The Agafay Desert: a stone desert an hour from Marrakech

What the Agafay actually is

The Agafay is a stone desert. Not sand, not dunes, not the Sahara. It is a plateau of bare rock, grit and dry riverbeds about 30 km south-west of Marrakech, and it looks like the surface of somewhere else entirely.

We are leading with this because the internet is not honest about it. Search for Agafay and you will find photographs of golden dunes with camel trains crossing them. Those pictures are the Sahara, several hundred kilometres further on, or they are shot at an angle that makes a small patch of grit look like Erg Chebbi. Travellers arrive expecting one thing, find another, and feel sold to.

What Agafay is instead: a vast, silent, khaki-coloured emptiness that starts abruptly at the edge of the city and runs to the foot of the High Atlas. The technical word is hammada, a rock desert. In the late afternoon the whole plateau turns orange, the mountains behind it go blue and then pink, and the silence is total in a way that is genuinely difficult to find within an hour of a city of a million people.

If that is what you want, it is superb. If you want dunes, go to Merzouga or Zagora and give it the days it needs.

Why people go, and who it suits

The honest case for Agafay is time. Reaching real Saharan dunes from Marrakech means a minimum of two days and realistically three. Agafay gives you desert light, desert silence and a night under an enormous sky, and has you back at your riad the same evening.

That trade works well for:

Travellers on a short city break who want one dramatic landscape and cannot give up two days of it.

Families, because the drive is under an hour in each direction and there is no walking involved unless you want it.

Anyone who wants a good dinner somewhere extraordinary. The camps out here have become genuinely good, and eating under that sky is the thing most people remember.

It works badly for anyone who has already been to the Sahara proper, and for people whose mental image is specifically dunes. Being clear about that up front costs us the occasional booking and saves everyone the disappointment.

What there is to do

Three things, broadly, and you do not need all of them.

Camel rides are the slow option. An hour on a camel at walking pace across the plateau is more about the setting than the animal, and it is the version that photographs best.

Quad bikes and buggies cover far more ground and are the reason a lot of younger groups come out. They are also loud, and they change the character of the place for everyone else nearby, so if silence is what you came for, go early or go on a camel.

The camps are the third thing, and increasingly the main one. They range from simple Berber tents with rugs and a fire to full glamping with pools, ensuite bathrooms and proper kitchens. Some are day-use, some are overnight, and several do dinner with music after dark. Our Shared and Private packs use a standard camp and the Luxury and Full day packs a luxury camp with a pool; we confirm which camp when you book.

You can also just go and look. Drive out, walk a few hundred metres from the car, sit down and watch the sun set. It costs nothing beyond the transfer and for a certain kind of traveller it is the best version of the trip.

Getting the timing right

Go in the afternoon. The Agafay in the middle of a summer day is a hard place with no shade at all, and the flat overhead light makes the landscape look like a quarry. From about four o’clock onwards it becomes what people come for.

Spring and autumn are the best seasons. March to May and October to November give you warm days, cool evenings and a decent chance of snow on the Atlas behind the desert, which is the view that makes the photographs.

Bring a layer. The temperature drops sharply once the sun is down, and people who came out in a t-shirt at five o’clock are cold by eight.

Practical things worth knowing

The road out is the P2009 and it is paved the whole way, so no four-wheel drive is needed to reach the main camps. Some individual camps sit down rough tracks off the main road — if yours does, tell us when you book and we will send a vehicle that can get to the door.

Our four packs are priced per person and include the transport, the quad, the camel and dinner with the show, so nothing is paid to a separate operator on the day. The steps up are your own car and driver, the luxury camp with its pool, and a full day that starts with a morning pickup and adds lunch. The prices are in the pack table above; the Full day pack keeps the same sunset finish but starts in the morning.

If you want the desert without the crowds, ask for a weekday. Weekend afternoons in high season are busy out here now.

Compare the fleet on our vehicles page, see every trip on the day trips hub, or check the price list. If it turns out you wanted mountains rather than desert, the Ourika Valley is a similar distance in the other direction and could not be more different.