10-Day Morocco Tour: Casablanca to Marrakech via Chefchaouen and the Sahara

Your driver-guide meets you as you clear customs at Casablanca airport and drives you into the city. The rest of the day is yours to sleep off the flight. If you have the energy there is time for a walk along the Atlantic corniche as the light goes - a useful reminder on day one that Morocco is a country on the ocean before it is a country of desert.

The morning is Casablanca: the Hassan II mosque standing over the water, the art deco facades around Place Mohammed V, and the quiet arcaded lanes of the Habous quarter. Then north to Rabat for the Hassan Tower and the whitewashed Kasbah of the Udayas, and inland through Ouezzane as the road climbs into the folded hills of the Rif. Chefchaouen arrives in the late afternoon, its lanes turning indigo as the light drops.

A morning among the blue alleys before the day visitors arrive: the Place Outa el Hammam, the kasbah gardens, and the climb to the Spanish Mosque viewpoint for the view back down over the rooftops. Then south out of the Rif to Fes, arriving in the late afternoon. A licensed local guide introduces the city - its gates, its skyline, the shape of the medina - and dinner is inside the old town.

A full morning in Fes el-Bali with your guide, which is the only sensible way into it: the Al-Qarawiyyin quarter, the carved cedar and stucco of the Bou Inania madrasa, the Chouara tanneries seen from a terrace above their bowls of dye, and the artisan quarters, with free time of your own among the lanes. In the afternoon the road climbs into the Middle Atlas through Ifrane, with its pitched roofs and pine air, and the cedar forest above Azrou where Barbary macaques come down to the roadside. The night is in Midelt.

South over the Tizi n Talghemt pass, the landscape shifting from mountain green to pre-Saharan ochre. The road drops into the Ziz gorges and then follows the great palm sea of the Ziz Valley, kilometres of date palms along a river cut into bare rock. Errachidia, then Erfoud, the last town before the sand. By late afternoon you are at Merzouga, and camels carry you into the Erg Chebbi dunes for sunset. Dinner is under the stars with music around the fire.

Rise before dawn for the sunrise over the erg - the sand goes from grey to gold in about ten minutes and there is no sound at all. Then west across the desert plain through Tinejdad to the Todgha Gorge, where limestone walls rise three hundred metres on either side of a river narrow enough to step across. Through the palm oasis of Tinghir, and on to the Dades Valley, arriving as the late light catches its folded rock formations.

The longest day of the trip, and still under six hours. Morning viewpoints over the hairpins of the Dades Gorge and the cliffs locals call monkey fingers. Then Kelaa M Gouna and the Rose Valley, and the Skoura palm oasis with its old earthen kasbahs standing among the trees. In Ouarzazate the film studios; then a guided visit to Ait Ben Haddou, the UNESCO ksar whose earthen towers rise above the Ounila river. The Tizi n Tichka comes last, at 2,260 metres, and you descend into Marrakech as the Koutoubia catches the final light.

A full day on foot with a licensed local guide, which is how this medina should be seen. The Koutoubia minaret, the painted ceilings and courtyards of the Bahia Palace, the Saadian Tombs that were sealed for two centuries and only reopened in 1917, and the blue-green paths of the Jardin Majorelle. Then the souks, which are best entered with someone who knows where the streets come out. The day ends at Jemaa el-Fna as the lanterns come on.

Up before dawn and out to the foothills for the balloon. You lift off over the plains and Berber villages as the light arrives, with the High Atlas along the whole southern horizon, and land to breakfast in a tent. The middle of the day is yours. In the late afternoon you drive out to the Agafay, a stony plateau of grey hills, for quad bikes across the tracks and then dinner under the stars with the mountains going to silhouette behind you.

A free morning at your own pace, then 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.