Agafay Stone Desert

What to expect

Agafay is not sand but stone: a rolling desert of bare grey-gold hills about forty minutes south-west of Marrakech, with the snow line of the High Atlas along the horizon behind it. It is the closest thing to the Sahara you can reach in an afternoon, and it looks completely unlike anywhere else near the city.

Go for the afternoon and stay for dinner as the hills turn pink, or spend the night in a camp with proper beds and a pool. It pairs naturally with a night at Dar Mazik: desert on one day, mountains the next, with an hour of driving between them.