Morocco Gravel Bike Adventure: In Search of Camels

I had but one goal: See camels.

Actually, I suppose I had two goals: See camels, and hope my tires held up to the suffering that the mountains and deserts of Morocco would dish up.

Turns out, I accomplished both of those. Plus, I even got to ride a camel.

All of this was on a recent trip with Thomson Bike Tours, which does both on-road and gravel tours all across Europe (and beyond). As I mentioned elsewhere recently, we’re aiming to partner with them for a few things in the future, including an adjacent Mallorca trip tied to the DCR Open House (once such new DCR Cave gets relocated here). So obviously, I wanted to test out the company and make sure I was happy with them. Spoiler: Super happy. In fact, my wife (aka The Girl) is on a gravel trip in Tuscany this week. Thus, Thomson let me join their trip without cost, though I did pay for my airfare.

The Morocco Gravel trip was 7 days, though 6 days of riding. I flew into Marrakech, where I met the rest of the group before we’d transfer across the Atlas Mountains the next day to start riding in the desert. The mountains were capped with snow, and during our drive it was snowing (a very wet snow) over the top of the pass.

Now I won’t cover all of the riding days here, but rather, just some quick highlights. Plus, I spent a silly amount of time on the video, so…you should watch it. If for no other reason than I actually finished this VLOG style video, whereas about 95% of the other ones I shoot end up half-edited (or 90% edited…). :)

After our long transfer over the mountains, we did a quick shake-out ride to ensure everyone’s gear was working well. A few of us took our own bikes, while the remainder rented bikes. The trip was initially a private trip for a group of 6 guys from Seattle that do annual trips, but they later opened it up to anyone who wanted to join (hence how myself and another 5 or so guys joined). Given they had other travel plans in Europe after Morocco, they rented bikes. Interestingly, they rented two bikes each: One regular gravel bike, and one e-gravel bike. More on that later.

In any case, the first day of riding went without technical issues for a simple loop around the flats leading up to the mountains:

You can see the full itinerary here. As a general rule of thumb, when looking at those distances, roughly 2-3x lower than the distance/time you’d do on a road bike, to adapt to the very-not-champagne-gravel of Morocco. So while some of those distances might seem low at first glance, all of us agreed at the end, it was just about perfect to enjoy each day feeling like you accomplished something, without feeling totally shot.

Of course, as I mentioned, my biggest goal here was seeing a camel. And things got off to a promising start, with seeing a camel…sign. Yes, just a sign that camels could cross the road.

But alas, no camels were spotted on this day.

The next day would be the first climbing day, up towards the mountains, but not quite hitting snow. Nor hitting any massive climbs. That’d come later. We’d climb about 1,000m up, before descending down into a lush valley.

Probably one of the neatest bits to coming to Morocco in early spring is that the winter rains have made everything quite green, yet we managed to avoid any rain ourselves (literally it only started raining in the last 5-10 seconds of the last day, as I hit the stop buttons on my bike computers).

This would be the first major descent, as we twisted our way down this mountain road:

This would take us to this town below:

This would be our first introduction to the children of Morocco, just getting out of school. We’d later be joined by them numerous times on bikes as well.

Also, I feel it’s important to point out there’s a sheep riding a donkey:

A short bit later, we’d get lunch. Each day, lunch was tended by chefs who set up a table in the middle of nowhere. Though, one day, we had lunch at a small restaurant atop a hill.

For the Morocco trip, Thomson partners with a local hotel chain (Xaluca), which covered almost all of the hotel pieces, and they in turn also sorted the food-in-desert bit. Further, they had these support vehicles with us the entire time throughout the desert. One of Thomson’s ‘things’ is that they always have a seat for every rider. That’s especially important in Morocco in the event of some sort of heavy rain thunderstorm, given routes could quickly become impassable rivers for cyclists. But more practically, these vehicles just had a lot of snacks for us, and could carry day bags.

Now, like I said earlier, I won’t cover every single day, the video covers most of them. But I do want to skip to the second-to-last day, when we rode to the dunes. Most of our riding in Morocco was in the mountains and valleys, but on the 5th day, we rode across the desert towards the start of the giant sand dunes. And more specifically, the start of the Sahara Desert.

The day started like any other, directly from the hotel, heading out of town. We’d go through some palm and date plantations, before eventually getting out into the open desert:

Unlike previous days (with up to 7,000ft of climbing), we had almost no climbing on this day. It was like the Netherlands. Except, like the Netherlands, you still had something else to contend with. Instead of wind, it was sand spots here.

The closer we got to the dunes, the more frequent the sand spots would occur. You’d be pleasantly enjoying yourself on hard-packed desert paths, and then ‘boom’, sand spot. Your bike would sink in, and eventually you’d fall over or dismount. On my first fall (caught below), it actually triggered the incident detection on the Garmin Instinct E, before I could stop it. Which in turn notified my wife (somehow we actually had cell coverage here).

Most people fell many times. It was a battle to see how far you could get across the sand spot (perhaps even to the other side, if it was only a handful of meters), before the sand won.

And of course, there was the carrying of the bikes:

Also notable about this day was that we had hired a drone videographer to join us. You cannot import your own drone into Morocco without massive reams of paperwork. However, it is easier to rent a drone, with slightly less paperwork. And I had started that process more than a month out, but alas, it didn’t work out. So instead, Xaluca worked to arrange a drone pilot for us. Which ended up being both a drone pilot and a secondary on-ground shooter. All of which cost less than it would have to simply rent the drone.

Obviously, I’m used to flying my own drones to capture my own cycling. So this was the first time I had someone else capture footage of me riding. Before we started, I was pretty apprehensive that I’d get any usable footage from an unknown pilot. But he turned out to be pretty good at his shots, with lots of different angles, movements, etc… While he’s still relatively new to drones, and he was only shooting with a DJI Mini 3 Pro, he’s got the right creative eye, which is all that matters. There are a bunch of these shots in the video.

More critical than the drone dude, was the fact that I finally saw my first real-life camel on this trip. It took 5 days to sight one, but I managed to find not just one of them, but an entire herd out in the middle of nowhere.

Interestingly, later that night I learned that in addition to carrying tourists, camels also are used to carry drugs. Notably, carry drugs northbound without any guide. They go by themselves across the Sahara desert, crossing the borders deep in the dunes where no border guards exist. Here’s an article explaining how it works.

After many many hours of riding across the desert (and a pit-stop at an oasis for lunch), we arrived at the dunes. Somewhat astoundingly, there were massive lakes settled in front of the dunes. Go figure.

I then headed up into the dunes to get a few more photos, and shoot some other bits for a future video.

Somewhat hilariously, after being there perhaps 20-25 minutes, a random dude appeared out of nowhere (I was near nothing, with nobody around me). I assumed he wanted to sell me some trinket or such, but he first offered to take a few photos of me (I had taken some earlier photos using a selfie stick in the sand, but was struggling with the very high winds, to get things perfect).

What was most impressive was that he actually took good photos. More specifically, he had me posing all over creation, like a Top Model contestant. It was pretty funny. On bike, holding bike, bike on head, leaning back, leaning forward, landscape, vertical, and so on. He took over 50 photos!

Fear not, I bought some fossil flower things from him, for my daughters. I would have paid him just for the photos, but he insisted on me taking something from his stash.

From a riding standpoint, our day ended here. At least, riding bicycles. We had arrived early afternoon, so Xaluca had arranged for us to be able to use one of the pools at one of their hotels for the afternoon. Obviously, cannonballs were in order:

After which, we’d transfer via…camel…to our next hotel, which was in the dunes itself. Now, these photos don’t do the wind justice (the video does). It was howling out, roughly 50-70kph winds. Basically just sand-blasted. But hey, I was here to ride bikes to the dunes, see camels, and then ride camels into the dunes. So let’s get sandblasted!

The Instinct E doesn’t have a horseback profile, so I used the next most logical thing: eMTB. Seemed right:

Riding a camel is not a fast process, but it does eventually get you where you want to go.

We rode said camels for about 45 minutes to a relatively high point, where we watched the sunset:

After camel-time, it was down to our camp for the night:

The build logistics of this place is crazy. But it’s got everything from running water for hot showers, to toilets, and more. I have a room tour in my video. Super swanky!

Now, the next day we woke up, walked ourselves out of the dunes (since riding is impossible), and then started a 6-7 hour long ride across the desert back to our final hotel for the night.

There was some awesome riding moments with girls who had just finished school that day in the video as well:

It was great to see, repeatedly, how much the kids enjoyed riding with us. Be it in small towns, or the absolute middle of nowhere in the mountains, when kids would pop out of farms or dirt paths to ride with us for a bit. Super cool.

Ultimately, the trip was awesome. The staff were great, both the on-bike guides as well as the supporting team managing logistics and the support vehicles. The routes were all well designed, and flowed pretty well into each other. A few big days followed by an easier day, and so on. All of the days had spectacular views, whether it was snow-capped mountain views, oasis-like valleys, or the stark landscape of the desert. Plus, thanks to the Marc from Thomson, who also took a bunch of these photos of me (seen in this post), throughout the trip. Collectively, the two of us took over 3,000 photos, and over 1,000 video clips.

The hotel accommodations were all quite good as well. Most were from Xaluca, though there were also some boutique hotels too, including this one that we rode directly poolside, had the entire place to ourself, and then was prime for cannonballs.

In terms of the food, it was plentiful, and quite a bit of it was good. I would say that there wasn’t quite as much variety as you might see on trips in other countries, as we mostly ate a variant of the same dish at dinner in a number of the hotels. Though later in the week, the hotels we stayed at had more options as part of a buffet. Still, I think one of my favorite spots was actually a tiny lunch spot atop a mountain, where a single dude was cooking on a BBQ. Super good!

For those in our group with e-gravel bikes, those worked out great. Thomson doesn’t offer those on all trips, but given the more technical and demanding nature of the Morocco Gravel trip, it helps keep the group together. And indeed, it did exactly that. Nobody was flying off the front with e-bikes, rather, it just kept the group in one spot, especially going up the long multi-hour climbs. Like all e-bikes, these had multiple power levels, and most of the guys just used them on the lowest level, which was just enough to equalize everyone, and allow everyone to enjoy the day (rather than feel like they were dying in the desert).

Anyways, as I said, the point of this trip was to see how the company does, for a future partnership, and I’m super happy with them. The bulk of their trips are within mainland Europe (mainly road, but a portion gravel), with many tied to events like the Tour de France, Vuelta, the classics, and more. But they also have things like a Gravel Iceland trip and more. Full details on their site. I’m definitely looking forward to working with them in the future, both in terms of a DCR trip, but also just exploring some of their more adventurous locations as well.

With that, thanks for reading!

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