Four weeks on Moroccan roads: an entire month flickering between mountains and mirages, swallowing asphalt and dirt tracks, scalding tea and horizons too vast for a single helmet. A motorized vagrancy, collecting gorges, ksours, and fleeting encounters… along with that quiet feeling of finally being exactly where one ought to be: somewhere between the wind, the dust, and a deliciously battered freedom.
For a long time, I snubbed the Moroccan dazzle. I had my high-altitude loyalties: the mountains of Northern Vietnam or those of Ladakh, lands that are earned in liters of kerosene and jet lag. Morocco? Too close. One doesn’t let oneself be subjugated just two flight-hours away, I thought. Then this trip made me swallow my certainties, with panache, if you please. Ultimately, the best reason to go was precisely to prove myself wrong.
From the Ziz Gorges to the Merzouga Dunes
It was while approaching Outat El Haj, on the foothills of the Middle Atlas, that my ride truly began. From Nador, where I rolled off the ferry, the crossing of semi-arid steppes and high plateaus felt somewhat monotonous. Then came the Ziz Gorges—the first spark in a long series. Carved into the High Atlas limestone by the river’s quiet force, they appear as a spectacular tear in the mountain. They reveal ochre and red cliffs plunging toward the water, a millennia-old passage between inner Morocco and the Tafilalet—an immense oasis signaling the desert.
Exiting the gorges, the contrast is jarring. The red cliffs give way to a sea of date palms in a lush green. The road snakes through this corridor of life, where the Ziz’s water is channeled by an ingenious irrigation system. I fly through a string of mud-brick villages and ksours, earth-colored silhouettes so fused into the landscape you’d think they grew there like wild grass. During this Ramadan period, they are—to my great regret—totally deserted. I skip the “mousse mousse” cigarette breaks and the little café au lait that usually let me savor local life. I console myself throughout the trip by telling myself that my small personal renunciation is nothing compared to the great collective effort of the fast. A pocket sacrifice weighed against a continental struggle.
Slowly, vegetation vanishes almost entirely. The road crosses a monotonous reg. Excitement builds because, on the horizon, an increasingly sharp orange band begins to appear. Merzouga. The dunes of Erg Chebbi rise suddenly like an immense wall of orange sand. The sun beats like a drum. I only venture out around 4 p.m., exploring on foot the field of dunes that take on shades of fire and purple as the light fades. From the crests, shadows stretch to infinity, sculpting the sand into waves of golden velvet. Even if, below, camel caravans carry tourists rather than bales of spices, the spectacle remains grandiose. Neither snake, nor fox, nor Little Prince in sight, I head back to my inn where my host has promised a tagine under the stars, one I expect to remember for a long time.
The Todra Gorges
The 200 kilometers leading to the Todra Gorges play a score of contrasts: a mineral reg as far as the eye can see, then, like a desert whim, oases that surge only to vanish again. Approaching Tinghir, the terrain rears up, announcing the mountain’s edge. At the entrance to the gorges, it’s a tourist circus: souvenir shops, cars, and buses dumping flows of visitors posing at the foot of the immense limestone cliffs. Fortunately, this carnival lasts only a few hundred meters. Beyond, the gorges regain their serenity, revealing a mineral setting of striking beauty. Once past the narrowest section, the valley widens again. The road climbs toward the High Atlas, and the landscape turns alpine, wilder: cultivated plots become scarce, the vegetation shifts, and the atmosphere takes on the air of a fierce mountain.
I pause at the village of Tamtetoucht, at the Amazigh inn (“Free Man” in Berber), where I meet Hamid, the master of the house. A mason by trade, he built the inn with his own hands, and the result is remarkable: mud walls, refined decor, local craftsmanship, all in pure Berber style. His lamb tagine, our talk of the Berber people, and the mention of a trek toward salt caves convinced me to return one day.
I begin the ascent toward the high plateaus of the Atlas. The setting is austere and mineral: denuded mountainscapes, littered with blue-grey, dark, and violet rocks. Vegetation is meager, limited to low shrubs. Villages are rare and isolated. I cross Berber hamlets of stone or mud-brick, their isolation testifying to the harsh, traditional life of the high-altitude Imazighen.
Agoudal: 2,300 meters in the teeth. A village placed there like an error in altitude, far from everything, clinging to the void. I arrive at the hour of the muezzin, that murky minute where day hesitates to die. The air is dry, cutting. It smells of cold stone and smoke. At Bassou’s place, things don’t linger. Dinner is barely finished when the lounge fills up. Neighbors drop in unannounced, as if the night had called them. And then, it starts. The thumping drum. The snapping tambourine. A winding flute. The lute setting the spine. And those small metallic cymbals—nervous, almost insolent. Not a concert. A rehearsal. Another one. Before the Imilchil betrothal festival. But they play as if it were the last night on earth.
The next day, I leave Bassou with the beats still echoing in my skull. The road flies toward the Dades Gorges. I’d made a myth of them. This time, no doubt: I’m going to get shaken.
The Dades Gorges
From Agoudal, a fine paved road rises toward an arid, wind-swept high plateau, where dry-stone sheepfolds blend so well into the mineral backdrop you sense them more than see them. Further on, the road turns to dirt and climbs in tight hairpins toward the passes of the Central High Atlas, offering plunging views of ochre valleys and jagged ridges. In these barren plateaus, nature is mischievous. At every turn, it gives me the giggles, revealing an incredible palette of colors—from shaly grey to ferruginous red and limestone beige—and whimsical shapes that feed my fertile imagination perfectly.
Then, the tilt. A long, steep descent toward the valley. The landscape carves out, the rock lightens, pulling toward reddish tints, announcing the limestone of the gorges. At M’Semrir, life reappears: oases fed by the oued. The road sinks in, the cliffs tighten. After tea and a few walnuts at Hassan’s—the only café open at this altitude—I finally enter the most spectacular part: the upper Dades Gorges.
The turns grow tighter and tighter—those famous hairpins coiling against limestone walls hundreds of meters high. The landscape becomes dizzying: a gigantic mineral parade where the road, narrow and sinuous, claws at the mountain. The gorges then appear, monumental, notched with cliffs sculpted like stone organs. I ride at a crawl; I must soak in this hallucinated nature, petrified in its delirium for eternity. It is the spectacle of slow, patient, determined work—tectonic power and millennia of rain and wind. A true master-jeweler’s craft.
The “Monkey Fingers,” a geological curiosity, signal the exit. Emerging from the gorges, I feel like an orphan. If it weren’t for the promise of a beer in Ouarzazate, I’d turn back. The “Route of a Thousand Kasbahs”… a pretty name for the ears, sure, but it feels quite bland compared to the gorges. I’m bored. Nothing better, then, than to find the Dades again to shake my torpor, at the village of Sidi Flah. There, it copiously waters a lovely palm grove, far less crowded than Skoura’s. The detour is essential before the final straight line to Ouarzazate.
