High Atlas Mountains Tour – 6 Days from Ouarzazate

The bikes are the first thing to understand about a Desert Rats tour. The fleet is ten Cimatti Scrambler 125cc and five Cimatti Bobber 50cc tuned to 125cc, all street-legal and maintained by the company's own team. Nobody is riding a 1250 GS here, and that is deliberate: a light bike on a mountain trail is a completely different and in many ways more enjoyable experience than a heavy one, and it means the Bobber can be ridden on a standard car licence. The Scrambler needs a full motorcycle licence. What the company asks for in both cases is some riding experience rather than a particular endorsement, and it offers to have riders arrive a day early for a shakedown if it has been a while. The route itself runs roughly thirty per cent off-road and seventy per cent on winding asphalt, with the roads picked specifically because nothing else is on them. Desert Rats publishes the highlights rather than a day-by-day breakdown: 2,700-metre passes, big green forests that surprise most first-time visitors to Morocco, river crossings shallow enough that the local children will join you, green fields with the occasional donkey in the way, lively local souks, isolated Berber villages, lunch with a local family, and a walk to the Ouzoud Falls, 110 metres high and populated by Barbary apes. Groups run to a maximum of twelve riders plus a guide, or fourteen on a private booking. Navigation is handled by a smartphone the company supplies, loaded with the route in Outdooractive, so riders can ride at their own pace and stop for photographs without holding anyone up. A support vehicle follows with a full medical kit, and the guides and drivers hold medical certificates. Accommodation is a mix of small hotels, riads and auberges, several with a swimming pool, and alcohol is available every night either from the hotel or from Desert Rats. Riding gear is the significant exclusion: the company does not supply it and asks riders to bring their own for fit and comfort. A refundable damage deposit of 200 euro is taken in cash at the start and returned once the bike is checked over.

Six nights and five days of riding through the High Atlas on 125cc Cimatti Scramblers and Bobbers, which is the detail that makes Desert Rats different from every other operator on this list. Around thirty per cent of the route is off-road and seventy per cent winding asphalt chosen for its lack of traffic. The company positions this as its hot-weather tour, because the passes reach 2,700 metres and the mountains stay bearable when the desert does not. Highlights it publishes include forests most riders do not expect to find in Morocco, river crossings, a hike to the 110-metre Ouzoud Falls with its Barbary apes, isolated Berber villages and lunch with a local family. Groups are capped at twelve riders plus a guide, and the Bobber can be ridden on a car licence.