The breathtaking drive from Marrakesh to the Sahara Desert

After bidding goodbye to Marrakesh, I embarked on possibly one of the most beautiful journey in Morocco. An absolutely breathtaking drive through the Atlas Mountains and several astonishing towns and legendary gorges.

There are two ways to get to the Sahara Desert in Morocco, through two gateway towns: Merzouga and Zagora.

Merzouga, after much research, has so many more scenic sights. From the shifting orange sands to rolling dunes, the journey is 560km from Marrakesh. And according to Google Maps, the drive would take about 9 hours, which would give me a couple of hours to explore the different places along the way.

While Zagora is about a 6 hour drive, spanning across 360km. Located in the pre-Saharan Steppes, it is pretty rocky and has much smaller dunes.

Despite the research I've done, I decided to go for the longer, much more scenic route. I mean... what's 10 hours of driving and how difficult can it be, right? Wrong.

There are many things in life that you only need to do once. This solo drive to the desert is high on that list. While the views took my breath away with every twist and turn through the Atlas Mountains, I was traveling alone. The 12 hours drive proved to be quite a feat.

I had a route planned out, one that hit all the amazing places en route to the desert. Marrakech > Aït Benhaddou > Ouarzazate > Dadès Gorges > Merzouga. Of course, nothing ever went as planned when I travel solo.

Most people, when they travel from Marrakesh to the Sahara Desert, they spread the journey out across two days or more. Well, I only had one day to get to the desert. The drive was way more arduous than I had imagined.

The Atlas Mountains were hard to navigate, the roads were narrow and unpaved. For someone who really hates slow drivers, I was only going at 20km/hr at the bends. There were so many times where I imagined driving off the road and down into the abyss. It also didn't really help that there was no mobile reception in some stretches in the mountains.

I only stopped twice, once for gas and the other for lunch. It was really hard not to stop in the middle of the mountains for photos of the landscape, but I resisted for the most part, in fear of losing light. Needless to say, I didn't manage to stop at any of the beautiful places I'd planned.

The last part of my drive was filled with worry. Worry that I'll lose light and have to drive in pitch black darkness. Worry that I won't be able to make it to the desert by nightfall. Luckily for me, the moon was full and bright. It was moonlight and my perma-high beam for the rest of the 150km until I finally got to Merzouga. The only dangers really, were locals on bicycles with no light, no reflective strips.

Having said that, the drive was great and the sights along the way were incredible. From the crazy mountains to dirt roads. Clear blue skies to the dusty pink sunset. At this point, I've driven across three different biomes on this trip.

Next time, I'll definitely spread the journey across a few more days. After all, it's always about the lesson learnt, right? It is pretty insane now that I look back on the 560km drive. Now, can I put extreme driving on my résumé?