Mountain biking in the Atlas Mountains

Atlas Mountains mountain biking holiday

With its roots in Africa, but charged with eastern exoticism, Morocco represents the closest truly “different” destination to Britain. Twice the size of the UK, but with only half the population, much of Morocco is a vast wilderness of towering mountains and desolate desert where rural life has hardly changed in hundreds of years.

It’s a magical land where men shuffle around in hooded cloaks and each day begins with an intoxicating call to prayer from the local mosque.

Add to this a tradition of superb hospitality which has risen up from the remote outposts of the Sahara desert and an incredible network of dirt roads, and all the ingredients are there for a Atlas Mountains mountain biking holiday of discovery.

This superb Atlas Mountains mountain biking adventure focuses on the deep south of Morocco, a land of big skies and stark mountain ranges where mud-brick kasbahs appear to rise up out of the desert, sitting in tranquil palm oases and framed by dramatic backdrops of snow-capped mountains. We ride along Morocco’s dirt roads, taking us from Marrakech to the Tichka Pass, the highest in the High Atlas Mountains, and then southward, descending along the Draa Valley to the fringes of the Sahara Desert.

The mountain biking is on non-technical hard-pack trails, which are normally in a good condition although they can be rough, covering, on average, about 50km per day. En route we pass through numerous traditional villages, on the way visiting the ancient kasbah of Ait Benhaddou and making plenty of mint tea stops to experience close-up the legendary hospitality that has risen up from the remote outposts of the desert. As we descend from the High Atlas Mountains we see a gradual change in flora and fauna as the desert starts to make its imprint on the landscape. 

This Atlas Mountains mountain biking holidays follows a route of palm oases, finding the occasional refreshing pool for a dip, biking alongside ruined villages and kasbahs which, in the early morning and late afternoon are bathed in a sublime desert light; it’s not surprising that the whole region has become popular with filmmakers. As we arrive at the fringe of the Sahara Desert, not far from the town of Zagora, where we take a break from bikes and kasbah hotels and instead opt for camels and a night under the stars in a Berber desert tent, surrounded by pre-Saharan dunes.