Updated December 2025

People used to ask: where was the front cover of your Morocco Overland 3 book?
Gara Medoaur, I say, though I’ve yet to actually go there. A distinctive outcrop just north of the N12 near Rissani, the epic cover was shot by desert trucker Marc Heinzelmann with a drone, something that’s increasingly tricky to smuggle in these days.
Despite appearances, Gara is not an ancient volcano – the near-horizontal sedimentary strata give that away. Time and again I hear or read of people attributing the desert’s dramatic formations to volcanism, though you get that too.
But Gara sure looks good and, like so many isolated hills in Morocco, large and small, it was used as a strategic natural fortress and observation post from a millennium ago when nearby Sijilmassa, was a northern terminus of the medieval caravan trade from Timbuktu. Inside Gara’s ‘crater’, shallow ravines were dammed to collect water and there are long eroded remains of dwellings. In later years it’s said it was a Portuguese prison, a similar enclosure for slaves, or just a storehouse.

Though filmed since at least 1988, the outcrop rose to fame with the release of the 1999 film, The Mummy for which a ramp was built up through the ancient wall on the southern side. Thereafter, it grew to become a destination for tourists as well as other films and commercials.
But more than the nearby Todra Gorge, you can see why it’s uniquely compelling. Not only does it resemble an impressive natural ‘volcanic’ fortress – a Bond producer’s dream – but from the rim you get a great view across an arid desert plain as well as a killer viewpoint spot perched on the exposed crag.

The earliest record I’ve found of Gara Med being used as a film location is as the magical “Speaking Mountain” in a 7-part Italian mini series from 1988 called Secrets of the Sahara. With English speaking actors and a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, it was also condensed into a film.
But it was 1999’s The Mummy which put Gara on the map, and which may again have featured in The Mummy Returns (2001). Since then Gara Medouar has been seen in several films as well as product promo videos seeking to evoke the arid Saharan wastes without having to go more than a couple of miles off road or too far from five-star civilisation.
Here’s my list with vid clips below. Did I miss a few? Probably.

• Secrets of the Sahara (1988) Seven-part Italian TV series. Gara is central to the plot
• Secrets of the Sahara (1988) Short movie version
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) Disney fantasy movie with magical daggar
• Spectre (2015) Baddy’s lair in a Bond movie
• Zero Zero Zero (Sky, 2018) Better than average drug cartel drama series
• KTM 790 Adventure (2019) Launch promo vid,
• Yamaha XT700 Tenere (2019) Launch promo vid
• The Forgiven (2022) Dire yuppie nightmare movie set in the desert
• Rouge Heroes (BBC, 2022) Opening scene for the SAS’s desert origins
• Land Rover Defender (2022) TV advert
• Pol Tarres gives his Yamaha T7 what for in 2023