Discover Morocco — 13 Days

Your private driver meets you at Mohammed V International Airport and takes you to your hotel in Casablanca. Take the afternoon to rest or walk the elegant Maarif neighbourhood, then a stroll along the Ain Diab corniche as the Atlantic turns gold in the evening light. Tonight, you're in Morocco.

Begin with a guided interior tour of the Hassan II Mosque, built by 30,000 artisans on a platform above the Atlantic. Continue to Rabat: the Mohammed V Mausoleum, the Hassan Tower, and the blue-and-white Udayas Kasbah overlooking the Bou Regreg river.

Drive north through the Rif Mountains foothills to Chefchaouen — a mountain city so beautiful it seems imagined. Every surface is painted in blues ranging from pastel to indigo, layered over centuries of repainting. Arrive in the early afternoon with time to wander the medina without a schedule — Plaza Uta el-Hammam, the washing fountain, the Andalusian garden above the kasbah, and the golden hour when the blue walls glow amber.

Drive south to Meknes — the imperial city Sultan Moulay Ismail built to rival Versailles. Stand before Bab el-Mansour, the most ornate gateway in North Africa. Continue to Volubilis, a UNESCO Roman city covering 40 hectares, where 2,000-year-old mosaic floors depicting Orpheus and Bacchus still lie exactly where Roman families once walked. Arrive in Fes — Morocco's most rewarding city — at sunset.

Fes el-Bali was founded in 789 AD and has barely changed. Your licensed local guide — born in the medina — takes you through the Attarine Medersa (a 14th-century theological school whose courtyard is one of the most beautiful enclosed spaces in the Islamic world), the Chouara Tanneries (leather processed in the same stone vats since the 11th century), the Mellah, and the Royal Palace gates. Lunch on a rooftop with panoramic medina views.

Drive south through Ifrane — the alpine Swiss-style town built by the French Protectorate, with stone chalets and a famous snow-covered lion sculpture. Continue through cedar forests where Barbary macaques roam free, then descend through the Ziz Valley — a river gorge with thousands of date palms creating a green canopy above the arid landscape. Arrive in Erfoud, gateway to the Sahara, at sunset.

Explore Rissani — birthplace of the Alaouite dynasty and once the great terminus of the trans-Saharan trade route. Detour to Khamlia village for a deeply moving Gnawa music performance under a goatskin tent. Then arrive at the edge of Erg Chebbi: 50 kilometres of the most spectacular sand dunes in the world. Mount your camel as the sun begins its descent — the slow rhythm, the dunes turning gold and amber and red. Luxury desert camp awaits: dinner, drumming, ten million stars.

Rise at 5:30am. Climb the dune. Watch the world turn gold. Then travel west through the Berber heartland — past Tinghir's vast date palm oasis to Todra Gorge, where sheer 300-metre limestone cliffs create a slot canyon dramatic enough to stop your breath. Continue to the Dades Gorge, a wider valley of sculpted red rock formations. Spend the night in a lodge perched above the valley floor.

Travel the legendary caravan route through Skoura's palm oasis and Ouarzazate's film studios to Aït Ben Haddou — the UNESCO mud-brick fortress filmed by Ridley Scott, Iñárritu, and dozens of others. Walk its thousand-year-old alleys with your guide, past grain stores still in use and craftspeople still making pottery and jewellery. Cross the Tizi n'Tichka Pass (2,260 m) and descend to Marrakech as the evening lights begin to sparkle below.

Full-day guided discovery of Marrakech with your licensed local expert. The Saadian Tombs — discovered behind a sealed doorway in 1917. El Badi Palace — stripped of its 360 carved marble columns by a later sultan, its empty ruins now haunted by storks. The opulent Bahia Palace. The dyer's souk. The lantern market. As dusk falls: Djemaa el-Fna — storytellers, Gnawa musicians, acrobats, and the rising smoke of a hundred food stalls.

Drive west through argan tree forests (where you'll see goats climbing in the branches) to the Atlantic coast. Essaouira is a UNESCO-listed fortified port of extraordinary beauty: blue-painted fishing boats bob in the ancient harbour, sea ramparts overlook the grey-green Atlantic, and inside the medina woodworkers craft thuya root furniture while women press argan oil at a Berber cooperative. Walk the ramparts at sunset with the wind at your back.

Drive the Atlantic coast road north, stopping in Safi — Morocco's ceramics capital, where pottery workshops line the hillside below the old Portuguese fort and artisans hand-paint dishes in the same patterns their grandparents used. Continue to El Jadida, a UNESCO-listed Portuguese coastal fort whose magnificent underground cistern (a vaulted chamber with a shallow pool reflecting Gothic arches) is one of Morocco's most haunting spaces. Lunch at El Oualidia, a sheltered lagoon famous for the best oysters in Africa. Then back to Casablanca for your final evening.

A final Moroccan breakfast, then your private driver takes you to Mohammed V International Airport. You've seen Morocco from its mountains to its deserts to its Atlantic shores — imperial cities, blue mountain villages, medieval medinas, golden dunes, Hollywood kasbahs, windswept port cities, and the best oysters in Africa. That's Morocco, completely discovered.