Your guide meets you directly at your riad, hotel, or guesthouse. Departing early is deliberate — it means you reach the mountain pass before the midday haze softens the view, and you arrive at Ait Ben Haddou while morning light still catches the ochre walls at its most luminous angle. Introductions are made, water and dried fruit are offered, and you are on the road within minutes.

The N9 road from Marrakech climbs steadily through the foothills before reaching the dramatic Tizi n'Tichka pass at 2,260 metres — the highest paved mountain road in Morocco. The switchbacks, the stone-built Berber villages visible on the slopes, the argan trees giving way to bare rock and then snow in winter — your guide provides the geological and cultural context that transforms a scenic drive into a genuine education. There will be at least one stop at the summit viewpoint.

Just off the main road, the Glaoui family's 19th-century Telouet Kasbah is a remarkable detour for travellers with a particular interest in Moroccan political history. The partially restored interior chambers contain some of the most intricate Moorish plasterwork in the country — and virtually no other visitors. Add this stop when booking if you have an appetite for additional depth.

You cross the river on stepping stones. This detail matters. It is the first physical signal that you are entering a different world — one with a different relationship to water, to time, to the act of passage. The ksar rises before you in tiers of earthen towers decorated with Berber geometric patterns, the ochre walls almost glowing in the late-morning light. Your guide leads you through the narrow interior passages — pointing out the communal granaries, the family quarters stacked above shops, the mosque, the ancient olive press — before climbing to the hilltop fortified granary for a panoramic view across the Draa Valley that regularly leaves guests without words. Ait Ben Haddou has served as a film location since the 1960s: Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator, Game of Thrones. More importantly, it has been a living community for over a millennium.

We stop at a carefully selected local restaurant in Ouarzazate — not a tourist complex, but a family-run establishment where the tagine has been simmering since early morning. Slow-cooked lamb or chicken with preserved lemon and olives, freshly baked bread, seasonal salads dressed with argan oil, mint tea. The meal is a necessary pause that allows the morning's experiences to settle before the afternoon continues.

Atlas Film Studios is the largest film studio complex outside Hollywood — and uniquely, it welcomes visitors to walk through its standing sets. Productions filmed here span six decades and include dozens of major international releases. The experience shifts between the surreal (a pharaonic palace entrance, a Roman forum, an Egyptian temple) and the genuinely fascinating (the scale, the craft, the history). Taourirt Kasbah, a short distance away, is the largely overlooked jewel of Ouarzazate — the former residence of the powerful Glaoui family, its restored interior chambers contain intricate plasterwork and carved cedarwood ceilings that rival anything in Marrakech's medina.

The afternoon crossing of Tizi n'Tichka is visually different from the morning: long shadows fall into the mountain valleys, the rock faces shift between amber and deep purple, and the scale of the landscape is somehow easier to absorb on the return journey. Your guide continues the conversation — about the Berber cooperative economy, the argan oil production you pass on the descent, the agricultural patterns of the foothills — before Marrakech's terracotta sprawl gradually reappears on the plain below. Arrival back at your accommodation between 7:30 and 8:00 PM.