Tizi nTest Pass

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 sits at 0 km, early in the day. 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 54 km in. Next is Tizi nTest.

3. 3. Tizi nTest

   Tizi n'Test is the pass that makes riders go quiet, then talk about it for years. At about 2,090 metres, it crosses the High Atlas between Marrakech and the Souss plain near Taroudant, and the road, built by the French in the late 1920s and early 1930s, is a thin ribbon of tarmac cut into the mountainside, with hairpins, drops of several hundred metres, and, in places, no barrier at all. It is narrow, in sections just wide enough for two vehicles to squeeze past, and landslides and rockfall are part of life.

   Read the complete Tizi nTest write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

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

   Planning note

   109 km in you reach Tizi nTest. Next is Taroudant.

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, late in the day.

Recorded source links

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