My wife and I arrived at the Royal Mansour hotel in Marrakesh hot, tired, and sand-caked.
After 10 hours on the road — crossing desert, flatlands and mountains — we could not have been more grateful to be at a hotel with running water. As we bid farewell to our Nomad driver (and his Toyota) I contemplated what a hellish trek that would have been on the back of a camel.
To travel to Morocco is to travel to a timeless place. One gets the sense — wandering through the souks or stopping at a roadside cafe — that a traveler 800 years ago likely walked the exact path. The only difference? You’re guided by GPS; he used the stars.
This, along with the food, colors, hospitality, and proximity to New York, had drawn us to Morocco. A nonstop redeye the week prior took us from JFK to Casablanca (about $900 nonstop, RoyalAirMaroc.com). We hopped a train at the airport, and three hours later were winding our way through the medina in Marrakesh to a townhouse-turned-boutique hotel, the Riad Al Massarah (from $117).
After checking into the riad, we enjoyed a rooftop luncheon of Moroccan meatballs, followed by a scrubdown in its private hammam. Rejuvenated, we began exploring Marrakesh.
The winding thousand-year-old streets and alleyways of the medina, or old city, are perfect for getting lost.
The goal, in fact, is to get lost … without getting taken for a ride. There is no shortage of teenage scammers eyeing tourists gaping at their signal-less iPhones trying to call up Google Maps. But why bother with technology when, for a few dirham (10 to $1), you can hire one of those kids as a guide?
Sure, he will greet you warmly, walk you in a circle and deposit you where you started, befuddled. But that’s all part of the adventure.
Still, once wise to the ruse, I thought dressing like a local might leave me free to wander in peace. I purchased a djellaba — a traditional unisex robe — and marched proudly through the medina, but to no avail. Hucksters continued to trail me, likely, my wife pointed out, because I was still wearing Vans and a Deer Valley hat.
The next lesson? One cannot visit Marrakesh without getting fat.
Every other door reveals a restaurant more inviting than the last. We ate simmering tagines in candlelit courtyards, fluffy couscouses in flower-filled gardens, and sweets from street vendors. It is an immersive buffet.
Between binges we explored the museums, gardens and palaces strewn across the city.
An exhibit at the Maison de la Photographie captures the recent colonial intrusions upon Berber and nomadic life that had gone unchanged for centuries($4).
At the Islamic college Ben Youssef Madrasa, intricate lattice and tilework glorify God ($2.25). Over in the iconic Jemaa el-Fnaa square, snake charmers, potion peddlers and fire jugglers make it easy to imagine you’ve stumbled back into the Middle Ages. There’s a sense of the eternal everywhere you step.
After three days at Riad Al Massarah, a cartboy hauled our luggage — and the five rugs we’d impulsively bought — to our waiting SUV.
We left Marrakesh, crossing over the snowcapped peaks of the Atlas Mountains — every bend of the highway offering a new scenic vista, the mountains spilling into the desert of the Draa Valley.
We wandered the 18th-century ruins of the Glaoui Kasbah in Telouet.
Until the 1950s this was home to the local pasha, the strongman-king of southern Morocco, along with his 55 wives and 80-odd concubines. Zawiya Nasiriyya, the 700-year-old library in Tamegroute, houses volumes hundreds of years old inscribed on gazelle hide.
The highlight of the collection was an exquisite 1,000-year-old Koran, calligraphed when, across the Mediterranean, the light of scholarship was barely flickering.
After a flat tire, and a night stop at the exquisitely appointed Kasbah Azul (from $95) in the roughhewn town of Agdz, we arrived at M’hamid — literally, the end of the road.
From here, we bounced overland for three hours in the Sahara before arriving at Erg Chicaga Luxury Desert Camp (from $263, two-night minimum). A pair of Nomads greeted us with cold drinks and showed us to our tent, outfitted with a king-sized bed and an en suite bathroom — the epitome of glamping.
For two days we were treated to 5-star hospitality smack in the center of one of the planet’s most inhospitable environments. A camel ride (mostly a desert hike for my wife, who found the camels ill-tempered) ended with a three-course lunch in an oasis, then sundowners on the dunes. We were serenaded around a campfire, and slept under the stars in a bed moved outdoors for us. The entire experience was heartbreakingly romantic.
The trip back to Marrakesh involved a drive back through the Sahara, this time across a prehistoric lake bed, with a break for fossil hunting, and another to purchase even more rugs.
Ten hours later, after the drive from the desert in that Toyota, we checked into Marrakesh’s Royal Mansour just in time for dinner (from $1,000).
The property, which opened in 2007, is a dwelling fit for a modern pasha (ruler), marrying traditional Moroccan design with 21st-century luxury, including 53 private riads in an ersatz medina. More than 1,000 Moroccan artisans embellished the lavish quarters.
For dinner, we enjoyed pigeon pastilla and a sea bass tagine at one of the property’s three gourmet restaurants. The next day, after shopping in the new city and an excursion to Le Jardin Majorelle — Yves Saint Laurent’s former residence — we took a dip in our rooftop plunge pool, then strolled through the gardens.
Our final dinner was a tribute to gluttony at a former royal palace. Now a restaurant christened Le Tobsil (22 Derb Abdellah ben Hessaien, Bab Ksour), we ate tagine after tagine in its stunning setting.
We’d enjoyed the Morocco frozen in time. But the next morning, we were grateful for one touch of modernity en route to the airport: a six-lane highway, bereft of hairpin turns and fallen rocks.
Eight hours later, we were back in New York.