The Road Through Morocco : Going off the beaten track by bus, taxi and market cart into Berber lands and the rich red dunes of the Sahara

Before I made it to the Sahara, I believed in the movies. Marlene Dietrich tossing her shoes off and disappearing forever into creamy folds of sand. The hapless couple of “The Sheltering Sky,” decimated by disease and isolation in the Algerian desert. The Sahara, I thought, should be unreachable or, if reached, the place from which one doesn’t return.

As I waded into the rich red dunes near Merzouga, I changed my mind. The staggeringly beautiful landscape, starkly desolate under a harsh African sun, was merely 1 1/2 day’s travel from Fez. After piecing together bus rides to Rissani, the end of the paved roads in southeastern Morocco, I had stepped aboard a rickety old van that carried me over the last 25 miles of dust and gravel to the end of my route, near Morocco’s border with Algeria. I was surprised it had been so easy.

I was looking for the romance of Morocco. On my Michelin map, I had planned my trip by tracing seemingly impossible roads to places with dreamlike names. I had only fuzzy ideas of what mode of transportation would take me there, but my imagination was titillated when solid lines gave way to dotted ones--unpaved, “impraticable in bad weather conditions,” according to the Michelin map. The oases they led to must be precious.

I had been living in Fez for two months, researching Moroccan and French colonial architecture on a Fulbright grant. When the heat let up in late October, I decided to track down some of those points on the map.

In the summer months the heat in the desert is oppressive (it can get into the 120s), but from October to May the weather is perfect for exploring. November brings the date and olive harvests. In late winter, pink flamingos congregate near Merzouga. Spring features a brief but eerily gorgeous bloom. I gave myself three weeks to find my way around and budgeted $20 per day, although I could have made do with even less time and money.

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Fez is separated by two mountain ranges from the dry expanse of the Sahara. The bus from Fez to Rissani leaves just before dawn from the main bus station near Bab Bou Jeloud, the main gate of the old medina. It is a good rule of thumb in Morocco to arrive at any bus station at 4 a.m., since schedules change frequently but are always arranged around the cooler hours of the day. From Fez, the bus to the desert labors across the Middle Atlas mountains for five hours. It is only about 100 miles from Fez to the cooler altitudes of Midelt, where the bus stops for half an hour. But every hill and incline taxes its old engine, and each small town merits a stop. After Midelt the scenery becomes dramatic, as the bus strains over the craggy High Atlas mountains.

There are two types of buses in Morocco. The national line, called the C.T.M. (for Compagnie des Transports Marocains), has comfortable seats, makes fewer stops along the way and shows videos (usually early Van Damme or Schwarzenegger, dubbed into French or Arabic and with the volume set at blaring). The C.T.M. requires reservations and is generally pleasant, except when the ventilation system is broken.

Otherwise, a range of private bus lines--the mode I use most often--serve the desert in varying comfort. These can be cheaper (I spent about $8 to get from Fez to Er Rachidia, the eastern gateway to the Sahara), but they run on a less fixed schedule than the C.T.M. At the lowest end of the range, the buses are old and rickety. They are kept cool by ratty curtains and open windows and often depart late, having waited for a few more passengers to show up. Until filled to capacity, they will stop to pick up extra riders at any point on the route. And while the C.T.M. cruises by the Moroccan Highway Patrol, the private lines must endure occasional searches, which end after identity papers have been checked.

After climbing the High Atlas for another 3 1/2 hours, the bus descended through the spectacular Ziz Gorge into Er Rachidia, a sprawling desert city with a university and a range of basic hotels. I spent the night there to rest my back and so that daylight would illuminate the next segment of the trip.

After Er Rachidia, the land flattens out and a string of oasis villages hug the Ziz River. These fortified villages, called ksour in Arabic, are made of straw-laced mud and clay pounded until it sets. They are masterpieces of design, except on the rare occasion when it rains and they crumble. Constructed to shield residents from the sweltering sun, the ksour feel magically cool inside even when outside is an oven. It is possible to get off the bus at any one of them and wander through the shade-darkened alleys. I particularly recommend the village of Aoufouss, both for its size and its welcoming residents.

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Like all of southeastern Morocco, Aoufouss is a Berber town. On Thursdays, Berbers from the smaller ksour in the area come to Aoufouss by foot and on donkey to trade at its weekly market, so the town is accustomed to outsiders.

Straying into the network of covered streets and passageways is a test of one’s sense of direction, but Aoufouss’ residents maintain a quiet, if surprised, reserve at the sight of a foreign wanderer. Since the walls of the houses are made of the same material as the soft earth, it is easy to become confused and lose one’s way into a living room. When I mistakenly walked into the home of an Aoufouss family, I was greeted warmly and served absinthe tea on the palm-shaded rooftop.

There are no hotels in Aoufouss or any of these villages, and unless you wish to accept an invitation to stay at a house you have wandered into, it is best to continue on to Erfoud or Rissani before dark. Simply go back to the paved road and hail any of the many taxis that serve the Er Rachidia-Rissani route.

Taxis are the most extraordinary method of transportation in Morocco, and after hundreds of miles of travel, they remain my favorite. Invariably large Mercedeses or station wagons, usually many years past respectable retirement, the grand taxis run between towns, gears slipping, window cranks and seat belts removed.

They are distinguished from private vehicles by medallions on their roofs and the number of passengers crammed inside their doors. You hail a cab the same way you do anywhere. If there is space, it will stop. If not, the driver will make an apologetic gesture and you will wait.

There is no schedule. The taxis leave when enough passengers have assembled. This number is always six. Passengers fold themselves together on the accordion model: one leaning back, the next leaning forward. The front seat, in my experience, is the less comfortable, particularly when the driver doesn’t have a cushion to cover the space between seats. Riding in the middle is a test of balance and brotherly love as one leans either into the other passenger’s lap or the knob of the gear shift.

On one leg of my desert journey, I sat in the front of a cab next to a particularly large man. As close as I pressed against him to my right, I couldn’t help but nudge the car out of gear to my left. Eventually, to the amusement of my fellow passengers, the frustrated driver kicked me out of the front seat, and I changed places with a skinnier and more experienced Moroccan from the back.

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At about the halfway point between Er Rachidia and Rissani, Erfoud has plenty of decent hotels. I stayed at La Gazelle across from the post office for about $7, but the three-star Hotel Tafilalt is there for those with more cash and less patience for shoddiness. Erfoud is a laid-back place to regroup but is otherwise uninteresting. On the main road, called Avenue Moulay Ismail in town, is the grand taxi stand, from which taxis run frequently to Rissani (about 80 cents one way).

In the dusty market town of Rissani, the Ziz River finally gives in to the elements and disappears underground. The paved road ends here and the bus route too. Rissani has two hotels (the Sijilmassa is significantly better, for about $17 per night, and has a reliable restaurant) and several cafes. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are market days, and the town fills with Berbers who come in on trucks, taxis and donkeys from the surrounding Sahara.

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Merzouga, serviced by collective taxis from either Erfoud or Rissani, is the place in Morocco that most fulfills Western fantasies of the desert. Our myth of the Sahara, as a place of windblown dunes, runs against the rocky reality of the desert, which is only 10% sand. Nonetheless, Merzouga sits at one side of Morocco’s largest erg, a dry ocean of undulating sand. A pleasant inn, the Ksar Sania, was opened by a French couple in the early ‘90s, and for $9, one can wake up to a vast expanse of red dunes.

After the long, bumpy ride to Merzouga, the softness of the sand was a tonic, and I took off my shoes and hiked into the granular ocean. In late October, the scorpions submerge themselves to warmer depths, and my only companions were large dung beetles, breaking the silence with the tiny patter of their scuttle.

I spent four days doing little but sitting at the top of sand mountains, looking across a vista without perspective, listening to the sound of wind shifting the dunes. Occasionally, I would go back to the Ksar Sania for a book, a meal of beef cooked with truffles or to share a Coke with the bored Moroccan soldiers at the nearby border.

At the inn I met a pair of French expatriates from Rabat who, armed with a four-by-four, had traveled on paths that do not even merit dotted lines on the Michelin. When I expressed admiration, they asked, “But how did you get here?” I listed the sequence of buses, collective taxis and market trucks, and their eyes opened wide. “You are braver than we.”

I wouldn’t have said braver, just more frugal. Moroccan car rentals are expensive, and my friends who have rented cars have had breakdowns in inconvenient locales. The flexibility of having your own wheels is certainly valuable in the desert, where being limited to bus schedules often means spending a day and a night in unexpected places, but, I decided, it is often those experiences that yield what is most memorable.

The French expatriates had come to hunt for fossils and offered me a ride to points inaccessible by public transportation. And so, strolling among rock inscriptions in Taouz--an oasis outpost a stone’s throw from the strip of no-man’s-land that separates Morocco from Algeria, an hour of eerie emptiness from Merzouga--I revised my idea of the desert. The Sahara is possible.

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GUIDEBOOK: Sahara Transport

Getting there: There are no nonstop or direct flights to Fez. American, British Air, United, Virgin Atlantic and Air New Zealand fly nonstop from Los Angeles to London or Frankfurt. Royal Air Moroc flies from London and Frankfurt to Fez, with a change of planes in Casablanca. Round-trip, advance purchase fares from Los Angeles to Casablanca begin at $1,088. Round-trip fares between Casablanca and Fez are $69.

Transportation in the desert: In Fez, the main bus station is just north of Bab Bou Jeloud, the main gate of the old medina. The C.T.M. station is in the Ville Nouvelle on Avenue Mohammed V, a taxi ride from the old city.

Where to stay: Outside major cities, hotel reservations are not necessary. Phone numbers are not available.

In Erfoud: Ho^tel La Gazelle is basic and cheap (about $7 per night) but reliable and centrally located.

In Merzouga: Ksar Sania (about $9 per night).

For more information: Moroccan National Tourist Office, 20 E. 46th St., Suite 1201, New York, NY 10017; tel. (212) 557-2520.

--B.E.