11 Days in Morocco: Casablanca to Marrakech, Coast to Sahara

You are met at the airport and driven into the city. The rest of the day is yours to sleep off the flight. In the evening there is time for a first walk along the Atlantic corniche and a look at the Hassan II mosque from the outside, its minaret standing over the water - a useful reminder, on day one, that Morocco is a country on the ocean before it is a country of desert.

North along the coast to Rabat, the capital, where the Kasbah of the Udayas sits above the mouth of the Bou Regreg with its own blue-and-white lanes, and the unfinished Hassan Tower stands beside the royal mausoleum. Then inland and up, out of the coastal plain and into the green Rif, until Chefchaouen appears in the late afternoon - a town painted blue from the doorsteps to the rooftops, folded into the side of a mountain. The night is spent in a riad inside it.

A slow morning in the blue alleys before they fill up, then south. Volubilis comes first: a Roman city standing in wheat fields, its columns and mosaic floors open to the sky, with the arch and the main street still legible after eighteen centuries. Then Meknes, and the enormous Bab Mansour gate into the old imperial capital. Fes arrives in the late afternoon - and Fes takes a moment to understand, because there is nothing else quite like it.

The morning belongs to a licensed local guide, and it should. The Fes medina has thousands of lanes and no logic a visitor can read alone: you go to the Al-Qarawiyyin quarter, look down on the tanneries from a terrace, and step into the medersas with their carved cedar and tilework. In the afternoon the road climbs into the Middle Atlas, through Ifrane with its alpine roofs and then the cedar forest above Azrou, where Barbary macaques come down to the roadside. The night is in Midelt, a quiet town under the High Atlas.

The long day, and the one that changes the trip. South from Midelt the road drops through the Ziz gorges and opens onto a palm grove that runs to the horizon, one of the largest in Morocco. Then Errachidia, Erfoud with its fossil workshops, and Rissani, an old caravan crossroads of ksour and dry riverbeds. West from there the ground turns to black stone: dark gravel plains against pale mountains, and almost nothing else for an hour. Nkob comes at the end of it, a kasbah village under the ridge of Jebel Saghro.

Into the Draa. The valley widens through Agdz, where the palm groves and red kasbahs begin, then Zagora, the old departure point for the caravans that crossed to Timbuktu. At Tamegroute you stop for the ancient library and the green pottery, then run south to M Hamid El Ghizlane, the last village before the sand. There the vehicle changes: the camp 4x4s take over for the crossing into the erg. You arrive in time for a camel ride into the dunes at sunset, dinner under the stars, and music around the fire.

Wake for sunrise on the dunes, which is the reason to sleep out here. Then the 4x4 crossing back out to Foum Zguid, where the asphalt starts again and the desert flattens into open plain. The road runs west through Taznakht, a weaving town known for its geometric rugs, then Taliouine and the saffron terraces, and Taroudant with its long ochre walls. Agadir and the Atlantic arrive in the evening. It is a long day, and it is the price of Chigaga.

A short and deliberately easy day. Morning views over the bay from the Kasbah hill, then north up the coast road through Taghazout, a surf village of boards and cafes, and Imsouane, a fishing bay with a famously long wave and a cluster of blue boats. The road stays above the ocean most of the way. Essaouira arrives in the afternoon: ramparts, gulls, a working harbour, and a medina of white walls and blue shutters that is easy to walk after four days of driving.

A last morning on the ramparts, then east across the argan plains, where goats really do stand in the trees, and into the red city. The afternoon is spent on quad bikes on the tracks and palm groves at the edge of Marrakech - dust, rocky ground, and a couple of hours of not sitting in a car. The night is in a riad inside the medina.

Up before dawn for the balloon. You lift off over the plains north of the city as the light arrives, with the High Atlas along the whole southern horizon, and land to a Berber breakfast in a tent. Back in the city a licensed guide takes you through the medina on foot - the Koutoubia minaret, the courtyards and painted ceilings of the Bahia Palace, and the Saadian Tombs, sealed up for two centuries and only rediscovered in 1917. The day ends the way a Moroccan day should: a traditional steam bath, and a massage.

A private transfer to Marrakech airport for your flight. If you are flying out of Casablanca, Fes, Tangier or Agadir instead, we drive you there and the transfer is included.