Embrace the sway, the rhythm, the butt massage. That’s what I told myself as my camel rocked and rolled behind Bill’s across the rosy golden Sahara Desert dunes to our Moroccan luxury tent site. The sun sank behind us, casting long shadows across the fine sand.
I had planned our trip to Morocco around a three-day tour to the Sahara to ride camels. This was my highlight and I loved every minute of it! Bill was less enamoured by the romance of it all.
“We’ve ridden camels before,” he’d said. Indeed, we had. In Australia’s outback in 2003 during our round-the-world trip with our three kids.
“But there weren’t the wavy, beautiful sand dunes like in Morocco,” I replied. “It’s the Sahara Desert!” Underlying my eagerness was the desire to honour my father, who passed away in 2016 after instilling in me his love of camels and their snooty demeanor, their upturned noses.
Bill is nothing if not a supportive husband, so he gamely went along with my plan.
Watch for camels on Morocco’s desert roads (above and below)! They also featured on the 100-dirham bill (about 10€ or $16 Cdn) and in murals.
But first, I had to resolve two ethical dilemmas.
During my pre-trip research, I had read that camels should not be ridden or exploited for tourism. The ethical approach is to walk along beside the camel or ride a quad (4-wheel ATV) out to the desert camp instead.
I try to be sensitive to ethics, but this dilemma didn’t last long for me. Camels have been essential to desert life for centuries, if not millennia. As long as they’re fed, watered, rested, and treated humanely, how is camel riding different from horse riding? Besides, the Berber people earn valuable income by sharing this part of their culture. And I don’t see how noisy gas-guzzling quads are environmentally superior.
In Marrakech, where we began our 12-day Moroccan adventure, I faced my second dilemma: to eat a camel burger or not?! I do like to try local foods wherever we travel. Better to eat one before riding one? I experienced cognitive dissonance – just like I can look at a lamb or calf or piglet and think they’re adorable, but then eat them later.
I hemmed and hawed, indecisive, right until the waiter at the Clock Café turned to me for my order. I went for it. And it was delicious. Much like ground beef, tender, not gamey at all. Sigh. I know I am disconnected from my food sources…
My first close camel encounter came in Dades Gorge with a chocolatey brown baby.
Our camel-riding experience was part of a three-day two-night private tour we booked through Merzouga Tours. Ismail, our driver and guide, picked us up at our Marrakech riad on Day 1 and led us on a wonderful road trip. (More about that in a later story.) It’s a long way from Marrakesh to Merzouga – the town where our camel ride began – so we stopped the first night in Dades Gorge.
On Day 2, Ismail greeted us in full Berber garb: a long loose-fitting robe called a djellaba and a turban. Berber and Tuareg people have worn turbans for centuries to protect their heads, faces and necks from the hot desert sun, keep their heads cool, and keep blowing sand out of their mouths and noses.
Ismail is a Berber and lived a nomadic childhood with his parents and eight siblings, living in tents and moving with their herd of goats, sheep, donkeys and camels to find grass and water. At age 15 he went to a high school where he stayed during the week but spent weekends at his cousin’s house, since his family was far away. His descriptions of nomadic life fascinated us.
Ismail showed how to wrap a turban and then taught us how to ululate. He said he can always pick out his mother’s ululating voice from amongst others at celebrations.
We stopped at a store selling the long colourful cotton scarves – about two to five meters long – that are wrapped to form turbans. The salespeople dressed us in Berber djellabas and turbans, then posed us with the Berber flag for photos.
We learned that tourists wearing turbans represent cultural appreciation, not cultural appropriation. Moroccans love sharing their culture and encourage visitors to don turbans, as a sign that you want to enjoy and learn about their culture.
Although we had our own hats, we wanted to join the camel-riding spirit by wearing turbans, so we chose scarves for ourselves. Ismail was delighted and honoured when we also bought a Berber flag. Blue represents the sky and water; green for mountains and nature; and yellow for the desert. The red symbol is the letter “z” in the Berber alphabet and also represents “free man.”
In Morocco, tourists wearing turbans mean cultural appreciation, not cultural appropriation.
During our drive, Ismail taught us some Berber words: “bset alerom” (my phonetic spelling) means “lots of camels.”
“Cad naihari alerom, inshallah,” I tried again. “We will ride camels, God willing.”
“Inshallah,” he agreed. But then he made me repeat “alerom” countless times to practise the pronunciation. Roll the “r,” then almost snort the “om” at the end. He laughed at/with me.
We passed many nomadic shepherds tending their flocks of sheep, with some goats and camels. One flock had camel babies! Big gangly adorable babies. My excitement grew.
We reached the dunes
This pretty white-and-tan camel photobombed us.
Finally, we spied an orangey-pink glow on the horizon – our first glimpse of the Sahara sand dunes! I excitedly took many photos that didn’t do it justice. We passed sets of low sand fences about two feet high, made of woven reeds and shaped like XXXXXs laid flat on the ground. Ismail said there were more sand fences now because there were lots of accidents here last year.
I told him about snow fences in Canada to stop snow drifting across the roads.
“Our snow is sand,” he said with a smile.
As we drove closer, the dunes grew larger and more imposing. It hit me how frightening it would be to get lost amongst them.
“Wow!” said Bill, who’d expected beach-like dunes, not small mountains. “I had no idea they’d be so high.”
Bill settled into his camel saddle like a pro.
We reached Riad Akabar Merzouga and Ismail led us to our camels. He knelt and had me place a foot on his raised knee to boost me up. I swung my leg over and settled onto my seat, hanging on tightly to the metal T-bar handle.
“Lean back,” he said. No sooner had I complied than my camel stood – back legs up first, which tilts you forward, then front legs up. Camels are tall! We were far off the ground, with no stirrups to help our feet clutch the camel’s flanks.
We ambled off, headed from town into the dunes. Ismail, who stayed in Merzouga that night, waved goodbye. The young camel caravan guide walked slowly, holding onto a rope attached to the lead camel. The others, all connected by ropes, followed obediently behind, like cars behind a train engine.
I got a splendid view of Bill’s back, on the camel before me, as we made our way across the dunes.
Camels are said to spit at people. We didn’t experience that, although the camel behind me during our Australian ride had encrusted my pant leg with snot, and the baby camel in the Dades Gorge left saliva on my shoe when it experimentally nibbled my toe.
They do grunt and groan and complain a lot. The camel right behind me was not happy for the first half-hour. He snorted his distaste and brayed towards my left leg; he seemed just as disgusted with his rider as I was. The guy spent most of the ride calling friends to tell them he was on a camel in the desert. Every time I looked back, his head was buried over his phone, ignoring the unfolding beauty around him.
Ah well. His loss.
I settled in to the swaying and rocking. The dunes fascinated me in their enormity – some 150 to 180 metres high, although those dimensions must shift every day as winds sculpt the sand like undulating waves on the ocean. Classic Lawrence of Arabia turf. This western section of the Sahara Desert is called Erg Chebbi. “Erg” means “sand sea” and Erg Chebbi stretches about seven kilometres east to west and about 28 kilometres north to south, butting up against Morocco’s border with Algeria. Of course, those dimensions also shift with the blowing sand.
The setting sun cast long shadows on the fine sand, which turned from tan to peach to rosy gold.
Sadly, the dunes are far from pure. Litter seemed to get blown by the wind into piles in the low spots. Occasionally we could see black conduit pipes appearing out of the sand, also in low spots; these undoubtedly carried water and electricity to the tent sites. Solar panels also dotted the landscape.
We followed a narrow path made by the camel trains, but the noisy quads left their tracks everywhere and their sound carried some distance. They buzzed around like annoying mosquitoes I’d like to have slapped into oblivion. Fortunately, our camels did not seem bothered in the least.
I contented myself with the thought that we were riding the original quads, the vintage quads, the four-legged ships of the desert.
Stop for sandboarding
Despite the camel massage, I loved every minute of our 1.5-hour camel ride to the desert camp. And the sandboarding was fun!
Camel Train Guy stopped us along the crest of dune and we dismounted to watch the sun set.
Another man named Ismail was driving the truck with our luggage out to the camp and stopped to see how everyone fared. “How was the camel massage?” he asked.
“Great!” I said, lying through my teeth. Our legs felt like jelly and I could feel two bruised spots at the bottom of my pelvis.
“Ask me tomorrow,” said Bill.
“No!” Ismail Luggage replied with a knowing grin. “Tomorrow will be worse!”
One camel wore a muzzle. He nips rather than spits. But note his long, beautiful eyelashes!
Our jelly legs recovered quickly. While we waited for the sinking sun, Camel Train Guy unloaded a sandboard from the lead camel and invited us to slide down the dune. He demonstrated first, then a young girl went, sitting on the board, not standing with feet clipped in like snowboarding.
I decided to give it a go. Lots of fun! The hardest part was climbing back up the dune, but Camel Train Guy came part-way down, grabbed the sandboard and my hand, and hauled me back up. I was out of breath for quite a few minutes.
We chatted more with Ismail Luggage, a Berber from Merzouga who had worked his way up from leading camel trains, then quad drivers, and now the luggage truck. He told us all our camels were male, and most were eight to nine years old except the five-year-old baby, which the young girl rode.
“Awwww,” said the girl, looking at her camel with even more affection.
The golden setting sun saturated the undulating dune colours, speckled with elliptical shadows.
Someone asked what the camels ate.
“They’re all vegetarians, except this one,” he said, laughing and pointing to the camel wearing a muzzle. He nips people. (Camels eat a variety of desert shrubs, leaves, berries and grasses.)
I asked my camel’s name, but Ismail Luggage said none had names. How sad! I wrote down my camel’s ear tag number instead: #00146263. Kind of like C3PO or R2D2. I thanked him for his services.
The sun descended behind the dunes, intensifying their colours from peach to a rosier gold. We threw our legs over our respective camels, leaned way back while our camels stood, and completed our journey to our desert camp.
Glamping in the desert
We glamped at the Akabar Luxury Desert Camp.
What a beautiful camp! Long maroon carpet runners lined the walkways, lit with Moroccan style filigree lamps. A few trees hinted at an oasis. Our private tent had L-shaped sofas on the covered porch. The door opened to reveal a luxury tent. This was glamping indeed!
We oohed and aahed over our tent’s features, especially the bathroom with a full flush toilet, generously sized shower, and sink with hot and cold running water. We had outlets to charge our phones, but no cell reception. Bill and I have camped in tents for most of our 43 years together, but this was our first time glamping. (Staying in a basic camp had been an option, but I hadn’t fancied finding the shared bathroom tent several times each night. We’re in that age category…)
Exploring behind the tents, we found the water heater – a big tank with a wood fire burning underneath.
Our bed was much more luxurious than sleeping bags on blow-up camp mats. Heavy blue and green djellabas were laid out on the bed for us to wear against the cool desert night.
We’ve done a lot of camping, and this bathroom was pure luxury compared with outhouses, thunderboxes and squatting in the woods. Indeed, it was better than many bathrooms in buildings.
The dining tent easily accommodated a large group.
After a generous buffet dinner in the large dining tent, we gathered around a campfire surrounded by padded benches. Ismail Luggage and other young men who had welcomed us and served dinner gathered with djembe drums and hand cymbals (figure-8-shaped iron cymbals called crotals) to play traditional music for us.
Despite having visited the Marrakech Music Museum beforehand (and the National Music Museum in Meknes later), I remained overwhelmed by the different names and styles of music encompassed by the loose term “Berber music.” Gnawa, for example, is a blend of African, Berber, and Arabic religious songs and rhythms.
I gave up trying to figure out what was what and simply surrendered to the deep thrums of the drums. One drummer invited everyone to dance, so I joined them to circle rhythmically around the fire, humming along with the chant-like singing. Between dances, I tapped my feet and hands to the infectious beat.
At the Marrakech Music Museum, much to Bill’s amusement, I tried playing a djembe as well as the crotal hand cymbals (right). Ismail Luggage was a better teacher.
During a break, Ismail Luggage came over and sat beside me.
“I think you want to join the drumming,” he said.
“Oh, I’m terrible at drumming!” I warned. But he taught me how to prop the djembe between my legs, cradled by crossed feet. He showed me a basic rhythm and, when I’d mastered that, added more and demonstrated how to get deeper sounds by hitting different areas of the skin. Then he sang, and I joined him as best I could without knowing the language.
I felt honoured that he’d taught me.
“Many people travel to learn about other cultures but here, people come and I learn about cultures from all over by talking to them,” he said, before asking about Canada and my family.
Returning to our tent for the night, we paused to gaze at the splendid array of stars. We picked out the meagre few constellations that we knew: the Big Dipper, Orion’s Belt, the North Star.
Then we slept the quiet night away in our comfy bed.
Sunrise on the Sahara
How could you not feel the magic of the sun rising behind these lovely camels?
I set my alarm for 6:45 a.m. to get up for sunrise. Bill groaned. He looked briefly through the small bathroom window and went back to bed.
I donned my shoes and a jacket and walked behind our tent to the east, past the fire pit, and discovered six camels in a sandy area, waiting with their saddles on for early riders. They overlooked the bits of litter round them so I did too. They calmly chewed their cuds, oblivious to the sun peeking over the dunes behind them, silhouetting them perfectly.
A frisson of pure bliss passed through me – one of those pinch-me moments when you can’t believe you’re actually where you are. I was not dreaming – I was in the magical Sahara Desert with camels. My Dad would have loved it.
Bill loved the quick return via 4WD truck!
We could have ridden camels back to Merzouga the next morning, but Bill flat-out refused. I was torn, but the results of my camel massage convinced me to join Ismail Luggage in his 4WD truck. Bill sat up front with him while I and two young women crammed into the back seat.
Ismail Luggage zoomed along the sand roads, over rocky outcrops, up and over dunes. He slowed when we came to two camel trains.
“Traffic jam,” he joked. I don’t know what time the camel trains had left camp, but we made it back to Merzouga in 10 to 15 minutes.
“That was a blast!” said Bill, sporting a wide grin. “Way more fun than camels. Spinning in the sand, going up and down dunes. Way easier on your butt too.”
Me? I preferred the camels. Much more peaceful, contemplative, and, yes, romantic as they plodded along.
We rejoined our Ismail and drove north towards Fes, along the edge of the swirling, curving dunes. Their colour lightened as the sun rose higher, turning from peach to a tan-beige, dappled by their own shade, until we finally left them behind.
Just me and my camel, #00146263.
We visited Morocco in April 2026. Find out where we are right now by visiting our ‘Where’s Kathryn?’ page.
Very fun to read. Thanks for sharing your adventure, as always.
And thanks for reading, Tim!