We are from the place the caravans were heading for.
Most Morocco trips are sold from Marrakech by people who visit the desert. We live at the other end of that road — in Rissani, in the Tafilalet, where the Sahara actually starts.
Rissani, and the city underneath it.
A few kilometres outside our town lie the ruins of Sijilmassa — founded in the eighth century and, for six hundred years, the northern gate of the trans-Saharan trade. Gold and salt came up out of the desert and stopped here before anything went north to Fez or Marrakech.
The city is gone. The road it created is not. The Tafilalet still runs on the same oases, the same ksour, the same families — ours among them. When we say local, we mean the place itself, not a licence bought in a city.
Amazigh, and small on purpose.
We are Amazigh — Berber, if that is the word you know. We speak Tamazight at home, Arabic in the market, French and English in the car. The team is small enough that the person who answers your first email is the person who writes your itinerary, and often the person who drives it.
We are not a booking site
There is no cart, no instant confirmation, no inventory. You ask a question, a person answers it, and a plan gets written for your dates. That is slower than a checkout and it is the entire point.
We are not a reseller
Most desert nights sold online are resold two or three times before they reach the camp. Ours are not. The camp, the cook and the 4x4 are arranged by us, here, which is why we can change them for you.
We say no
If your week is too short for the route you want, or your month is too hot for the south, we will tell you and suggest something else — including coming another time. We would rather lose the booking than the review.
Living at the desert end changes what we can promise.
- The camp is forty minutes away, not six hours
If the wind turns or a family needs a different tent, someone we know is already there.
- We know which months are honest
We live through the July heat here. That is why the desert routes run October to April and why we will say so rather than sell you a summer trip.
- The people on your trip are neighbours
The cameleers, the cooks, the Gnawa players in Khamlia — they are not a supplier list. They are people we will still be living beside next year.
The people you will actually deal with.
[Name] · plans the itineraries
Reads every enquiry and writes the day-by-day. Born in the Tafilalet. EN / FR / AR / Tamazight.
[Name] · drives the south
Knows the gorge roads in the dark and which kasbah does a proper lunch. [x] years guiding.
[Name] · runs the camp
Out at Erg Chebbi most of the season. Cooks the dinner you will describe to people at home.
Our guides work independently — the one who drives you depends on your dates and your route. Every one of them is from the region and has been doing this for years.
The honest list.
Friday is the prayer day and the family day here. If you write on a Friday you will hear from us on Saturday, and we would rather say that than pretend otherwise.
A shared minibus from Marrakech will always beat us on price. If the price is the deciding factor, take the minibus — we would just be a more expensive version of a trip you would not enjoy.
Eight guests is the cap, and most of our trips are two or four. Above that the thing we are selling — your own pace, your own start time — stops being true.
If you send us eight cities in seven days we will send back six and explain why. You can overrule us — it is your holiday — but you will get our opinion first.
Ask us anything. Even “is March too hot?”
No form-filling marathon, no sales call. One reply from one person who has driven the road you're asking about.