Over the Tizi n'Tichka: Telouet, the ksar at Ait Benhaddou, and back in the dark
Marrakech, Telouet, Ait Benhaddou, Ouarzazate
8 stops · 7:15 am – 9:45 pm · kept in March 202612 playbooks shared · added to 36 trips
- 7:15 am1Private car and driver out of Marrakech over the passMarrakech
Roughly 1,400 MAD for the car for the day, not per person, and that is the difference between this day and the 300 MAD minibus: you stop where you want and you are not on someone else's schedule. Leave by 07:15 - the switchbacks above Taddert fill with trucks after 09:00 and you lose an hour behind them. The new tunnel shortens the pass; ask your driver to take the old road over the top anyway, it is twenty minutes and the whole view. Take something for motion sickness before Taddert, not after.
36 min by train or taxi · 80 km - 10:15 am2Telouet Kasbah, off the pass on the old caravan roadTelouet
Twenty minutes off the N9 and most day tours skip it, which is why you should not. From the outside it is a collapsing mud fort; inside, two rooms of the Glaoui pashas' apartments still have their painted ceilings and zellige intact and there is nobody in them. 60 MAD. The caretaker will unlock the roof if you ask, and from up there you can see the old salt road running south.
- 11:30 am3Argan cooperative on the Ounila roadTelouet
Every driver has one and gets a cut, so treat it as a tea stop that you may or may not spend at. The test for a real cooperative rather than a shopfront: women are actually cracking nuts on the floor, and the price of culinary versus cosmetic oil is posted. 100 MAD for a small bottle of culinary is fair. Say no comfortably; a good driver will not sulk.
- 12:45 pm4Lunch on the far bank, looking at the ksarAit Benhaddou
Eat before you cross, not after. The coach groups arrive between 11:00 and 13:00, walk the ksar, then take over every terrace at 13:00 - so you want to be sitting down at 12:45 and climbing at 14:00, which is the exact inverse of the crowd. Tagine and a bottle of water each; the climb is exposed the whole way.
- 2:15 pm5Cross the Ounila and climb the ksar to the agadirAit Benhaddou
About 30 MAD for the granary at the top plus a local guide at the bridge for around 300 MAD, and here a guide earns it - he knows which of the eight families still live inside, which walls are film set and which are 17th century pisé. In spring the river runs and you cross the concrete stepping-stones; in flood they charge for a mule. Climb the back lanes on the way up and take the wide stair down, not the other way round: the crowd does it in reverse and you will meet nobody.
19 min by train or taxi · 19 km - 4:30 pm6Atlas Studios in OuarzazateOuarzazate
About 8 EUR, cash at the gate, guided in fixed groups every half hour. It is plywood Egypt and a Tibetan monastery from Kundun baking in the sun - fun if you like knowing where Gladiator was shot, entirely skippable if you would rather have the extra hour at the ksar. Decide at 16:00, not in advance.
11 min by train or taxi · 6.9 km - 5:45 pm7Kasbah Taourirt before the light goesOuarzazate
60 MAD, in the middle of town, and the restored Glaoui apartments upstairs take twenty minutes. The reason to come at 17:45 is the outside: the whole earth-red mass turns the colour of a brick kiln for about ten minutes before sunset and then goes grey.
- 7 pm8The drive back over the pass in the darkMarrakech
Nearly three hours and it is the honest cost of doing this as a day trip rather than sleeping in Ouarzazate - say it out loud before you book. Trucks run without full lights on the descent and Moroccan drivers overtake on the bends, so this is not the leg to hire the cheapest quote. If anyone in the car is fragile, sit them in front and stop at Taddert for tea.