The Sahara Desert travel guide

So go on, we hear you ask, how do I visit the middle of nowhere? Well, first of all, most tours don’t just magically drop you in the middle of the desert. It takes time to reach the Sahara proper from civilisation – which means a long drive to the gateway towns that sit precipitously on the desert’s edge. To get to Chinguetti, Mauritania, for instance, it’s 65km from the nearest town on unmade road. The most popular, accessible place from which to reach the edge of the desert is in Morocco. You can drive from Marrakech to Merzouga or M’Hamid in a day to see the Moroccan Sahara. Most tours will probably let you spend a few days in Marrakech, before heading up the Draa valley – as a small group, or in a tailor made tour, stopping at interesting settlements along the way. Once you reach the famous sand seas, you’ll spend maybe one night in a desert camp, before heading back.

The Sahara is one cheap map to make, as there are very few landmarks plotted on its surface. The Sahara’s ‘highlights’ are all on its edges: little towns are like drawing pins, stretching out a blank canvas of deserted desert between them. These ‘last towns before the desert’ feature sand-drowned stone houses, squat, square mosques and ancient ksars (fortified old towns). In the desert itself you’ll find some surprising features. Rolling sand seas (ergs) make up 25 percent of the Sahara, low-lying oases provide brief areas of habitable land , whilst huge elevations, like Chad’s Ennedi Plateau and Tibesti mountains, add dramatic topography.