Sahara Desert Morocco

In this post I will briefly explain you the differences between the two desert areas of Morocco as well as some options you have for such a trip and tips and utilities to travel there taking the most of it without spending your entire budget.

1. The desert

If you are planning to visit the Sahara desert Morocco you have two main options: Merzouga or Zagora. Each destination offers you a different experience so it is up to you to decide which one of them is better for your trip.

Without going through the details, Merzouga is believed to be more beautiful and it is easily to access. However, Zagora offers you a more authentic experience as it is considerably less touristic.

Now, some details:

Tours visiting the Merzouga region from Marrakech last 3 days 2 nights or 4 Dayd 3 Nights, one of them in the desert. This allows tourists to visit other parts of Morocco while travelling to the desert, such as Aït Benhaddou, Tinghir or the Todgha gorges. The town of Merzouga is just at the entrance of the Erg Chebbi sand dunes, which means it is full of hotels and tourist-related activities.

From the town of Merzouga it is really easy to take a camel ride or a 4×4 and be surrounded by sand dunes, without anything else to see 360º on the horizon. The shock is quite appalling and the landscape extremely beautiful. Erg Chebbi is full of haimas where you can spend the night or a few days, so you have a lot of options to chose; but, on the other hand, having other haimas around you the feeling of solitude is somehow diluted.

Neither the amount of tourists or haimas prevent you from having an amazing experience.

The trip to Zagora from Marrakech usually lasts 2 days. The views on the road are breathtaking although the drive is a little abrupt.

The sand dunes of the region of Zagora (Erg Chigaga) are more difficult to access than the ones in Merzouga (usually takes a few hours 4×4 drive or camel ride). Also, sand dunes are not as wide in Zagora as in Merzouga. These two reasons are why many tourists chose Merzouga over Zagora.

However, Zagora has the advantage of offering those tourists who do visit the area a more authentic and personal experience than the one in Merzouga, as they don’t have to share it with so many people.

I could not recommend you one desert area over the other because I’ve only been to one of them. We had a lot of doubts over which region to visit and we finally decided over Merzouga because we also wanted to visit the Todgha gorges and they were on the way to Merzouga. We do not regret this decision.