It is difficult to explain the Sahara to someone who has never experienced it. Even my photographs of sweeping dunes, desert sunsets and wide open spaces don’t do it justice. They don’t convey the endless horizons, the silence, the scale, or the feeling of being completely detached from the modern world.
After falling in love with Morocco in 2019, I returned with a group of friends (solo women in their 50s) to see more of Morocco and hike in the desert. Four of us set off from M’Hamid el Ghizlane, a small dusty town on the edge of the Sahara, with a local trekking guide, camp cook, two camel men and four camels, loaded with our camping and food supplies.
For five days we did our best to keep up with our long-legged camels, through a spectacular landscape of undulating sand dunes, dry riverbeds and ‘hamada,’ a desolate, rocky plateau, stripped of sand by the wind. We saw the occasional nomad, herding goats to a well, or passing through on a motorbike. No one else. No roads. No phone reception. Almost no vegetation, other than the occasional thorny acacia tree, that provided scant shade from the searing sun during our lunch stop and early afternoon siesta. Later in the day, we’d set off again for another few hours of hiking until we settled on a place to camp. We’d watch the sun sink behind the dunes and eat dinner under a vast sky of dancing stars.
In that empty landscape, a seed was sown. That trip was the catalyst for my boutique tour business, escorting small groups through the country that has captured my heart. And, of course, no trip to Morocco is complete without a night in the Sahara – still under canvas but with air-conditioning and ensuite bathrooms!
Heather McNeice is the founder of Moroccan Escapes, an Australian-owned tour operator specialising in independent travel and small group and women's tours to Morocco.