Erg Chebbi or Erg Chegaga: Choosing Your Sahara

Two dune seas sit within reach of Marrakech, and almost everyone planning a first Sahara night ends up asking which one. They are both real Sahara: wide fields of wind-built sand, not a patch of dunes kept for photographs. What separates them is how you arrive, who else is there, and what the road shows you on the way.

Erg Chebbi: the dunes by the village

Erg Chebbi lies beside Merzouga in the far east of Morocco, close to the Algerian border. It is a compact erg, about 22 kilometres from north to south and up to 5 kilometres wide, and its tallest dunes reach around 150 metres. What makes it striking is how suddenly it begins: you cross a flat, dark, stony plain and then the sand stands up in front of you like a wall turned orange by the late sun.

Because a paved road reaches Merzouga, Erg Chebbi is the easier of the two. Hotels line the edge of the dunes, the camps sit a camel ride inside them, and the drive from Marrakech is long but straightforward. The route is one of the finest in the country: over the High Atlas by the Tizi n'Tichka pass, past the ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, through the Dades and Todra gorges, and out across the plain to the sand.

The cost of that ease is company. Erg Chebbi is the better-known of the two, and in the spring and autumn high seasons you will share the dune edge with other travellers at sunset. Once the camels have taken you into the dunes and the light has gone, it is quiet again, and the night is as dark as any in the Sahara.

On our Erg Chebbi trips you sleep at Sahara Garden Camp, our partner among the dunes, in a tent with its own bathroom and shower, and a heater for the cold winter nights.

Erg Chegaga: beyond the end of the road

Erg Chegaga lies south-west of Erg Chebbi, at the bottom of the Draa Valley. It is the larger of the two, about 35 kilometres long and some 15 kilometres wide, and it is reached in a way Erg Chebbi is not: the road ends at M'Hamid, and the last stretch, roughly 50 kilometres, is driven across open desert by 4x4.

That crossing changes the whole feel of the trip. There is no village at the edge of the sand and no line of hotels, so the camps are scattered and far apart. The drive down the Draa Valley, with its palm groves and earth-built villages, is gentler than the gorge road to Merzouga, and the way out can be different again: across the dry bed of Lake Iriki to Foum Zguid, instead of back the way you came.

The price of that wildness is time on the road and a bumpier last leg. If you are short of days, or if one of you dislikes long drives on tracks, Erg Chebbi is kinder. And if you would rather walk than drive, our eight-day camel trek to Erg Chegaga crosses the desert on foot beside a caravan.

Choosing between them

A simple way to decide:

• Choose Erg Chebbi if this is your first time in the desert, if you want the gorges and the kasbah road on the way, or if comfort at camp matters most. It is also the one to choose if you are going on to Fes, because the route north from Merzouga runs through the Ziz Valley and the Middle Atlas.
• Choose Erg Chegaga if you have been to the desert before, if you want the sense of being far from anywhere, or if the open-desert crossing appeals to you as much as the dunes.
• Choose by season, too. In the busiest weeks of spring and autumn, Erg Chegaga's distance from any village keeps it quieter. In midwinter, the extra comfort of a heated tent at Erg Chebbi counts for more.

What does not change

Whichever you choose, the shape of the night is the same. You arrive in the late afternoon, ride or walk into the dunes as the light turns, eat dinner at camp, and wake early for the sunrise, which is the moment most people remember. Bring a warm layer whatever the month: the desert loses its heat quickly after dark.

If you would like to compare them on the road, our three-day trip to Erg Chebbi and our three-day trip to Erg Chegaga both start from your hotel in Marrakech. Tell us when you are travelling and we will tell you honestly which one suits those dates.