The road that folds back on itself

330 kmFrom Marrakech

6 hDrive time

Oct–AprBest time

3 daysIdeal trip

Also from Ouarzazate (150 km · 2.5 h).

Same roads. New stories.

01 · The drive

A valley of kasbahs, then the walls close in

From Boumalne the R704 follows the Dades river north into the mountains through a valley that is one long village: mud-brick kasbahs on every rise, poplars going yellow along the water, children waving at every car. For twenty kilometres it is pretty. Then the walls close in, the valley becomes a slot, and the road has nowhere to go but up the side of it.

What it does next is the reason you came.

The road in from Marrakech

Marrakech → Tizi n'Tichka · N9, 110 kmLeave by 7. The road climbs to 2,260 metres in two and a half hours of bends; the pass has been under widening works for years, so expect single-lane sections and a slower crossing than the map says.
Aït Benhaddou · the ksarHalf an hour off the main road and worth two hours: a fortified mud-brick village on a hill above a river, the one every film crew in the world has used.
Ouarzazate → Skoura → Boumalne · N10, 120 kmFuel and a late lunch in Ouarzazate, then the palm grove at Skoura and the rose valley at Kelaat M'Gouna as the light goes long. Sleep in Boumalne or just inside the gorge.
Day 2 · the gorge road, up and backThirty kilometres up the R704 to the hairpins at Tissadrine and the café above them. Lunch under the Monkey Fingers, back down for the night.
Day 3 · Todra Gorge, then the long road homeAn hour east to Tinghir and the twenty-minute walk through the narrows of Todra, then Marrakech by nightfall — or a second night and the mountains at dawn.

In OnRoute this is the road in from where you are — Ouarzazate too — with a stop for lunch and one for the light.

02 · The hairpins

Where the engineers gave up pretending

At Tissadrine the gorge narrows to a few hundred metres and the road climbs its wall in a stack of hairpins laid one on top of the other like a folded ribbon. From the café at the top you look straight down on the whole staircase — eight bends, the river, and the cars taking them at walking pace. It is the most photographed road in Morocco and almost nobody drives it; the coaches stop at the viewpoint and turn round.

Below it, around Aït Oudinar, the cliffs have weathered into the formations everyone calls the Monkey Fingers — red rock dissolved into rounded columns, like hands pressed against the valley. The kasbahs here are built from the same earth as the cliff and disappear into it until the evening light picks them out.

The hairpins at Tissadrine, from the café above. — Eight bends, and from the top you can watch every one of them being driven.

03 · Why this week

The heat has gone and the poplars are turning

November is when the south of Morocco becomes driveable all day: the thirty-five-degree afternoons of September are gone, the light is low and gold by four, and the poplars and walnuts along the river turn yellow against the red walls. Nights in the gorge drop towards freezing, which is what the auberge fireplaces are for. The summer crowds are gone and the roads are empty between the villages.

04 · Things to do

Three days from the pass to the narrows

08:00Boumalne's Wednesday souk, if your day is a Wednesday: the valley's farmers, their animals and a great deal of shouting, an hour before the gorge.
10:00The drive up the R704 to Tissadrine, slowly, stopping at every kasbah that asks to be photographed. Forty-five minutes of driving that will take you two hours.
12:30Lunch at the café on the top bend, looking down the staircase. A tagine and the view; nothing else is required.
15:00Walk the river below the Monkey Fingers from Aït Oudinar, an easy hour between the fields and the rock.
17:00Back to the auberge for the last light on the cliffs, which is the whole show.
Day 3Todra Gorge, an hour east past Tinghir's palm grove: a slot three hundred metres deep and barely twenty wide, walked in twenty minutes, with climbers on the walls above you.

Kasbahs in the Dades valley, the colour of the cliff behind them.

05 · Eat and stay

Auberges on the river, tagines by the fire

A string of family-run auberges lines the river from Aït Oudinar up to the hairpins, most of them with a dozen rooms, a terrace over the water and a fireplace in the dining room. Dinner is what the kitchen made — a tagine, a Berber omelette baked in its clay dish, bread from the oven in the yard, and mint tea poured from a height. Book ahead for the weekend; the ones under the Monkey Fingers go first. Boumalne itself has hotels with more beds and less of the gorge.

Breakfast is bread, honey, amlou and eggs, and it is worth getting up early for the terrace.

06 · Know before you go

Fuel, cash, cold, and the end of the tarmac

Fill the tank in Boumalne or Ouarzazate; there is no fuel in the gorge. Cash for everything beyond the hotels — the nearest reliable ATM is in Boumalne. The tarmac continues past the hairpins to Msemrir and then turns to track; do not continue to the Todra side over the mountains without a four-wheel drive, a local who has done it this month, and daylight. Police checkpoints on the N10 are routine — have the rental papers and your licence to hand. Nights are cold from November; a jacket for the terrace and the car's heater for the dawn.

The coaches stop at the viewpoint and turn round. The road, from there, is yours.

Go and see it

OnRoute knows this place. Give it your dates and it drafts the 3 days from where you are — the road in, the stops, where to sleep — and watches fares to Marrakech (RAK) if you are flying. One drive a week, written by OnRoute Labs, in the app.

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