The second part of our road trip was marked by vast, deserted areas, occasionally brought to life by oases and a still surprisingly large number of rammed-clay buildings. Since we decided to go all the way to the Saharan dunes, we could only stop at a few places – our main focus was accommodation, food, shopping, and similar necessities. We could mostly observe the landscape from the car window, but it still left a deep impression :-) As one of the participants said: there were moments when we felt like we were on Mars, and at other times like we were on the Moon :-)
Points of interest during this part of our journey:
▪️ The Ammeln valley - A desert-like valley with several villages and various striking rocks formations
▪️ Tafraoute - A rather touristy town with lots of markets and an Almond tree flower festival we just missed, a palm grove and beautiful large rocks all around
▪️ La Maison Berbère Traditionnelle de Tazka - a real must see in Tafraoute - the landlord made us a perfect presentation about a traditional Amazigh house that he maintains and grew up in
▪️ La gazelle (close to the abovementioned house) - a prehistoric animal engraving on a rock, estimated to be 3-5,000 years old
▪️ Eerie mountainous arid landscapes, later rather desertlike regions and exotic Oases in it on the road towards Tata
▪️ Riad Bounaylat - a traditional, atriumlike kasbah in an Oasis environment, an authentic-feel like place to stay overnight
▪️ Tata - the city offers much more but we chose to visit only the markets due to time pressure
▪️ Zagora - last town before Sahara, said to be about 52 days camel ride to Timbuktu
▪️ Camp M'hamid Ras N'khal - a camp to stay at the desert, offering food, accomodation and a drive to high dunes nearby
Our Route: https://mapy.com/s/fejoredodo
April 9th-10th 2025
Music:
Medina Melodies | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay
Desert Bells | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay
Memories of Chefchaouen | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay
Whispers from Zagora | Royalty-free Music - Pixabay