At the gates of the Sahara

Where the piste fades out, the great desert begins. The rocky plateaus and stony regs slowly give way to the long dune ridges of the erg, those waves of sand the wind redraws every single day. The first time you see them rise up on the horizon it always catches you, and more than anything it makes you itch to ride straight into them.

Morocco has two great mythical ergs: erg Chebbi, near Merzouga, with its tall dunes that glow red at sunrise, and erg Chegaga, wilder, out at the far end of the Drâa valley, where the road truly stops. Between the two, a whole world of nomads, dromedaries and hidden oases where the date palms grow. This desert isn't empty: it's inhabited, crossed for centuries by the caravans that linked sub-Saharan Africa to the north of the continent.

Riding here means learning to read the sand, to feel how firm it is, to pick your line according to how the dunes are aligned and where the light is coming from. You come away with smoother, more supple riding, and a serious dose of humility. And then there's that silence you don't find anywhere else, so complete you can hear your own heartbeat. At sunset, the whole landscape turns to gold, then pink, before the cold drops in all at once.

This is the ultimate training ground for rally-raid, demanding and intoxicating at the same time. And our bivouacs under the stars, far from any artificial light, with the Milky Way splitting the sky in two, are among the strongest memories you bring home from a raid. My desert raids →

More about the destination:official Morocco travel site →