Experience the intimate South
Few people know about Southern Morocco's little secrets. Yet the region is teeming with amazing things to do, see or experience.
Bivouac in the dunes
This is the dream place for answering the call of the desert. Many bivouacs are organized in the Chigaga dunes from M'Hamid onwards. Those in good physical shape can participate with nomads in a real transhumance. During this trek, the Aït Atta Berber tribes drive their flocks of sheep and goats between the High Atlas and the Saghro djebel (or vice-versa).
Architectural treasures
The impressive Aït Benhaddou ksar (fortress, plural ksour), a Unesco World Heritage of Humanity Site, lets you enjoy a magnificent panorama of the palm grove and the Atlas. You may visit cave-dwellings now used mainly as cereal granaries at Imadri in the Dadès Valley. The underground village of Tamgrout is, too, dug out of the rock in the Drâa Valley. It is renowned for the manuscripts housed in its Koranic museum: the oldest dating from the 11th century!
Simple pleasures
The Skoura palm grove, where many other fruit trees grow: pomegranate, almond, apricot, date, fig and olive, is situated 42km from Ouarzazate. It also houses several kasbahs, more and more impressive as you penetrate deeper and deeper into the palm grove. Not far away, near Toundout, there are must-see salt mines: you will see three colours of salt, red for drying meat, black for feeding livestock and white for cooking.
Festival and cinema
At the end of September, the little village of Aït Ameur, situated about 20km from Imilchil, holds the Fiancé moussem. Thousands of Berbers pitch their traditional tents near this High Atlas village and join in the festivities. As well as being a fair, marriages are arranged or celebrated on this occasion. Ouarzazate has been unfailingly linked with cinema since 1984. Its climate, geographical situation and economic conditions have encouraged film studios to locate there. The sets of films such as Lawrence of Arabia and Asterix & Obelix: Mission Cleopatra or the Sheltering Sky and Gladiator can be visited.
To remember
There are many novel ways to discover the Southern Morocco: luxury bivouacs or ancestral ceremonies, underground or palm grove visits.
