My journey to see the full moon at the edge of the Sahara was quite an adventure on its own: crossing the Atlas Mountains and visiting attraction sites along the way to the desert. With the tour itinerary, it took two days to reach the destination, absorbing the landscapes from inside the van. Here is the time-lapse video of the passage from Marrakech to Merzouga—from two days to less than six minutes.
The trip started before dawn, stopped at a couple of viewpoints in the mountains including the Tizi n’Tichka pass, and visited Aït Benhaddou—an ancient fortified city and a UNESCO World Heritage site. We kept going after lunch. We had another couple of breaks and two viewpoints before reaching the hotel in Boumalne Dadès, Tinghir.
On the second day, we went straight off after breakfast, had a quick break, and met a local guide at Todra viewpoint. He showed us around Todgha Gorge and introduced us to the Berber cultures: visiting a farm and a carpet house. Then the driver stopped at a bazaar, where we were put on the traditional attires and I got a large scarf. After the lunch break, we had a couple of stops for water and cigarettes. Finally, we reached Erg Chebbi and got on a camel to the campsite.
My Brazilian fellow traveller has much better details of the journey in his YouTube video (in Portuguese).
Ultimately, we were about 600 kilometres on the road under the scorching desert sun—a tough drive, indeed. The heat radiated from my body on the first night because of the shotgun seat in the afternoon. I was astonished and thankful that the driver, Karim, took us there safely. In Morocco, the law requires truck and van drivers to record their driving and rests on a disc installed in the vehicle. At one point, he stopped to reset the disc (at 1:17 in the time-lapse video). Police checkpoints were frequent. But I was mindful not to film them. And we learned driver signals if a checkpoint was ahead.
The road conditions were in good shape, with just a few potholes in some towns. Cellular towers were present along the way. Hence mobile signal covered the whole trip (except a weak one at the campsite).
On the other hand, we just drove straight back to Marrakech. It took ten hours. I was exhausted and caught a heat fever a few days later. Worth the experience, hell yeah!