Full-day excursion to Ait Ben Haddou from Marrakech

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Full-day excursion to Ait Ben Haddou from Marrakech

Duration

9 hours

Starting point

Marrakech

End point

Marrakech

Description

The excursion to Ait Ben Haddou from Marrakech continues to Ouarzazate, the gateway to the Sahara Desert. You will visit the Kasbah of Taourirt, the former residence of the Glaoui family and one of the most beautiful kasbahs in Morocco, with a maze of adobe houses, crenellated towers and geometric decorations. Part of this fortified complex is open to the public. After some free time for a coffee or mint tea, we will return to Marrakech in the afternoon, crossing the High Atlas. Your day trip ends in the evening with a transfer to your hotel or riad in Marrakech.

Highlights

Tour itinerary

The fortified village of Ait Benhaddou

This excursion to Ait Benhaddou is very interesting, and at Vamos a Marrakech we recommend it in spring and summer, when the days are longer, as it crosses the High Atlas and its famous Tichka pass (2,260 m) twice. You can extend this excursion south from Marrakech to visit Ouarzazate, known as the gateway to the desert and the Hollywood of Africa for its national and international film activity (many films have been shot in this area: Gladiator, The Mummy, Babel, etc.).

After breakfast, we will start our day trip to Ait Benhaddou and Ouarzazate from Marrakech. We will cross the Marrakech plain before heading into the High Atlas Mountains and over the impressive Tichka pass, at 2,260 meters, where we will stop at viewpoints overlooking magnificent Berber villages lost in the mountains, with their traditional adobe and straw houses and thousands of satellite dishes on the rooftops.

All this will make you feel that nothing has changed in this area for thousands of years. Donkeys and mules are still the main means of transport for local people in these high mountains, where many villages cannot be reached by car. After almost three hours of travel, we will arrive at the fortified village of Ait Benhaddou, the best preserved in Morocco.

This ancient village was built in the 11th century and was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. We will cross the Ounila river and walk through the narrow alleys of the ksar’s kasbahs, where more than three hundred people once lived before moving to the other bank of the river. We will admire these abandoned defensive buildings, although some are still used as stables or bazaars. We will climb the hill to the village’s old granary for a panoramic view of the Ounila Valley. Then we will go down for lunch at a local restaurant and rest before returning to Marrakech.