A Girls’ Road Trip Through Morocco: Marrakech to the Atlas Mountains and Beyond
Somewhere between our third mint tea and a very heated debate about whether we'd actually survive a desert camp, one of us said it: "What if we just... drive?"
No fixed tour, no driver waiting outside every riad with a clipboard. Just us, a map, and whatever roads Morocco wanted to throw at us. That one sentence turned into eight days, four cities, and one very memorable mountain pass none of us will forget.
How We Actually Planned It
We’d read enough horror stories about Marrakech traffic to feel a little nervous – the medina alone looked like a maze designed to break tourists. But once we got talking to other travellers (and, honestly, once we’d done our homework), the picture changed. Self-driving in Morocco isn’t the chaos people warn you about, as long as you know a few basics: French road signs, right-hand traffic, and toll autoroutes that are honestly better maintained than some back home.
We booked through car hire Morocco, mostly because we wanted something simple – no hidden fees, no surprise deposits, and a pickup point close to our riad so we weren’t dragging suitcases across half the medina at 7am. Worked exactly as it should have. Keys in hand, playlist on, and we were off before the city had even properly woken up.
The Road to the Atlas Mountains
Here’s the thing nobody tells you: the drive itself is half the trip. We left Marrakech heading toward the High Atlas, and within an hour the flat city streets turned into switchbacks climbing through the Tizi n’Tichka pass – one of the highest mountain roads in North Africa. Berber villages clung to the hillsides, walnut trees lined the valleys, and every few kilometres someone was selling geodes or amethyst by the roadside. We stopped more times than planned, obviously.
Driving it ourselves meant we could pull over whenever something caught our eye – a viewpoint, a tiny café, a shepherd crossing with his flock. No tour bus schedule, no group of strangers waiting for us to finish taking photos. That freedom is really the whole point of doing it this way.
A few things made the drive smoother than we expected:
- Fuel stations are frequent on main routes but sparser in the mountains, so we filled up before climbing.
- Roundabouts follow a “give way to traffic already in the circle” rule, which took one confused loop to figure out.
- Parking in town centres is often informal – a local guardian will point you to a spot for a small tip, totally normal practice.
- Google Maps worked well on the main roads, but we kept a paper map as backup once signal dropped in the mountains.
What We’d Tell Any Group Planning the Same Trip
I’ll be honest, none of us had driven abroad together before, and there were nerves going in. But by day three it felt completely normal – the kind of normal where you’re singing along to the radio while cruising past kasbahs like it’s nothing. If you’re the kind of traveller who likes control over your own itinerary (stopping for that one photo, skipping the “recommended” carpet shop), a self-drive road trip through Morocco genuinely delivers.
We’d say give yourself more time than you think you need. We rushed the Ourika Valley on day two and regretted it – that’s a stop that deserves a full afternoon, not a rushed hour between destinations.
Final Thoughts
Looking back, the road trip wasn’t just a way to get from Marrakech to the mountains – it kind of became the whole story. The best moments weren’t on our itinerary at all: a random stop for fresh orange juice by the road, a wrong turn that led us to a viewpoint better than the “official” one, a shared laugh over who was navigating (badly). If you’re weighing up a group tour versus doing it yourselves in Morocco, we’d say trust yourselves a little more than you think you should. Pack snacks, download offline maps, and let the roads surprise you – they will.
By L Krekoneev
Image credit from dreamstime
