10-Day Ultimate Morocco Itinerary

Your driver-guide is waiting in the arrivals hall at Marrakech Menara. Cars stop at the edge of the medina, so a porter wheels your luggage the last few lanes to your riad: an unmarked door, then a courtyard of orange trees, a fountain and mint tea poured from height.

The evening is yours. Walk to Jemaa el-Fnaa as the food stalls light their grills and the storytellers draw their circles, or stay on the roof terrace and watch the Koutoubia minaret turn copper at sunset. Before you sleep, your guide takes you through the days ahead.

A licensed city guide collects you after breakfast. Start at the Bahia Palace, eight hectares of carved cedar, painted ceilings and courtyards tiled in zellige, built for a grand vizier in the late nineteenth century. Then the Saadian Tombs, the burial place of a sixteenth-century dynasty, sealed for centuries and only rediscovered in 1917.

From there the souks take over: spice merchants, coppersmiths, the dyers' quarter with its skeins drying overhead. In the afternoon, find the shade of the Jardin Majorelle, Jacques Majorelle's cobalt-blue villa and cactus garden, later restored by Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé.

The road leaves the plain through walnut groves and Berber villages terraced into the slopes, then climbs in long hairpins to Tizi n'Tichka. At 2,260 m it is the highest major road pass in Morocco. We stop at the top for the view back down the bends.

On the southern side the land turns ochre and dry, and the first kasbahs appear. In the afternoon, cross the river on foot to Aït Ben Haddou, the fortified earthen village listed by UNESCO in 1987 and the backdrop to Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator and Game of Thrones. Climb to the old granary at the top for the light over the valley, then continue 30 minutes to Ouarzazate for the night.

A long day, and a beautiful one. Head east along the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs, through the palm grove of Skoura and the Valley of Roses at Kelaat M'Gouna, then up into the Dades Valley. At Tinghir you leave the car and walk into the Todra Gorge, where the river has cut a corridor through limestone cliffs up to 300 m high.

Past Tinejdad and Erfoud the land flattens into black stone desert, and then the dunes of Erg Chebbi rise out of it, apricot-coloured in the late sun. At Merzouga your camels are waiting. The ride into camp takes about an hour, timed so the sun sets while you're still on the sand. Dinner is served under the stars, with drums around the fire afterwards.

Climb the dune behind camp before dawn to watch the light come up over the erg. After breakfast your driver takes you around the dunes by 4×4: across the black volcanic plain, through the village of Khamlia, where Gnawa musicians play the hypnotic music their families brought across the desert, and on to a nomad family's tent for tea.

Afternoons are slow out here. Try sandboarding, or simply rest in the shade of the camp. At sunset, choose a dune with no one else on it. The second night is the one people remember: on a moonless night the Milky Way spans the sky from one horizon to the other.

Today you cross Morocco from the Sahara to the Middle Atlas. North of Errachidia the road runs along the rim of the Ziz Gorges, above one of the longest palm groves in the country, and through the Legionnaire's Tunnel cut by French Foreign Legion soldiers in the 1920s.

Beyond Midelt and its apple orchards, the road climbs into cedar forest near Azrou, home to the Barbary macaque. Stop to watch the troops in the trees, though please don't feed them. Then Ifrane, a tidy town of steep red roofs that is often called the Switzerland of Morocco, and on to Fes by evening.

Fes el-Bali is the largest car-free urban area in the world. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1981, and with a licensed local guide it makes sense in a way it never will on your own. Enter through Bab Boujloud, the Blue Gate, and follow the lanes down to the Bou Inania Madrasa and its carved cedar.

Al-Qarawiyyin was founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri and is often described as the oldest continually operating university in the world. You can look into its courtyard from the doorway. Watch the coppersmiths at work on Seffarine Square, then look down on the Chouara tannery from a terrace above its dye pits, with a sprig of mint for the smell. End the day at the Merenid Tombs as the medina goes gold at sunset.

The drive north takes about four hours, through rolling wheat fields and olive groves into the Rif mountains. Chefchaouen was founded in 1471 on the flank of two peaks. Its medina is washed in every shade of blue, from powder to indigo, and the town keeps a slower pace than the imperial cities.

The afternoon is free to wander: the kasbah on Outa el-Hammam square, the spring at Ras el-Ma, steps painted the colour of the sky. Before sunset, walk 20 minutes up to the Spanish Mosque on the hillside for the view over the whole blue town.

This morning you drive south-west to Casablanca, with a stop in Rabat at the Hassan Tower and the Mausoleum of Mohammed V if you'd like one. In the afternoon, take a guided visit of the Hassan II Mosque, which stands partly over the ocean and has a minaret 210 m tall. It is one of the very few mosques in Morocco that non-Muslim visitors can enter.

Spend your last evening on the Corniche at Aïn Diab, with the Atlantic breaking below the promenade and the mosque lit up behind you.

After a final breakfast, your driver takes you to Casablanca Mohammed V airport, about 40 minutes away. If your flight leaves from Marrakech, we drive you there instead, about three hours south. Either way, your driver stays with you until check-in.