Category Archives: Morocco Overland

Moroccan Sahara – Are we there yet?

To paraphrase the cop addressing Jack Nicholson’s character at the end of Chinatown:
‘Forget it Jake, it’s the internet.’

Exactly where does the iconic and eminently Instagramable majesty of Sahara start in Morocco? Like Keyser Söze, is it even there at all?
Years ago I came across an internet forum argument on the now defunct LP Thorn Tree (I gave my 2ç then left them to it). There, a couple of know-alls lambasted the callow innocents daring to enquire where they could ‘see the Sahara in Morocco’ – in most cases referring to the famous Erg Chebbi dunes. ‘I told you: there is no Sahara in Morocco!’. All concerned have now migrated to TripAdvisor from where the quotes below were copied. It staggers me that some of these individuals can assert their unsubstantiated beliefs with such conviction, but such are the times. According to one of TA’s wise owls, ‘Erg Chebbi is not in Sahara, desert it is but not Sahara‘. So the Sahara is ringed by an unnamed desert that is not the Sahara?

… neither … Erg Chebbi/Erg Chigaga are the Sahara. For that you need to head to Western Sahara.
Ok, we know that but we want just see Sahara and ride camel
The limit of the Sahara is classified by the limit of the Date Palms
the Sahara,… lies 100 km or more to the south in Algeria.
Although not part of the Sahara , the dunes are pretty amazing.
It also corresponds to the 100mm isohyet in the north and the 150mm isohyet in the south. Long term average rainfall. A further definition is where the evaporation potential exceeds the presipitation [sic].
I don’t care what “Sahara” means. I am talking about the actual geographical boundaries of the area. And your definition of those boundaries is as incorrect and misleading as that of the ridiculous tour companies’ one.
Erg Chebbi is not in Sahara, desert it is but not Sahara. If you by reading see on website about Sahara tour, then it is only marketing to attract customers. But Sahara begin first in Algeria or you have to go to the South of Guelmim, to Western Sahara.
Here we go again with the “Erg (Chebbi/Chiggaga) is not the Sahara” brigade. What’s wrong with you? What’s a few hundred miles between friends? Jesus H. Christ.
May I just make one thing clear? You will not be travelling through the Sahara desert until you have gone south of La’ayoune. References to the Sahara in other places such as Erg Chebbi and so on are simply concoctions dreamt up by tour companies to fool their victims into thinking that they have been to the Sahara – they haven’t. To the east, the Sahara starts way over the other side of the border, deep into Algeria.
the Sahara if [sic] 100’s of kilometers away from the big dune areas over the border in Algeria and not in Morocco [continues] ... [Chebbi] is more spectacular than any of the places in the Moroccan Sahara that I have visited.

This knotty problem of the Sahara’s precise extent may be unique to Morocco. You start with the very concept’s compelling mystique. It’s hard to think of other wilderness regions that conjure up such strong imagery and notions, maybe because it’s so close to Europe compared to other iconic wastelands.
Then you mix in the unceasing clash between gullible bucket listers wanting to definitively tick off the Sahara – and devious local tour ops who promise the earth and deliver a turd. One wily tour agency has even managed to insert themself as a ‘reference’ on Wiki’s ‘Sahara desert (ecoregion)’ page.
This seems to be the angled grinder which the naysayers above fixate on: if some Moroccan cat in an oversized cheche strolls up and says ‘Hello my friend. Come, we will drink tea with nomads and I will show you Sahara’, you can expect to be a little disappointed.

As with all geographical features (seas, mountains, etc), it’s tempting but futile to apply fixed boundaries to their precise extent, as if they were a country. Where exactly does the Southern Ocean become the Atlantic? Where does the Karakoram become the Himalaya, or the High Atlas become the Anti Atlas for that matter (along the N10 highway, of course!).

It’s the same with hot deserts, commonly defined as arid regions with less than 100mm of average annual precipitation. Unlike a sea shore, there can be no finite edges identifying this change in rainfall; to imply otherwise would be absurd. In this way the NOAA map (above) is rather more nuanced, showing blurred transitions, not fixed isohyets (rainfall contours) between regions. Both the hard-edged yellow and red maps below could benefit from the same idea.

According to this ridiculous website, (sadly, the first that popped up on my Google) it appears to rain every other day in Merzouga/Erg Chebbi. (The ‘sea temperature’ there gets pretty balmy too – or maybe they mean ‘sand sea’).
This source for Merzouga looks rather more plausible: 65mm. Another estimates 53mm. yet another 172mm. This French Wiki gives 59mm. Let’s assume it’s not Kew Gardens down there and it comes in under a 100 mil most years.

Another map with a red zone straying over the Moroccan border. Can’t be right! Source

Archway into the desert, south of Guelmim (iirc)

Not all accept the level of aridity as a definition (‘I don’t care what “Sahara” means…‘), but they don’t cite any sources to explain their assertions about the Sahara’s boundaries. Instead, some of the TA dolts avow the Sahara lies ‘100km south of Erg Chebbi’ (ie: in Algeria). Others insist ‘200 miles’ from Chebbi. Final answer: ‘100’s of kilometers away’. Some even proclaim they magically entered the Sahara at Guelmim in western Morocco because ‘it is officially known as ‘The Gateway to the Sahara’’, surely a bald, tourist-oriented claim in a town famously thick with faux Tuaregs.

Others insist that, to be in the Sahara in Morocco, you must go ‘beyond Layounne’ (left), a fairly boring road trip, even for a dedicated bucketeer. What will they see on the way there? It may look like a desert, walk like a desert and quack like a desert, but it sure won’t be the Sahara!
No matter – give it a few decades because it’s said the climate in Morocco will see the Sahara creep over the berm and into Morocco.

You can see why some of your forum know-alls get cynical, myself included, even if I believe they’re dying on the wrong hill on this one. Lately, some canny marketing has designated an area of eroded wasteland ever so conveniently close to Marrakech’s gated resorts as ‘the Agafay Desert’ or ‘le petit Sahara’ which ‘extends over several hundred acres’.
There you can do all your favourite deserty things: sip tea in a tent, wear a cheche or ride camels, quads and 4x4s across a landscape where the barren rounded hillocks of dried mud resemble dunes. Insta heaven!

Some academics have sought to reclassify the liminal sweep in question as the ‘North Saharan steppe and woodlands‘. Aka: the edge of the Sahara where things gradually become less arid, like the Sahel in the south. But looking at the zone on the map below, ‘woodland’ is not a word which springs to mind. The band encompasses the vast Grand Erg Oriental spreading across Algeria (left) and southern Tunisia – about as Saharan an expanse anyone could wish for which would swallow up hundreds of Chebbis. The only woodland here is of the petrified fossil variety, west of Hassi bel Guebbour.

Me? Having travelled much of the Sahara over the last five decades, if you pushed me blindfolded out the back of a Hilux behind Erg Chebbi and removed the hood, I’d get up, smell the air, squint at the sun and guess I was in the Sahara. It may transpire to be the edge of the Sahara in boring old Marrokie, because vegetation and rainfall change in a very short distance (by Saharan standards) in the mountains to north.
But from Chebbi south and west along the Algerian border all the way to Tan Tan, it all resembles the Sahara I’ve seen – often dreary, sometimes epic, often barren, vegetated in patches, hyper arid elsewhere – all the way from Mauritania’s Adrar plateau to the Selima Sand Sheet (left) close to the Nile.

Camels? Dunes? Palms? What else could be be?

If anything, Erg Chebbi is just too darn Saharan for school and so has become one trampled terminus of Morocco’s Axis of Tourism, a quad-busting desert resort. I avoid the place. Over the years the pretty cluster of dunes at the end of the road has become choked with desert camps, kasbah-hotels, a few opportunist sharks and us tourists doing the dunes by various means.
In that sense it is very much not what I know of the real Sahara, but caught right, Chebbi can still be an amazing sight for a desert first timer. You’re on the very edge of the Sahara. Which side you’re on is up to you.

The Men Who Ride Like Goats

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… until Tizi n Telouet: there, all greenery ceases; the burning breath of southern winds denudes the mountain’s rocky skeleton.
Charles de Foucauld’s Reconnaissance au Maroc, 1883–1884

While scanning aerial mapping for new pistes in the High Atlas I came across an intriguing possibility. A seemingly good track lead 24km off the N9 via a village or two to the 2450-m Tizi Telouet pass on the High Atlas watershed (31.3372, -7.2663), a few miles east of the Tichka pass on the N9 trans Atlas. From that point southwards the way ahead was an obliterated mule path, but picked up rideable terrain in just two kilometres, with Telouet town visible nearby. Downhill on a light bike, walking where necessary, it might be doable, no? ‘Who wants to go first?’, I quipped on Twitter.

Once it was mule trains of salt from Telouet’s mines, but today, like the grand old Duke of York and his 10,000 men, a column of pylons marches up and over the col, bringing power from the massive Nour solar plant, 50km away near Ouarzazate.
You’d assume some sort of vehicle crawled up the slopes to erect the pylons, but no service track is evident on the south side. Still, at the very least, riding the switchbacks up to the col for a quick look might be possible. In my experience damage from water run-off gets less severe the higher you go, as the volume, momentum and sludge density all decrease with elevation. The real damage gets done down in the valleys.

I mentioned this recce to a mate who’ll join me out there next week. He soon found some Spanish KTM-ers – a YT channel called Enduro Aventura – who pulled off the Tizi n’Telouet descent (and a whole lot more) in 2002, filmed it all and capped it off with a tracklog on Wikiloc, classified as ‘Very Difficult’.
They call the Tizi Telouet ‘Collado Torretas’ or ‘tower/pylon col’? They confirm ‘the north face has been fixed with a track with a thousand curves and somewhat broken by the rain‘ but continue… ‘the south face on the way to Telouet is a narrow and broken trail with a lot of stones… This hill [trail] seems to be disappearing…‘. They speculate that a new road might get put in as the truncated northside track suggests, but I’ve found tracks or roads often come to a dead halt at provincial boundaries, which this watershed is. The col was just an efficient, ‘as-the-crow-flies’ route for the power cables from Nour to Marrakech.

On the track to Tizi n’Telouet. Though we knew we’d never manage the descent with my 300L, let alone James’ 890, we had half a mind to reach the col for a look, so took the track at Ait n Amer off the N9. We did a few clicks but realistically, it was late in the day and we probably wouldn’t have got back to the N9 before dark.

Their 80-minute vid below is timed to start at the Collado Torretas stage (covering just a few minutes). It’s soon turns gnarly af (stills above). But scan any other random minute in the vid and you’ll see just what light and lightly-loaded KTMs (including 2T) can achieve off-road in the hands of a fit and determined crew. You’ll be staggered to see what these guys blithely attempt. Chapeau to Enduro Aventura I say! The Men who Ride like Goats. Me, I think I’ll take the long way round.

Morocco 2023 Fly & Ride film

By Mike D and Group T1, early November 2023.
A great souvenir of our one-week ride on G310GSs.

Dacia Duster rental in Morocco 2

Map review: Reise Know-How Morocco 1:1m (2023)

The Hills Have ‘I’s • Ineos Grenadiers in Morocco

I was involved as one of the guides on the recce for the Hard Way Home back in October 2022, repeating the course again just before following the actual filmed event in February from Ouarzazate to Marrakech. The first three Grenadier customers picked up their brand new cars from the middle of nowhere in Morocco and drove them home.
The 500-km route we mapped out was a spectacular mix of mountain and desert, but as you’ll see, with snow down to 1800 metres, bad weather disrupted the actual launch event. ‘The Grenadier Route’ will be in 4th edition of Morocco Overland, due early 2025.
see also: Scott Brady from OJ in the Ineos.

How to trace and save a GPS tracklog online

Fyi, I do this all on a desktop computer or laptop. It may well be possible on a mouseless smartphone or tablet but would drive me nuts.

Particularly in the desert, these days aerial or satellite imagery from Google Maps and ESRI (Bing, etc – often better than Google) is so good you can spot passing vehicles and whether a road is sealed, a track or even a little used donkey trail. This is the sort of age-sensitive information you won’t always get from maps, be they digital or printed.
When planning new off-road routes, I find tracing the probable route in advance helpful for all the obvious reasons. It also provides a good preview of the area and what features I might come across (mineral mines; climbs, meths labs, gorges, junctions).

Using Google satellite mapping services, tracklogs can be drawn, saved and exported in two ways:
Using Google Earth Pro – no Google account needed but your annotated maps won’t be automatically saved online/in the cloud. I’ve drawn tracklogs using this method in Moroccan hotel rooms prior to setting off along remote tracks (above left), benefitting from the reassurance of knowing a track exists and where the junctions are.
See the images and captions below for more.

**First: download Google Earth Pro (it’s free).**

Either **search** for your place or **zoom in** on your start point.
Now choose the **Ruler** in the **top tool bar** and then select **Path** (blanked out above when selected).
With your mouse **trace a path** click by click, point by point along the track you want along the ground.
The extent of precision is up to you. When you’ve finished, **Save**.

The tracklog your drew is saved. Now **right-click** and choose **Save Place As…**

It **saves as a .kml** or .kmz file (same difference, more or less).
You may now need to convert the Google .kml file format to **.gpx** to import into Garmin satnavs and maybe smartphone/phablet nav apps.
**Garmin BaseCamp** can do it, or use a free online converter like GPS Visualizer.
Import the .gpx into your device and you can now set off to navigate your MYO tracklog.

With a Google account (…@gmail, etc) you can save your routes on a Google ‘My Map‘. It can have as much detail (tracklogs and waypoints) as you like, but Google ‘My Maps‘ are limited to about 10 layers. Layers are a bit like folders (with infinite capacity) and sometimes you have to shift tracklogs or waypoints into a pre-existing layer to free up a new one so you can import more.
This map can be shared or exported but will be saved online and be viewable/editable wherever you have internet.

Open Google Maps and once signed in, **click the Menu** top left.

I already have **Saved** maps so look for **My Places** or **My Maps** and click.

In the sidebar click **Maps** and **Create New Map**.

You can give your map a **name and save**. Google **autosaves** every few seconds so long as there is internet.

You may also like to **Name** your first layer in your map and **Save**.

To trace a tracklog you need to **change the map’s base layer** to **Satellite**.

It looks like this – people often call it ‘Google Earth’ though that’s actually the app above.

If you don’t know where your start point is and it’s waypoint, use **Search**.
I chose Chenachen base, as close as I’m ever likely to get to this place.

It’s not strictly necessary, but click **Add to Map** to save your searched place as a waypoint.
You can also **add and name a waypoint** anywhere using the toolbar above (top arrow).
Useful for junctions, I find.

Right-click and you can **edit a waypoint’s** Icon and Colour for better visibility and classification.

Now, to **draw a tracklog** along a desert track, click the **Draw** icon in the toolbar and choose ‘**Draw a line or shape**‘.

**Trace** the track with successive mouse clicks. As before, levels of precision are up to you.
Unless you are going cross-country there will be a clear track on the ground.

**Or, if the track is shaded** by Google, it means it is ‘**routable**‘.
You can **automatically trace it**, up to a point.
This method is much **less tedious but hard to control**.

**Click on a start point** on the shaded track. It will be saved as ‘Point A’.
A new ‘Driving’ layer (not ‘Import’) will be created.
Now **follow the track with the cursor**; it automatically highlights it in blue and keeps going as
long as it lasts. The problem is, the track may not go the way you are.

At the end click again on the track and ‘**Point B**‘ is created and the track’s directions are
saved as whatever Google calls it: ‘route sans nom’ in this case.

Click on the 3 dots and the **distance and other data** are shown.

You can **export this Driving Route** (not a hand-drawn track) by clicking the 3 dots
alongside the map’s name at the top. Choose the layer you want: ‘Directions from Route sans…
and it will save as a Google format **kml file** which you can then convert to .gpx to be read by
a GPS or non Google mapping.

Back to hand-drawn. Click the track’s end point to **Save** and give your track a **name**.

Again, you can edit your track’s **width and colour** to make it more visible on screen.

The contents (waypoints; tracks) of an individual layer can be saved and exported by clicking on the layer’s **3 dots sub menu**, choose **Export Data** and save as **KML/KMZ**.

**Download** your kml or kmz to the desktop.

The layer’s data is **downloaded** as a kml/kmz.

You can also **Share** your data online in various ways.

If you have saved several layers and tracks, you can save and **export the entire built up map** as a kml.
Then convert to .gpx as explained above and import into your nav device.

Above, the top red line is the tracklog I traced the night before.
The second red line with an arrow is the ‘live’ or ‘true’ tracklog I am recording.
And the grey line below is the same unverified track as depicted on the digital map and which sort of eliminates the need for your own tracklog, assuming you trust the map. In some cases, not a good idea.

Time for my Tablet: Samsung Tab + Gaia GPS vs Garmin Montana

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With added info from Duncan B and Grant @HU
See also: How to trace and save a GPS tracklog online

In the early Noughties I recall meeting a lone G-Wagen near the Monts Gautier in far southeastern Algeria (Route A14). They’d hooked up their GPS to a laptop for big screen nav. It was the only sensible way to do it in a car if you wanted that sort of thing, but would have been hard on the spinning HDD drives of that era.

I’m not sure I even owned a laptop at that time. Instead we managed to research and log the scores of routes in Sahara Overland with a hardback jotter and a Garmin 12 or a ‘big screen’ 76 mounted in a sawn-off juice bottle and an elastic band. When needed, I transposed the lat/long reading to the then still excellent IGN 1 million maps using a ruler or a more accurate roamer grid (below).

You could then pinpoint your position with adequate accuracy for the expansive Sahara because, unless you were looking for a cache (which we’d buried the previous day for Desert Riders), that was good enough to locate yourself. Otherwise, as the Austrian guys had done, you had to scan and carefully calibrate your paper maps (taking into account the map’s projection format) so that the moving cursor dot would mark your precise location.

Fast forward 2.2 decades…
… and I was driving Duncan Barbour on a recce job in Morocco (more of which later) while he logged our convoy’s route on an iPad. I had my hands full and so assumed his setup was off his phone but in these phablet days, his SIM- enabled iPad was all he needed, along with an app like Gaia GPS. In the meantime a couple of others confirmed it was no longer possible to mirror a Garmin GPS onto a larger screen, be it laptop or tablet. Perhaps because Garmin want you to buy their 5 or 10-inch Tread series from £500 to well over a grand + subscriptions.
I already owned some 400 quid’s worth of 680T Montana, the Garmin handhelds which in 2010 changed the game by being able to load several base maps and not just record tracklogs and waypoints on what in the Sahara had hitherto been an essentially blank screen.

Scraps of tracks on the ‘Overland’ map layer. Not helpful (like old TPC aero maps).
(Don’t start on this scraps thing on the OSM database…)

Since then digital mapping has improved to the point where there are topo maps based on OSM of the middle of the Sahara matching the classic IGNs. Problem is, unlike the paper maps, these OSM-supported maps have been in part ~~automatically rendered – the discontinuous scraps of tracks are a dead give away, as above (southern Tefedest, Algeria).~~ A year later and I see I was quite wrong about this. These disconnected tracks and paths – some less than a hundred metres long, have actually been added – presumably remotely from aerial imagery – by OSM contributors whose understanding of ‘ground truth’ is… different. I have since found them all over southern Morocco on the OSM database with no path visible on any of the aerial layers. Very often the work off one contributor. The intention is unclear but it can sure make it hard to see the main track among all the clutter.
Anyway, even with the slowly lifting restrictions on overlanding in this part of Algeria, such maps will take forever to be completed with genuine tracklogs while the IGNs show it how is was (and still is). But with Gaia GPS Premium it’s also possible to download high-res WYSIWYG satellite imagery to use offline. Plus there’s nothing to stop you travelling with paper IGNs or similar, or scans of them on your device.

Tablet + Gaia GPS app vs Garmin Montana GPS

Tablet/Gaia good
Cheap to buy/lose/break
Can do internet/phone/camera etc
Big 8″ screen
Loads of Gaia maps (once subscribed)
The desktop app is much easier to navigate (keyboard/mouse)
ESRI (or non-Google) sat imagery downloadable too
Masses of memory (1TB)
One tap track recording
Loads of (unverified/messy) public tracklogs on the Gaia map
Works on my iPhone 6 and 7 (but not Android)
Gaia GPS free Topo map is nicely rendered for an OSM

Tablet/Gaia less good
Gaia GPS requires subscription
Freezes occasionally
Baffling organisation of saved files in folders
Hard to tap and manage on the move
Hard to save precise waypoint easily
Screen decentres after inputs
Battery life: must be plugged in unless dimmed
Proper car mounts are expensive
Gaia GPS app froze on my Android phone

Garmin Montana good
Rugged build (good for motos)
If needed, li-ion battery lasts all day (or takes AAs)
Once customised and familiar, interface easy to manage
Fits in a pocket
Will do routing like a car satnav (Gaia may too)

Garmin less good
Expensive to buy
Small and dim screen
Limited miniSD capacity (32GB)
Crashes occasionally
Needs BaseCamp and other (free) Garmin apps on a computer
Easy to forget tracking, zero the trip meter, etc
‘Keyboard‘ is comparatively excruciating
It’s only a GPS + a rubbish camera

Samsung A7 Lite
I decided to try Gaia GPS on my own car recce and settled on an A7 8.7 incher; £120 from Argos. It has a metal case, takes up to 1TB microSD and weighs 330g when fully charged. My laptop and desktop have always been Macs but an equivalent new iPad Mini starts at a staggering £750.
I owned a crappy old Samsung mobile; the A7 has the same interface so the A7’s Android learning curve was pleasingly pruned. Best of all, I was able to flog my Kindle Fire for 40 quid and remain ‘gadget neutral’ in line with current government advisories.

From fourbie driver CW in Arizona: a **twin-tablet set up** to save flipping from maps to satellite or playing with opacity due to bright sun visibility issues.

The A7 got a screen protector out of the box but the all-metal body is slippery so needs something better to handle it. I have a RAM windscreen sucker and flange mount but was shocked at A7 RAM ‘Tough Dock’ prices which easily exceeded the cost of the tablet.
In a car it’s not going to get run over and smashed, like on a bike, and I’m not rallying, so I bought child’s foam case off ebay for £12, complete with vomit-proof standle. It will do for the moment; I might attach a RAM or a Nuvi flange-and-sucker to the back. Actually I ended up just zip tying it to a handle or rear viewmirror

Adult mounts and other options
One the left, the DR400 of Grant from Horizons, based in BC: another A7 on a RAM Tough Dock mount. Grant says the unit tends to droop on rough terrain, which is why people end up with Rally towers. Waterproof cases like Otters can be hit and miss he says (this is a benefit of Garmin’s Mil-810-spec Montana), though there are ruggedised tablets, like the Carpe Iter. “It runs DMD2 software launcher, which is also available for any Android device. Their unit is also excellent in sunlight, whereas the standard tablets are crap. I’m running the software now on mine, and it’s good. It launches GaiaGPS which is what I use the most.” says Grant. I do notice it has 128GB but will only take another 128. Still on bikes, Thork Racing (see YT vids) do bike-ready mounts and even roadbook-like thumb controllers to avoid trying to jab the screen with the chequered flag in sight.

Luscious sat imagery offline – who’d have thought

Using Gaia
Note: it is possible I’ve yet to fully get to grips with Samsung and Gaia and fyi, I worked all this out by diving in and flailing around like a beached haddock; a good way to test how intuitive it all is. Pay your 24 quid subscription (jumped to £66 the following year!), log in and browse maps by one of four activities from the ‘Layers’ tab top right: Hiking, Overlanding, Pushbiking, Weather & Misc; there are at least a dozen maps for each. The selection is inevitably US-centric, but see which best suits you. All you really need for Morocco is one good topo map and maybe a satellite layer.
I chose the promisingly named. OSM-like Gaia Overland (metres) and World Imagery (© ESRI) satellite (find it under the ‘Hiking’ tab). I know ESRI sat is best for the desert (or at least often trounces Google). The other three sat imagery options looked less good. Sat is the layer you might want to zoom in on because, as mentioned above, the topo maps won’t be WYSIWYG, just an array of tracks added by OSM contribs with an inevitably shaky hierarchy. The track you want may be in there among the clutter.

Then choose what maps you want to download so you can use your device offline in the hills. That is they key. Tap the ⊕ icon top right, choose ‘Download Map’, select a rectangular area and import, ideally into a folder if you plan to have loads of maps. As you can see in the examples above, the whole of Morocco in ‘Gaia Overland’ is just over 2GB, while a smaller area of ESRI covering about 15% of the topo map is 3GB. Full res ESRI covering the good bit of Morocco would have been getting on for 1TB. It really couldn’t be easier.

Satellites thicker than bugs on a bumper

Recording and saving a tracklog
I laboriously emailed myself ~50 pre-traced tracklogs to and picked them up off the tablet to import into Gaia. This and especially sorting them out took quite some time.
I was warned getting to grips with folders is the thing; it’s so much easier on a desktop computer. Loading the Garmin with the same was easier, providing all the .gpxs have been index-accessibly named. I know we’re all supposed to be smartphone savvy now but around this time you realise what a great invention the keyboard and mouse were.
For most travellers that will do: pick up the tracklog you want and follow it to the end; the Gaia Overland map is pretty good in Morocco. I’m a bit different in that I’m over-recording a new, live track plus adding waypoints with distances and take notes.
Recording a track is dead easy on Gaia: hit the prominent top left green ‘Record’ tab. The Garmin’s track recording is another page so is more easily overlooked when you’re trying to get your shit together at the start of a new route. But in the Gaia app saving a waypoint for your exact current location requires pressing and holding the position arrow on the map; hard to do accurately with fat fingers and the car shaking about. On Montana you back up to Home Page, hit Mark Waypoint for where you are that second, then Save (and jot down the number). Map > Home > Mark > Save and back to map in just 4 taps.

Gaia waypoints are annoyingly recorded as long (but I suppose unique) date and precise time, though I suppose they’ll all display chronologically somewhere. Also, I found a Montana suckered to the windscreen was easier to grab and tap than the propped up Samsung. I know with Duncan at times I had to stop so he could save and jot down. This can break the flow but is the age-old problem in doing this in a jolting fourbie. (Yes, I have thought of voice recordings).
Another drag on the Gaia is having to re-centre your location and the full screen map every time you do an input. And I wish the map scale bottom left could be made less opaque, or not opaque at all; same with the zoom buttons, though of course you can spread two fingers to do the same. Occasionally Gaia freezes and needs a restart, but the Garmin crashes occasionally too.
Later in 2023 I did two more scouting trips in 4x4s and found the Gaia’s large screen and detailed map better for following, but the Garmin made recording data with minimal tapping faff much easier, as long as your remembered to start the tracklog. I recorded data with my trusty Montana, as i did on several moto trips, also scouting tracks.
It took me a while to fully get the key differences between these two devices (see red/green comparisons above). One just does nav (plus a crumby camera), the other is an internetable phablet that does everything a smartphone can do, but nearly as easily as a laptop. Feet up, when the navigating is over, a phablet can come into its own. And once you’re back on wifi or 4G you can shoot off your recorded and saved nav data to your Gaia cloud, your email or wherever. Then catch up on the news, other emails, twitter off your photos or watch a movie.
Duncan said initially he took both Montana and Gaia iPad on his nav jobs, now he relies on the iPad. I suppose alone and travelling at my own pace, I could rely just on the tablet too, though on a bike it would need a secure or shake-proof mount somewhere.

Morocco with Dacia Duster 4×4 rental

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Drive around southern Morocco and you’ll see loads of Dacia Dusters. The Renault-owned Romanian brand has a factory in Tangier where Docker vans and Lodgy MPV taxis are also assembled. You’ll see those everywhere too.
After spending a week in a Prado TX (right; more about that job here), I rented a Duster from Medloc to start work on Morocco Overland IV with a pal.

I’d spent the preceding weeks on Google Maps, Bing and BaseCamp, extracting a whole new tangle of routes right across southern Morocco, way more than I’d manage to cover in 12 days driving. Sadly my tally turned out to be even less than hoped when the weather turned during the Ineos job, ruining their route, snowing up passes down to 1800m and wreaking flood damage, landslides and transient floods across the land.

A network of discontinuous lines – c’est la vie.

With many normally bone-dry rivers still flowing I knew we wouldn’t achieve much in the Dacia but we went ahead anyway; no recce is totally wasted. On the very first day we were snowed back then blocked by a churned up oued and rerouted by a closed mountain road. On the second day (left) we had to turn back three times before lunchtime! We settled into this pattern for the next week or so, probing, turning back and covering about 3500km (map above).

Renting a Duster in Marrakech Airport [RAK]
I’d rented from Medloc in Marrakech years ago but it can still feel a bit sketchy to a first-timer. Unlike Avis, Hertz, etc, Medloc and other Moroccan rental agencies don’t have a cabin office in the Menara airport car park, a 3-minute walk from the terminal. Nor might they meet you with a sign as you come out of Arrivals (not me at least, but I was there already). I had to call them and tell them where I was, using a car park place number.
Next: do not expect your freshly valeted car to be there waiting for you. Two guys rocked up after I called but it was about a hour before our actual car, booked for 11am, turned up. It’s not just me; the week before a ‘executive/prestige’ rental outfit dicked us about for even longer sourcing a second Prado which had been booked well in advance. And this was a multi-car job worth tens of thousands. Note that Dusters come as 2WDs too; make sure you book the right one!
Our car was a little dinged and repaired here and there but with seemingly good tyres (as requested), a similar spare and the all-important jack and wheel-changing tools (always check these; half the Prados’ jacks were missing). I’d make a show of checking the oil level while they watched too; it shows conscientiousness (ours looked like Brent crude).
I paid the rental fee on a portable card reader: €65/day plus a deposit of €1500, same as we do when renting bikes from Loc. Basic 3rd party insurance is included; no other damage waiver insurance was offered. I signed various forms, the pouch of documents went back in the glove box and we were asked to return the car with the same four bars on the fuel gauge.
On returning the car another call identified my location in the airport car park. People turned up fairly swiftly; checked around the car, asked about the bodged repair to the turbo hose (see below), made some calls and unexpectedly even refunded me the 200D I’d paid for the repair with no receipt then signed the car off. There was no cancellation of the €1500 deposit; he said he’d email me later with it (he didn’t). This was unnerving but checking my bank statement that evening, it seemed it had never been taken in the first place while the full rental fee had. This was similar to a moto I’d once rented off a trailer by the roadside in central Marrakech from M2R using a wifi card reader. It all felt sketchy as hell but panned out too. Even where possible I try to avoid using my card in Africa – cash for the rental and deposit is an option with Medloc.

Lessons learned: go ahead and use your 4×4 to its full ability on Moroccan tracks but make sure you have a number to call and try it before you get in trouble. Alone in a smoking Duster with over 100,000 rental kms, you may want to constrain your off-roading ambitions. Some places we drove would have been a near impossible recovery but don’t assume they’ll come down with a replacement if you car breaks down. They may suggest you try and get it fixed locally. I’d also bring a good tyre compressor. I’d also considered blagging a couple of planks somewhere for bridging as well as traction, although rearranging rocks, kicking away oued banks and on soft terrain stopping early and deflating did the trick.
I note that Hertz at RAK also rent Dusters. Renting with Hertz ought to feel more reassuring, but only if you get a proper 4×4 Duster (which don’t come as automatics in Morocco).

In a line
Prepare to be surprised with what you can manage in this light, all-terrain SUV.

• You can feel how lightness helps
• Great end clearances – never touched on some steep banks
• Recorded up 45mpg (16 kpl), that’s a 750-km range
• Nippy enough on southern Moroccan roads
• Suspension pretty good for what it is
• Had air-con and sat nav (but not the best)
• I didn’t miss Low Range much
• Road tyres worked fine up to a point when ATs wouldn’t have been much better. No punctures
• There is some underside protection
• There were fewer electrical faults (none, in fact) on our Duster than some of the Prados with similarly high rental mileages

• Underbody clearance is lower than it looks over central track humps
• Lame air-con and hard to see sat-nav
• Clicking noises under power from the back diff on loose surfaces; an LSD working or transmission wear?

DACIA DUSTER
Le Doustaire is a budget SUV going from an amazing £15k new in the UK. I’ve long been impressed by its unusually functional angles and clearance – as good if not better than a stock Prado. In my experience, along with appropriate tyres, for off-roading good clearance is the first priority, followed by 4WD and good articulation (suspension range) or traction control, and finally low range. Plus a snorkel.

The 4WD Duster has six speeds but no low range, just a low first gear – though it doesn’t feel that low to me. I’d outlined my intended use to Medloc and asked for good tyres and that I didn’t mind a well-used example so long as it wasn’t black. At Menara we picked up a bronze 1st generation Duster a few years old with a Renault K9K 1.5dci, 85hp TD in 6-speed manual and 117,000km on the clock.

Our car had a sat nav which actually worked for routing once you’d got the better of the interface, but the matt LCD screen was hard to read and was set too low for the driver. There was also air-con but it was pretty poor at pumping cool air around. I don’t know if low pressure in the system does that.
With the back seats down (left and below right) there’s almost enough room for two to sleep on the near-flat surface, if needed. The brakes were OK (non ABS) and so were the lights. I should get a job at Top Gear!

4WD system
The Duster runs FWD until you turn a low-reach dial to ‘AUTO’ at which point the rear axle engages on demand, activated by front wheel slip. Another 90° turns the dial to ‘LOCK’ presumably engaging a central diff lock (up to 40- or 60kph) to split torque 50/50 for a bit more traction. I don’t think our car had ABS, nor did it have ‘ESP’ which includes traction control. Later models have more acronyms. This Renault video may help demystify things, or this page where there’s talk of the system overheating if used hard, so there must be something slipping somewhere.

It all feels a bit opaque compared to the old-school mechanical lever and lock systems I’m used to, but we only struggled twice; once when the articulation and so the traction was on the limit crossing a wash-out (left). That ditch took a bit to rocking/momentum (not ideal and how lurching, non-low-range cars get damaged). The other time was wet sand under a crust between low dunes where I wasted no time in stopping early, clearing the wheels, lowering the tyres and foot recce’ing a way out.

As I know well, on the piste you can manage with 2WD 97.3% of the time, but there’s no harm leaving it in AUTO which won’t wind up the transmission and ought only intervene when needed, though might create some drag and higher fuel consumption. It did feel like the steering stiffened reassuringly in LOCK so something was happening below, but a couple of times when turning on loose surfaces under power the back diff clicked as if there was a mechanical LSD in there, or something was slipping and would soon eventually strip splines or snap.
This is the risk in using lightly built ‘4WD’ SUVs on remote desert tracks where occasionally you might have to ask a lot of the transmission. There’s a reason why Land Cruisers and the like are relied on by aid agencies, despite their weight, cost and fuel. consumption. They are over-built to handle the task and last, but are of course still prone to failures.

This was why, again and again in our aged Dacia we backed away from terrain which we might have tackled in a stouter Prado with Low Range or with another vehicle present. And it was why we didn’t cross something which we weren’t confident we could reverse, if needed. Nor on this occasion did we intend to venture into the remote desert south of Rissani. The nature of flood damaged tracks: wash-outs, landslides, fallen rocks, boulder-filled river beds or actual rivers and slimy claypans (we encountered all these), is that a track can be perfectly drivable for miles, then virtually impassable, then fine for miles again to become completely impassable. It takes some experience of desert off-roading and a vehicle’s abilities to know how far to push it while also knowing what you can tackle without risk.

Camping fuel with fly-in rentals
Flying in to rent a vehicle then camp, you’re limited with what stoves or fuel you can carry on a plane. For boiling water a harmless volcano kettle will work but current models can be slow and fiddly. I managed to transport solid fuel ethanol blocks in my hold bag (they can be classed as ‘disinfectant gel’) to use on a compact gimp stove, and also thoroughly aired off my reliably powerful old Coleman petrol stove but ran up against the weight limit so left it. At the last minute I bought a Trangia burner which, using the same stand as a gimp stove, will work with alcohol that you can buy readily from pharmacies in Morocco.
In fact, in any small town it’s easy to buy a 5kg bottle of butane for just 60D (£5), as well as a cheap burner head for around 40D in a hardware store. From previous experience in North Africa a bottle this size will last a month and is of course dead easy to use once out of the wind.
While faff-free, one thing we noticed is that Moroccan butane is of a lower quality than what you’d get in Europe. You won’t get a crisp blue flame but it got there in the end, probably no quicker than a v-kettle, Trangia or a gimp stove.

Soon things got worse, then deteriorated

The independent coils all round give pretty good articulation and as mentioned, if nothing else, the clearances lapped up the piste. On the road the car was nippy in southern Moroccan traffic, didn’t roll much in bends and the brakes were OK. Six gears was a new one on me but if you don’t rush it you got it right most of the time. I’ve not driven a manual for over a decade but had I not read it before, I’d not have noticed first was extra low. Sixth is definitely an overdrive that drops the revs and noise.

The Duster’s clearance is nearly as impressive as it looks; not once did we scrape either bumper; more than I can say for the stock Prado I used last October (The Prados we used just before this trip were notably lifted).
So we were surprised when the undercarriage scraped, grounded and thumped on deeper twin-rut central humps. Looking underneath there is actually some steel protection, but the full-width bashplate under the engine (below left) seemed to be the Duster’s point of contact, along with maybe the forward edge of the rear diff housing (below right). Seeing that neither was getting pulverised made the occasional scrapes and thumps easier to endure, but it was irritating to have to drive deep ruts off-centre like a regular 2WD car to avoid excessive contact.
As it was, on many occasions one of us hopped out to either move rocks and/or guide the driver over tricky ground to avoid needlessly bashing the undercarriage.

A switch on the end of the wiper stalk I’d have never found toggles a nifty read-out on the dash which includes remaining range, live and average L/100km, odometer and outside temps. The Duster has a centrally mounted 50-litre tank and averaged the low to mid 40s mpg (6.5L/100km; 15kpl) which was pretty good. I doubt the hefty Tojo Prado ever exceeded 30. Accelerating the Toyota you could almost hear the gush of fuel pouring out of the pipe as the 3-litre engine heaved the 2.5-ton car into motion.

We did get caught out on one little used track which we started late, had it turn unexpectedly gnarly (above), and with us low on water and with no signal. The fuel range dived under harder use, compounded when a dash warning light came on (left) and power dropped off. Limp-home mode?
From day one Barry thought the turbo was playing up; not knowing the car I wasn’t so sure. But we couldn’t decipher the warning icon on the dash as the only handbook in the glove box was for the sat nav (it needed one). We checked for drips underneath and under the bonnet and carried on into the night. It was a tense couple of hours.

Never thought I’d be pleased to see the twinkling lights of Zagora.

It wasn’t till next day in Tamnougalte when we got online to find that orange warning lights are less critical than red. We also got a tip to check the turbo inlet hose. Up to that point we’d assumed the turbo had gone (Barry’s failed on his Defender at just 14k). But Medloc did not respond to detailed emails explaining our problem, or requests for a replacement car. Calling was the answer (trickier for me with shakey French) to which they suggested we buy a new turbo and get it fitted (for 1000D we were advised; one could have come down from Ouarzazate next day).

We should have spotted the loose hose on the piste; rev the engine and it blew off and remained displaced, producing black smoke so common to many older diesel bangers in Morocco. But the plastic hose (as opposed to more flexible rubber) wouldn’t push back onto the turbo and stay there; some attachment/clip was broken, caused I presume by old age plus the engine rocking on the chassis mounts over rough ground. I’ve had this engine-wobble/hose-strain problem before with the Land Rover 101 and other vehicles. Once our spliff-tooting mechanic had firmly lashed the hose back on with bailing wire and two jubilee clips, normal performance resumed and stayed. Was the turbo whining more? Hard to tell.

Above all, what impressed me with the Duster was its lightness – or how little it took to get the combined 1500kg mass moving with very little throttle or a relatively high gear. Often you could trickle along a piste in third. And when things got a little rough this lack on mass translated into non-self destructing impacts where the mass of a proper 2-ton 4WD would have either broken something or bashed you against the insides. This really was a revelation in the Duster and why I’d rent one again. Just maybe not such an aged banger. A few months later I did – read here

Book review: Gandini Jebel Sagho off-road guide

In a line or two
Packed with intriguing routes to amazing vistas, but unapologetically expensive and hard to visualise the potential with the single one-page map unless you download the tracklogs (another €20).

Price and description
£46 on amazon today ;-0
Jaques Gandini with Houcine Ahalfi
140 pages with loads of colour and one map.
Extrem’ Sud Editions; 2022
ISBN 9782864106746

What they say
The “Jacques Gandini [Jebel Sagho] Roadbook” [is a] lighter version[s] of the French ” Guides 4×4 J. Gandini” (without the historical or ethnographic boxes present in the French edition): all the itineraries, all the waypoints and their comments are included. Abundantly illustrated, they are printed on strong 170g/m2 paper and bound with a metal spiral for better handling on the trail. They are published in 4 languages: Spanish, English, German and Italian.

Jacques Gandini and Hoceine Ahalfi have explored in detail the Jebel Sagho, this magnificent wild region of southern Morocco, with its breathtaking landscapes, situated to the east of Warzazat and to the south of the Dades valley, and have put together 59 itineraries totalling 2,500 kilometres and 1,100 waypoints.

Thick, quality paper and spiral bound
Amazing Jebel Sagho deserves its own guide
There can’t be many routes left on the Jebel!
The author is not without a GSOH
A little of the historical and cultural background seeps in from the full French edition

Just as with previous Gandinis, it’s an effort to engage with the book’s content, even in English
Design/format too dense and basic
Just one map!
At £46 ridiculously expensive, even for a specialist guide
Better off just downloading the tracklog tramlines for €20
Scores of extraneous waypoints for every passing creek, etc

Review
I first came across Jacques Gandini’s Sahara guides 25 years ago when that was all that was available for Libya (apart from German). The books were loaded with well researched historical and cultural background but as practical piste guides for the early GPS era, I found them hard work. I may have bought one of his early Morocco books too, but was further put off.
Since that time I’ve written similar books like Sahara Overland (op) and Morocco Overland, and like to think I know what it takes to make a piste guide user-friendly for two- and four-wheelers. In the meantime the prolific JG has concentrated mostly on Morocco, producing 11 routes guides to various regions as well as other travel books and histories, assisted by his Berber-speaking local guide, Houcine Ahalfi. The books were all in French until this English edition for Jebel Sagho was released in 2022 (also in Spanish, Italian and German), alongside the new French version. A sign that more translations will follow?
The blurb clearly states this is a ring-bound, stripped down ‘roadbook’ of the full French version which is well over twice as long. And they’re not exaggerating. You usually get one line intros for routes squeezed between masses and masses of photos. A few of these are amazing (not hard on Jebel S), some a bit so-what-y, as if filling space.

The pistes are categorised using Gandini’s scale, shown left. ‘Tufna’ are easy, well-maintained tracks like MZ1, ‘Beldi’ are ancient winding village routes, some possibly abandoned for regular use (though young locals on 125s can go anywhere); ‘DPM’ I think is meant to signify ‘Dedicated Piste Merchant’ or somesuch. ‘Orangina’ is a bone shaker and ‘AFA’ is Absolutely F-ing Amazing.
Most are listed from A to T but these refs are scattered all over the hard-to-read map (tip: don’t used dark red text on a brown background). In between are sub-routes Ba, Cd, etc, plus the aforementioned five AFAs. Confused yet?

Page upon page is packed with distances, waypoints, short descriptions and photos. According to the blurb, with over 59 routes there is on average a waypoint every 2700 metres. Many of these waypoints seem to be unimportant names of passing creeks extracted from a local shepherd or off an old map. In the picture left, the right page has just six directional waypoints. I think this is too much distracting, unnecessary information. Perhaps Gandini is a writer who likes to throw in everything (a common flaw with many ‘under-edited’ self-published books): loads of waypoints, loads of photos. But loads of routes too. Also, I believe we’re now in the era of the less error-prone decimal degrees (DD) format: simply 00.0000, -00,0000, not N00° 00.00′, W00° 00.00′, let alone N00° 00″ 00′ W00° 00″ 00′. My next Morocco edition will use DD which I believe is the default in mobile phones.
You’d do well scrutinising the book or prefered routes with a highlighter and marking the waypoints that actually matter. In my Morocco book I decided ages ago that waypoints weren’t needed for every single passing feature which may be simply noted with a distance, especially when on a section of track you can’t get lost on. I have to add the condensed font is not to my taste either. For me, when on the piste and with the Orangina fit to burst, you have enough on your plate should the time come when you need to refer to your guidebook, and so legibility and ease of use are key.

It can’t be a mere oversight or issue of space that the book has just one overview map on the inside front cover (above and online), tightly packed in the 2500 kilometres of routes. I feel that in books like this, additional maps are an essential part of breaking down long lists of waypoints or tangled routes into something you can visualise. You get the feeling you’re being pushed into buying the tracklogs for another €20 (but of course not share them beyond your immediate family on pain of the guillotine). This is a current quandary over copyright with all publishers of similar content. As it is, a canny user of Google Maps could easily locate the pistes shown above and trace them off satellite imagery to make their own tracklogs.
Finding online ‘OSM’ maps maddeningly unreliable and inconsistent, that’s what I’ve been doing these last few weeks in search of new routes in southern Morocco. There are many places I’ve long wondered ‘Hmm, where might that go?’. The best answer is on a high resolution WYSIWYG aerial image; zoom in close enough and you’ll find a dense lattice of tracks leading to lonely homesteads and hamlets all over southern Morocco; just don’t expect these tracks to all be passable. That is the value of guidebooks; the routes have been systematically ‘curated’ for you.

Some anomalies I chanced upon: he calls my MH14 route ‘new’ which seems odd. Yes there are new mines up here but I was told of this piste way back in 2011, it’s a long-established Sagho route. I also note he draws 120km out of my MZ1 route, when my tracklogs record at around 102km. That’s quite a discrepancy on a route which must be identical.
Other than that, there’s masses of information based on years of experience, it’s just a shame Gandini hasn’t got better at laying it all out because it’s hard to easily take in what you actually need to know. Maybe, like any new guidebook, spending more time with it will make it easier to use.

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