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✦ Chefchaouen · Tinghir · Ouarzazate · Merzouga

Your compass for Morocco

Ali Ben Bassou grew up in the desert and finds the way without a sat nav. For an afternoon at the Akchour waterfalls or for three weeks down to Merzouga: we plan your route, or Ali drives it with you.

Write on WhatsApp How it works

✦ Two ways

Advice or guiding

Some just want to know which way to go and what there is on the ground. Others want someone along who knows, and who connects you with the country and its people. We do both.

Red rock and green fields in the Dades Valley, a village pressed against the slope

Advice

You travel on your own

We plan the route with you, and you drive it yourself. While you are on the road, we stay reachable.

  • Route planning, built around your time and what you want to see
  • Places to stay from our network: we make the introduction, you book directly with the host
  • Food away from the tourist traps
  • Contacts: drivers, hosts, artisans
  • Advice for climbers in the Todra Gorge, where Ali climbed for years himself
  • Reachable for as long as you are travelling

From €20 per travel day planned. Multi-day tours according to length and depth of planning.

A small caravan walking through the dunes with loaded camels, late light

Guiding

Ali comes along

A guide who comes from the country he takes you into. Journeys in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German.

  • Ali with you throughout the journey
  • Guided walks in the Middle Atlas, the Dadès valley and around the Akchour waterfalls, where paths are rarely waymarked
  • Access to a network of locals, artisans, families and nomads
  • Places and encounters a traveller does not find alone
  • Cultural context and translation: Arabic, Darija, French
  • We introduce places to stay and eat, such as KamKamCamp near Merzouga

Half and full days at set prices, see further down. Multi-day guiding according to length and distance.

The prices cover what Compass Nomad does. Overnight stays we introduce you to, and you book and pay directly with the host.

Most journeys become a mixture: a stretch of desert, a walk, a well-known place, an afternoon with a family who weaves. If you want to see Aït Ben Haddou, Merzouga or the Todra Gorge, Ali plans them in.

✦ With your own vehicle

Campervan, 4x4, motorbike

With your own vehicle you are free. The question that remains is which routes hold. That is best answered by someone who knows them.

Campervans at a site near Taznakhte, mountains behind them in the evening light

Campervan and motorhome

  • Which routes work with a camper and which do not
  • Places to park up, including the ones no guide lists
  • Where camping in the open works and where it needs an arrangement with someone local
  • Supplies: water, gas, waste disposal, shopping
  • A bed and a meal along the way: we put you in touch, for the nights you leave the vehicle standing
  • Road conditions and narrow stretches, honestly judged
Three four-wheel drives on red earth, ready for the track

4x4 and off-road

  • Which tracks are passable, and in which season
  • Dunes and sand: what a vehicle can take there and what it cannot
  • What is allowed in Morocco, what is not, and how it is handled on the ground
  • Desert routes that call for experience
  • A bed and a meal along the way: we put you in touch, from a desert camp to a family in the valley
  • Where it is better not to drive alone
A road winding through dry hills

Motorbike

  • Stages that make sense
  • How long a stage really takes, not how long the map says
  • Road surface and gravel stretches
  • Distances between fuel stops, and where to fill up beforehand
  • A bed and a meal along the way: we put you in touch, at the end of the stage
  • Workshops and places that store a motorbike safely

Ali has driven large parts of Morocco himself. Where his own experience ends, his network begins: drivers, hosts, traders and nomad families across the country. He carries the connections in his head, with distances and driving times.

Ask us about your route

✦ Excursions, half day or full day

Out with a guide from here

From three bases, with or without your own vehicle. If you drive, Ali rides with you. Travelling without your own vehicle: we arrange transport through our network.

Guide price from €80 for a half day for two, with the drive there and one meal included. The exact price depends on half day or full day, group size and distance.

Chefchaouen seen from above, its blue houses set in the green Rif

Chefchaouen

The blue city in the Rif.

  • The Akchour waterfalls and the Bridge of God
  • Fir forests and gorges in Talassemtane National Park
  • Through the medina to weavers, tanners and potters
  • Rural life in the Rif villages around the town
  • The Mediterranean coast at El Jebha, over the switchbacks of the Rif
The river in the Todra Gorge, between high rock walls

Tinghir

The gateway to the Todra Gorge.

  • The Todra Gorge, with rock walls up to 300 metres
  • Oasis gardens and Berber villages in the valley, farmed by families for generations and watered the traditional way
  • Dades Valley and Dades Gorge
  • The Valley of Roses near Kelaat M'Gouna, in bloom in April and May
The earthen walls of a kasbah near Ouarzazate

Ouarzazate

The door to the desert.

  • The ksar of Aït Ben Haddou, UNESCO World Heritage
  • The Atlas and CLA film studios
  • Draa Valley towards Zagora, stopping in Agdz
  • Skoura, the oasis of a thousand kasbahs

✦ The craft and the life of Berber families

How and where is Moroccan craft made?

Moroccan craft can be bought anywhere. It is more interesting to watch it come about: the sheep in the pasture, the wool, the colours drawn from plants, the women at the loom. Ali has known these families for years.

Carpets are the heart of it, but only part of the range of Moroccan craft. Ali also deals in silver from the Sahara and in wooden pieces inlaid with camel bone. The artists and makers live in different places across the country. Wherever your journey goes, a visit can usually be worked in.

View over the village of Zaouia d’Ifrane, earthen houses and a minaret among trees, the green hills of the Middle Atlas behind

Zaouia d'Ifrane, Middle Atlas

Here a carpet can be followed from beginning to end: the sheep in the pasture, their wool, the dyeing with plant colours, the women at the loom. And behind it the plain, long-held way of life of a Berber family.

Dark rock ridges outside Ouarzazate, a green line of palms in the valley, table mountains behind

Near Ouarzazate

In the palm grove below the black mountains outside Ouarzazate lives a nomad family Ali has worked with for many years. They weave colourful carpets in a range of qualities and sizes. You can walk along the river, and anyone travelling in a small camper can stay the night there.

Terraced green gardens with palms in front of red rock near Tinghir

Tinghir and the Todra valley

Palm groves as far as the valley reaches, the old kasbah with its historic Koranic school, and the way into the Todra Gorge. Carpets here are woven by a women's cooperative you can visit.

Nomad tents at the edge of the dunes

Merzouga, the desert

Where Ali is from. Much of his family lives here, and he spent many years in the desert himself. He knows families still living as nomads today, and they can be visited. You sleep simply in the sand, or at the camp his family built over more than twenty years and his uncle runs today. Whatever else the desert offers, from a camel ride at dawn to a tour of several days, the family arranges on the spot.

The carpets are woven in the same houses where you sit in the afternoon. The doors open because Ali belongs there.
Three handwoven hot water bottle covers in red, orange and undyed wool A black and white patterned carpet hanging over an earthen wall A wooden bowl inlaid with brass, silver and camel bone

✦ Craft

Carpets, jewellery, wood inlaid with camel bone

Carpets from Taznakhte and the Middle Atlas, jewellery from the Sahara, bowls and wall pieces of wood inlaid with brass, silver and camel bone. And the hot water bottle covers we developed with the families for the European market. Every piece has a place and a family behind it: Ali buys directly from the makers, and you can visit them along the way.

The catalogue is being built, starting with the jewellery. If you are already looking for something, write to us. Every piece is unique, and shipping and customs we discuss in person.

✦ How it works

Three steps

  1. 01

    You write to us

    Tell us what you want to see: desert, mountains, coast, culture, craft. How many days do you have? Are you travelling in your own vehicle?

  2. 02

    We plan with you

    Route, stops, places to stay, people to meet. We also tell you what will not work.

  3. 03

    You decide

    Whether you set off alone, or whether Ali comes with you.

Ali in a blue robe beside the four-wheel drive at the foot of a dune Isabelle and Ali with a camel in the dunes Ali and Isabelle under palm trees by a river

✦ Compass Nomad

Who we are

We are a German-Moroccan couple. Ali Ben Bassou is from Merzouga, grew up in the desert and has worked in tourism for more than 25 years. He knows the routes, the families and the places this site is about. Isabelle Kramer is from Germany and holds the other half: the website, the planning at the desk, and the correspondence with everyone who writes in German or English.

For you that means: you write in your own language, and the answer comes from someone who is there.

Ali in a blue robe and turban, phone in hand, the dunes behind him

✦ Contact

Every journey begins with a conversation

Write to us on WhatsApp or by email. We answer in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

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