Tizi n'Tichka and Ounila Valley

High Atlas switchbacks and fortified villages on a classic trans-mountain route.

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Why this ride

High Atlas switchbacks and fortified villages on a classic trans-mountain route. The road: N9 and P1506. Distance and riding time are estimates from the checkpoints until the road is measured on this page.

Roadbook

1. Marrakesh start

   Red walls, palm trees and the white peaks of the High Atlas on the horizon: that is the first impression of Marrakesh, and on a clear winter morning, with snow on the mountains to the south, it is unforgettable. The city stands on the Haouz plain in central Morocco, a sprawling, noisy, beautiful place of nearly a million people, built around a walled medina that has been a centre of trade and power for close to a thousand years.

   Marrakesh was founded in the eleventh century by the Almoravids, Berber rulers from the Sahara, and it gave its name to the whole country in some languages. The Koutoubia mosque, with its tall minaret of pinkish stone, has been the city's landmark for centuries, and the great square of Jemaa el-Fnaa beside the medina comes alive every evening with food stalls, storytellers, musicians, snake charmers and acrobats. The souks are a labyrinth of narrow alleys selling spices, leather, carpets and lanterns, and the old palaces and gardens, among them the Bahia Palace and the Majorelle Garden, are worth a day of their own.

   Riding in Marrakesh is an experience. Traffic is dense and anarchic, with scooters, donkey carts, taxis, buses and pedestrians all moving at once and few rules seemingly observed. Roundabouts are a free-for-all. Inside the medina, the streets are narrow and crowded, and riding there is best avoided altogether. Park in a guarded lot and walk. The police are visible, and speed checks on the roads out of the city are common.

   As a starting point, though, Marrakesh is superb. The N9 heads southeast toward the Atlas and the Tizi n'Tichka pass, climbing through Berber villages and red valleys to a summit of about 2,260 metres before dropping down to Ouarzazate and the edge of the Sahara. The road has been widened and improved, but expect trucks, sharp bends, rockfalls after rain, and occasional snow closures in winter.

   The city has everything you need: fuel, mechanics, hotels from simple riads to luxury palaces, and food everywhere. Try a tagine, slow-cooked in a clay pot, or tanjia, a local speciality of meat cooked for hours in the embers of a bathhouse fire. Fill the tank and carry water before setting off into the mountains; stations become sparse once you leave the plain.

2. Tizi n'Tichka stop · 2205 m

   The Tizi n'Tichka is the high road across the Atlas, the route that takes the main Marrakech to Ouarzazate highway over the crest of the mountains at about 2,260 metres. Below you, valleys of red earth and green terraced fields drop away toward the Sahara, and above you the bare slopes are patched with snow until late spring. In the Berber language tizi means pass, and the name has the sound of the wind itself.

   Culture here is Amazigh, or Berber, a mountain people with ancient traditions of building in mud brick, weaving and farming on tiny irrigated terraces. Villages cling to slopes like extensions of the rock, their kasbahs flat-roofed and towered, in the same colour as the soil. Close to the pass a side road leads to Telouet, a huge kasbah of the Glaoui family, who ruled the region in the early twentieth century with French support, and whose crumbling halls still hold intricate plaster and tile work. Further on, the fortified village of Aït Benhaddou has featured in countless films.

   The road itself was built by the French in the 1930s and is a delight and a trial, with continuous bends, hairpins and drop-offs on the southern side. Lorries crawl and sometimes block the narrow sections, and surfaces can be broken by frost and rockfall. Weather on the pass is serious: snow and ice can close the road in winter, and fog and rain can make it treacherous, so check conditions. Spring and autumn offer clear air, though a cold wind blows even in summer. Roadside stalls sell minerals, fossils and rugs.

   Fuel is available in Marrakech and Ouarzazate, with some stations on the road between, but the stretch over the pass can be thin, so fill up before climbing. Small cafes at the top serve mint tea and tagine, and stopping for a warm drink is a good way to take in the views. Bargain gently with stallholders, who are friendly and persistent, and start early to avoid the afternoon lorries and the heat of the southern slopes.

3. Telouet stop · 1800 m
4. Ounila Valley stop
5. Ait Benhaddou finish

   Aït Benhaddou looks like a sandcastle that someone left to harden for four hundred years. The ksar, a fortified village of rammed-earth towers and flat-roofed houses stacked up a hillside above the Ounila river, sits about thirty kilometres from Ouarzazate on the old caravan track between the Sahara and Marrakech, and it was listed by UNESCO in 1987. The walls glow red-ochre in the evening, the towers have geometric patterns pressed into their upper storeys, and the whole cluster is reflected, on the rare days when the river runs full, in the water below.

   The place is a monument to the trade that made it. Caravans carrying salt, gold, slaves and cloth came up from Timbuktu and across the desert, and this was a stop where merchants rested before crossing the High Atlas by the Tizi n'Tichka. Today only a handful of families still live inside the old walls, while most of the village has moved across the river into modern houses, and the earth buildings need constant repair after rain. Cinema found it early. Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator and the Game of Thrones series all used it, which explains the souvenir shops and the camels waiting for hire.

   For a rider, the approach is the thing. The N9 descends from Taddert in long, broad curves into a drier, redder landscape, with the road dropping toward the Ouarzazate basin in stages and the colour of the rock changing from brown to a deep brick. A short side road leads to the ksar from the main highway, and the surface is generally fine. Morning or late afternoon light is best for both riding and photographs, since the midday sun flattens everything, and in July and August the heat is considerable.

   Small cafés on the river bank serve mint tea and tagine, and you can cross the river on stepping stones or, when the water is high, on a small footbridge. Keep some cash for the entry to the upper terraces, which usually costs a few dirhams, and wear shoes with a decent grip, because the paths are steep and loose. Go before the tour buses, if you can manage it.

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