Morocco Motorcycle Tours

Morocco is three hours from most European airports and it rides like an expedition. In one week you can top a 2,200-metre pass before lunch, eat in a palm oasis, and watch the sun go down over the Erg Chebbi dunes. Mountains, gorges, plateau and desert, all stacked within a day of each other. That compression is why riders keep coming back.

The High Atlas is the backbone. Tizi n'Tichka takes the N9 south out of Marrakech to around 2,200 metres, a long resurfaced climb of stacked hairpins. There's a slower, prettier old road branching through the Ounila valley past Telouet to the mud-brick ksar at Ait Ben Haddou, and it's worth the extra hour. West of it, the Tizi n'Test on the R203 is the harder ride: narrower, older, edged by unguarded drops, topping out near 2,100 metres above the Souss valley. Run the two as a loop and you've seen the range.

South of the mountains everything changes. The N10 runs the Route of a Thousand Kasbahs east from Ouarzazate, through the palmeraie at Skoura towards Boumalne Dades and Tinghir. From Boumalne the R704 climbs the Dades gorge in a set of hairpins that photograph better than almost any road in Africa. From Tinghir the Todra gorge squeezes between 300-metre limestone walls before it spits you onto the high plateau. Keep going east through Erfoud and Rissani and you reach Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi sand sea. Head southwest instead and the Draa valley runs from Agdz through Zagora to M'Hamid, emptier every kilometre.

There's more than the desert circuit. The Anti-Atlas around Tafraoute gives you pink granite, almond terraces and smooth, near-deserted tarmac. The Atlantic coast between Essaouira and Agadir brings headwinds, argan trees and good seafood, with Paradise Valley cut into the hills behind. Up north, the Middle Atlas cedar forests near Azrou and Ifrane feel more Alpine than Saharan, and Fes, Meknes and Rabat give a trip its cultural spine.