Grand Tour
The Atlas Circuit
Three days over Morocco’s great High Atlas passes and gorges.
South of Marrakech the High Atlas throws up a wall of rock the old caravan routes crossed on foot. Three roads now carry you over and through it: the Tizi n’Tichka to the kasbah country, the painted gorges of the Dadès and Todra, and the fearsome single-track Tizi n’Test back to the Souss. It is one of the great mountain loops anywhere, and almost no one outside Morocco has heard of it.
Over the Tichka
Overnight: OuarzazateClimb the N9 from Marrakech over the Tizi n’Tichka, the highest major pass in North Africa, dropping past the kasbah of Telouet into the desert south.
The painted gorges
Overnight: Boumalne DadèsA day in the canyons: the switchbacks of the Dadès and the sheer red walls of the Todra, two of the most photographed gorges in Africa.
The Tizi n’Test
Overnight: TaroudantBack west over the Tichka, then the big one: the Tizi n’Test, a single-track ledge with five-hundred-metre drops and no barriers, past the ancient Tin Mal mosque and down to the Souss plains.
