What it's like to sleep in a Sahara desert camp

A desert camp is a cluster of large canvas or Amazigh-style tents set in a horseshoe or crescent, usually pitched out of sight of any road or village, with the dunes rising directly behind. At the best camps each tent is a proper room: an iron bed frame with a real mattress, cotton sheets, reading lights, a mirrored vanity, and an ensuite bathroom with a flushing toilet and a hot shower fed by an on-site boiler.

Mid-range camps have solid wooden beds but share bathroom blocks between four to six tents. Budget camps use thinner mattresses on the ground and composting facilities. The price difference between tiers is significant, and so is the comfort difference; we quote the camp with the rest of your trip.

The classic approach is by camel at sunset. Your guide leads the camel from the ground; you sit in a wooden saddle with a blanket and ride for 30–50 minutes into the dunes as the sky turns amber and crimson. It is slow, slightly uncomfortable and very quiet. At the crest of a dune you dismount, and the silence of the erg opens around you.

The 4WD option is faster and more comfortable — some guests prefer it, especially with young children or if they have back problems. Departure at dawn by 4WD is also the most practical choice when you need to reach your next destination early. Our Sahara tours include both options.

The Saharan temperature swing is remarkable. At Merzouga in October, you might wear shorts at 2 pm and a down jacket by 8 pm. Between November and February, night temperatures at the camp regularly fall to 3–8 °C — cold enough to make a proper sleeping bag worthwhile even inside a luxury tent. Luxury camps provide duvets and extra blankets; a few have electric under-carpet heating.

• Warm layers: fleece, down jacket, hat and gloves for November–February.
• Headtorch — even lit camps have dark paths between tents.
• Sunscreen and sunglasses for the next morning in the dunes.
• Sandals for inside the tent; your shoes will fill with sand.
• Cash for tips — the camp manager usually distributes collectively.

At a luxury camp, dinner is served in a large communal tent or around an open fire — usually a four-course spread: harira (tomato and lentil soup), a starter pastilla or salad, a slow-cooked tagine or mechoui (whole roasted lamb), then almond pastries with the inevitable mint tea poured from a height. The food is genuinely good. Vegetarian and dietary requirements are accommodated easily; advise in advance.

After dinner, the camp's maalem (Gnaoua musician) typically plays for an hour around the fire. The combination of fire, music, cold air and open sky is not something you reproduce at home.

A 5:30 am wake-up is not a punishment — it is the point. The dawn light over Erg Chebbi shifts from deep purple to rose-gold in around twenty minutes. Climbing the nearest dune before sunrise, with a thermos of coffee your guide has somehow produced, is the image most guests carry home alongside the medina of Fes as their defining memory of the trip.

Sandboarding — using a wooden board to slide down the face of a dune — is available at most camps and is excellent. The climb back up is not. Read more about Erg Chebbi and the surrounding Merzouga region.

The desert camp market is unregulated and brochure photographs are unreliable. A tent sold as "luxury" can mean anything from a genuine ensuite setup to a single mattress behind a canvas partition. The safest approach is to book through an operator who physically inspects the camps they use — or to ask directly: is the bathroom ensuite or shared? Is there a real mattress on a bed frame? Is there hot water? A good operator will answer all three without hesitation.