Morocco Tizi n Test

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Marrakech

   Marrakech announces itself with a smell before it shows its face: woodsmoke, orange blossom, leather, grilled meat, with mint and diesel in the mix. The city, founded in the later eleventh century by the Almoravids, grew from a camp of tents at the edge of the Haouz plain into the capital of a series of Berber dynasties. Its walls and many of its buildings are built of local red clay, giving it the nickname of the red city, and behind them sits the old medina, a maze of lanes where mopeds, donkey carts and tourists push through together. The Koutoubia mosque, whose minaret rises about seventy metres above the roofs and dates from the twelfth century, is the landmark you steer by.

   Read the complete Marrakech write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Marrakech is where the day begins. Next is Asni.

2. 2. Asni

   Asni is the last big village before the High Atlas stops being a view and becomes a road. It lies at about a thousand metres in the foothills south of Marrakech, a little under an hour away, and is the point where the road forks, one branch climbing toward Imlil, the starting point for Jebel Toubkal, North Africa's highest peak at 4,167 metres, and the other, the R203, heading for the Tizi n'Test pass. On clear winter days the snow on the peaks is visible from the street, and the air smells of woodsmoke and mint.

   Read the complete Asni write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Asni comes up about 53 km into the recorded legs. Next is Tizi n Test.

3. 3. Tizi n Test

   The Tizi n'Test is one of those roads that people tell stories about before they have even seen it. It crosses the High Atlas in southern Morocco at about 2,100 metres, linking Marrakech and its plain with the Sous valley and the town of Taroudant on the far side, and it does so by way of a narrow, twisting mountain road that was built by the French in the 1920s and early 1930s. The word tizi simply means pass in the Berber language, and the Berber villages along the way, built of the same red earth as the hills, look as if they grew from the mountain.

   Read the complete Tizi n Test write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 138 km into the recorded legs you reach Tizi n Test. Nothing on this route is higher. Next is Taroudant, mostly downhill.

4. 4. Taroudant

   Taroudant is a walled town in the Souss valley of southern Morocco, between the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, and its red-ochre ramparts, about seven kilometres around, are the first thing you notice. They are made of rammed earth and glow orange in the late afternoon, enclosing a town of seventy thousand people, a maze of lanes, a pair of busy souks, orchards and market gardens. The town is sometimes called the little Marrakesh, and for a time in the sixteenth century it was the Saadian dynasty's capital, before they moved north. The calm, unhurried pace is the contrast with the larger city.

   Read the complete Taroudant write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Taroudant closes the day.