10 Days Morocco Tour from Marrakech

Day 1: Welcome to Marrakech, Morocco

Your driver will be waiting at Marrakech Airport with a sign bearing your name, and from there it’s a short ride to your riad or hotel. We don’t schedule anything else for today on purpose flights into Marrakech run at all hours, and travelers arrive on very different sleep schedules, so today is yours to use however makes sense, rest, or wander out into the Medina before your guide meets you tomorrow. Overnight in Marrakech.

Day 2: Explore Marrakech with a local guide

Your guide will meet you after breakfast for a day built around Marrakech imperial history, starting at the Koutoubia Mosque, whose minaret has anchored the city’s skyline since the 12th century. From there you’ll walk the Menara Gardens and tour the Saadian Tombs, a burial site that stayed sealed and largely forgotten for close to 200 years before being rediscovered in 1917.

The route continues to Bahia Palace, where the carved cedar ceilings and painted tilework are worth slowing down for, and past the open-air ruins of El Badii Palace. We usually build in time at Majorelle Garden as well, a smaller stop but a good break from walking, with its cobalt-blue buildings and cactus collection tucked away from the street.

We save Jemaa El Fna for the afternoon rather than the morning, since it changes character completely as the day goes on quieter and market-focused earlier, then filling with musicians, food stalls, and performers as evening approaches. It’s usually the moment on this 10 days Morocco tour from Marrakech where travelers start to feel like they’ve actually arrived. Overnight in Marrakech.

Day 3: Marrakech – Ait Ben Haddou – Dades Valley [318 km]

This is the first real driving day, and it starts early, both to beat the heat over the mountains and to give you time at each stop without rushing. The Tizi n’Tichka pass climbs above 2,200 meters through a string of Berber villages, and we build in a few short photo stops along the switchbacks rather than driving straight through.

Ait Ben Haddou is the first major stop, a fortified village built almost entirely from rammed earth that has been used as a film set more times than most people expect, including for Gladiator. Walking up through the kasbah to the old granary at the top gives you the best view back down over the valley, and it’s worth the fifteen extra minutes of climbing.

After lunch in Ouarzazate, where several of Morocco largest film studios are based, the drive continues through Kalaat M’Gouna, the center of the country’s rose-growing region, and on into the Dades Valley by evening. Dinner and overnight in Dades Valley.

Day 4: Dades Valley – Todra Valley – Merzouga Desert [245 km]

The morning drive passes through Tinghir, where a wide palm oasis runs along the base of the town, before reaching Todra Gorge. The canyon walls here rise close to 300 meters on either side of a narrow river, and it’s one of the few stops on this route where we’d suggest getting out and walking rather than just photographing from the car.

From Todra, the road heads toward Rissani, once a stop on trans-Saharan trade routes and now known more for its market and small fossil workshops than its history. As the land flattens out past Rissani, the first dunes appear on the horizon, and by the time you check into your hotel in Merzouga, the desert is right outside your window. Overnight in Merzouga.

Day 5: Explore Merzouga Desert

We start the day away from the dunes, in Khamlia, a small village where families of West African descent settled generations ago and still play Gnaoua music with instruments and rhythms tied to that history. It’s a low-key morning, but it gives the desert stop that follows more context than jumping straight to the camels.

Camel departure is timed for late afternoon, so you’re moving across Erg Chebbi dunes as the light softens and arrive at camp close to sunset. Dinner is shared around a fire with local musicians, and the camp itself sits far enough from any town that the sky is genuinely dark. This is the night most travelers on our 10 days Morocco itineraries mention first when they get home.

Day 6: Merzouga Desert – Ziz Valley – Midelt – Azrou – Ifrane – Fes [468 km]

Most guests choose to catch sunrise over the dunes before breakfast, and we’d recommend it even after a late night at the camp. This is the longest driving day of the trip, so we build in a proper lunch stop in Midelt, roughly the halfway point, rather than pushing straight through.

The road out of the desert follows the Ziz Valley for a while, running alongside one of the largest palm oases in the country, before climbing into cooler terrain near Azrou. The cedar forest there is home to wild Barbary macaques that often sit close enough to the roadside to see clearly from the vehicle. Ifrane, just past Azrou, looks nothing like the rest of Morocco it was built in a European alpine style and still has a noticeably cooler climate than the desert you left that morning.

You’ll reach Fes by evening, arriving in a city that’s been a center of learning and craft since the 9th century. Overnight in Fes.

Day 7: Explore Fes with a local guide

Fes gets a full day with a local guide because, honestly, it’s easy to get lost trying to see it on your own the medina has thousands of narrow lanes and very few of them run in a straight line. You’ll start at Bou Inania Madrasa, a 14th-century religious school with some of the most detailed zellige tilework and carved cedar in the city.

From there, the walk continues through Nejjarine Square, home to a restored fountain and a former merchant inn that’s now a small museum of woodworking tools, and into the crafts districts, where tanning, metalwork, and weaving are still done the way they have been for centuries. Your guide will also take you through the Mellah, the historic Jewish Quarter, which is a part of the city many shorter tours skip entirely.

If a full day in Fes leaves you wanting more time in the medina, we also run this same desert route as a 3 days Marrakech to Fes desert tour, which can be paired with extra nights in Fes on request. Overnight in Fes.

Day 8: Fes – Volubilis – Chefchaouen [265 km]

The first stop after leaving Fes is Volubilis, the best-preserved Roman site in Morocco, with mosaic floors and standing columns spread across an open hillside. It’s a quieter stop than most of the cities on this trip, and we usually find guests want more time here than they expect going in.

From Volubilis, the drive climbs into the Rif Mountains toward Chefchaouen, where most of the old town is painted in shades of blue that shift depending on the light and time of day. We leave the afternoon open here rather than guiding it, since Chefchaouen is small enough to explore on foot at your own pace and easy to get turned around in, in a good way. Overnight in Chefchaouen.

Day 9: Chefchaouen – Rabat – Casablanca [351 km]

Heading south, the first stop is Rabat, Morocco political capital since 1912. You’ll visit the Kasbah of the Udayas overlooking the river mouth, walk through the Chellah, a walled necropolis with both Roman and medieval ruins set among gardens, and see the Hassan Tower, an unfinished 12th-century minaret that’s become one of the city’s defining landmarks.

By afternoon you’ll reach Casablanca, Morocco largest city, to see the Hassan II Mosque. It’s one of the few mosques in the country open to non-Muslim visitors, and its scale is hard to appreciate from photos alone the minaret is over 200 meters tall, among the tallest religious structures in the world. Overnight in Casablanca.

Day 10: Transfer to the Airport

Your driver will pick you up after breakfast for the transfer to either Marrakech or Casablanca Airport, depending on your flight home. Ten days is enough time to actually settle into a country rather than just pass through it, and most guests tell us this trip leaves them planning a return visit before they’ve even landed home.

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