5-Day Liverpool to Marrakech Holiday | Culture & Desert From £490

Up early. Your guide collects you at your chosen time (7am, 8am, 9am, or 10am) and heads south through the city and into the foothills of the High Atlas. The road climbs steadily through Berber villages, past walnut groves and terraced fields, until you reach the Tizi n'Tichka Pass at 2,260 metres — Morocco's highest road and one of its most dramatic drives.

The southern descent opens onto a completely different Morocco: drier, redder, ancient-feeling. Your first stop is the Kasbah of Aït Ben Haddou — a UNESCO World Heritage Site of earthen towers that has appeared in more films and series than most Hollywood studios: Gladiator, Game of Thrones, Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, Babel. Walk the narrow alleys, climb the ksar, look out over the Ounila Valley — then lunch nearby before continuing.

Through Ouarzazate — the Hollywood of Africa, home to the Atlas Film Studios — and east through the Valley of Roses where the land turns lush and the air sweetens in spring. Arrive in the Dades Valley by evening for dinner and rest. The desert is close now.

Day 2 highlights:

• High Atlas Mountains drive via Tizi n'Tichka Pass (2,260m)
• UNESCO Kasbah of Aït Ben Haddou — film location for Gladiator, Game of Thrones
• Ouarzazate — Hollywood of Africa & Atlas Film Studios
• Valley of Roses & Dades Gorges
• Traditional Moroccan dinner, overnight in Dades Valley

After breakfast, the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs takes you east through some of southern Morocco's most extraordinary landscapes — ancient mud-brick fortresses rising from palm oases, Berber villages clinging to rocky hillsides, the kind of scenery that makes you question why you ever went anywhere else.

First stop: Tinghir and its vast palm oasis — one of the largest in Morocco, fed by meltwater from the Atlas. From here, a short drive brings you to the entrance of the Todra Gorge, where 300-metre limestone walls close in above a narrow river path. Walk the gorge floor. Feel the scale of it. Pause for lunch wedged between those cliffs.

Then the road straightens and the landscape flattens and the colour shifts to deep ochre as you approach the Sahara. And then — on the horizon — the first dunes of Erg Chebbi appear. 150 metres high, golden, completely still.

At their base, your camel caravan is ready. The sunset trek across the dunes is the centrepiece of this entire trip — the silence, the scale, the light. You reach your Berber desert camp just before dark. Dinner under a sky full of stars, a Tam-Tam drum performance around the campfire, then sleep in your private tent to the sound of the Sahara at night: absolute silence.

Day 3 highlights:

• Road of a Thousand Kasbahs & Tinghir palm oasis
• Todra Gorge — 300m limestone canyon walls
• Camel trek across Erg Chebbi dunes at sunset
• Traditional Berber dinner & drum performance at desert camp
• Overnight in Berber camp under Sahara stars

🌟 Optional upgrade: Deluxe Desert Camp — private ensuite tent with hot shower. Ask at booking.

Wake before dawn. The optional sunrise over Erg Chebbi is the most-photographed moment of the entire trip — the dunes move through violet, then rose, then burning gold as the sun clears the horizon. Entirely worth the early alarm.

After breakfast at camp, your driver begins the return north. Scenic lunch stop in Ouarzazate, then the climb back over the Tizi n'Tichka Pass — the views on the way back feel completely different, the light lower and warmer. Arrive in Marrakech by early evening.

Your final night is yours. Djemaa el-Fna square after dark is unlike anything you'll have seen: food stalls, storytellers, musicians, the call to prayer drifting over it all. The Medina's souks stay open late — last chance for leather goods, spices, argan oil, ceramic. Or just sit on a rooftop terrace with a mint tea and take it all in.

Day 4 highlights:

• Optional Erg Chebbi sunrise
• Return through High Atlas Mountains
• Lunch in Ouarzazate
• Free evening in Marrakech — Djemaa el-Fna, souks, rooftop terrace

Final breakfast. Last walk in the Medina if you have time — the morning light in the souks is its own thing. Then your private driver picks you up for the airport transfer.

Your flight home to Liverpool takes around 3 hours 30 minutes. Enough time to edit the photos, relive the highlights, and work out how to describe the Sahara to someone who hasn't been.

Day 5 highlights:

• Final Moroccan breakfast
• Private transfer to Marrakech Airport
• Return flight to Liverpool