Visit The Southern Oases Valleys
Heading south-east from Ouarzazate, you cross the Jebel Sarhro massif, twisted and eroded into weird onion-dome shapes, into the Draa Valley, a wider, less rugged river course. The broad gravel plains of the river bed are planted with palms stretching as far as the eye can see, protected by a network of pisé walls and kasbahs now gracefully melting away as their defensive functions are no longer required. The valley peters out near the settlements of Zagora and Tinfou, where a lone sand dune sits puzzlingly in the middle of a vast gravel plain, shadowing a sign reading ‘Tombouctou 51 jours’. Fifty-one days, that is, by camel - a measurement dating from the days when Morocco exerted control right across the Sahara into Mali.