Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi dunes: camps, camels and the drive

The road from Erfoud runs south through the Tafilalt, past date palms and the last hotels and petrol stations before the desert, and then the land goes flat and pale. The dunes appear as a line of ochre on the horizon and grow slowly for half an hour, and then you are in Merzouga, where the tarmac stops and the sand starts.

Those dunes are the Erg Chebbi, a sand sea about 28 kilometres long and five to seven wide, pressed against the Algerian border. They rise as much as 150 metres above the stony plain around them, which is why they look like a wave rather than a landscape, and the village sits on their western lee where the wind is gentler and the water is nearer the surface.

How a night in the dunes works

Almost every visitor does the same thing, and it is a good thing: leave the village in the late afternoon, either on a camel or in a 4x4, reach a camp in the outer part of the erg, climb a ridge for the sunset, eat, listen to drums, and sleep in a tent. You wake before the sun, walk up the nearest dune in the dark, and watch the light come across the sand in bands.

The choice that matters is what you sleep in. A camp inside the erg means no walls, no signal and no light but the fire and the stars, and it is cold at night for much of the year. A guesthouse in the village means a hot shower, electricity and a short walk to the sand, which is the sensible answer with children, in July, or if you have driven a long way that day. The camps themselves range from a ring of simple tents with a shared bathroom block to outfits with private bathrooms and rugs on the floor, and the difference in price is large.

Camels, 4x4s and what the sand does

The camel is the slow, quiet way in: about ninety minutes at a walk, with a guide who is usually a member of one of the families that has kept animals here for generations. It is not a fairground ride, and the first twenty minutes are the ones that people complain about afterwards. The 4x4 covers the same ground in half an hour over the tracks, which is better for backs, knees and anyone with a schedule to keep.

Whichever you take, the day has a shape that the heat decides. In spring and autumn you can walk the dunes most of the day. In summer the sand is too hot to cross barefoot by mid-morning, and everything moves to the two hours after sunrise and the two before sunset. A sandstorm can arrive with almost no warning, which is unpleasant rather than dangerous if you have a scarf and something to shelter behind, and the camp staff have seen it all before.

When to go

October to April is the comfortable window: warm days, cold nights, and sand that holds the light the way the photographs promise. December and January mornings can be close to freezing, and the tents come with more blankets than you think you need for a reason. From May to September the days are punishing, with excursions squeezed to the cool ends of them, and the desert is at its least hospitable.

Rain is rare in the extreme, but it is not unknown, and when it comes it can come hard. In May 2006 a flash flood through the village destroyed 140 houses and hotels and displaced 1,200 people. In October 2024 the same kind of event filled basins that had been dry for decades. It is worth knowing that the dry river beds beside the village are dry most of the year and not always.

Getting there, and the signal on the way

There is no railway and no airport of any size nearby. The two ways in are from Marrakech, over the Tizi n’Tichka and through Ouarzazate, or from Fes and Meknes across the Middle Atlas and down through Errachidia and Erfoud, and both are long days of driving. Many people take an organised tour from Marrakech or Fes precisely because the driving is the hard part, and the shared minibuses that run the route are a reasonable middle way.

Signal is not a problem until it is. Erfoud, Rissani and Merzouga village all have good coverage and 4G, which is where you should buy any data you need and download the offline map. Once you are a few kilometres into the erg, the network thins and the camps sit outside it, so the map, the camp’s pin and the phone number of whoever is meeting you should all be on the device before you leave the last town. Treat the camp as the one place on the trip where being unreachable is the point.

The Erg Chebbi is not the emptiest desert in Morocco, and Merzouga is not a secret. It is, however, the most convenient place to see a real sand sea, with camps that make it easy, and the two hours either side of the low sun are as good as anything in the country. Go for one night, take the camel, and be awake for the sunrise.