Starlight Is the Ceiling at Morocco’s Dar Azawad Desert Camp

There is a point, driving into Morocco’s south, when the map empties and the world becomes sand and sky. Past the Drâa Valley toward M’Hamid El Ghizlane, asphalt gives way to desert tracks, and dunes shoulder in from either side. This is where Dar Azawad Desert Camp makes its home.

Enclaved near the Erg Chegaga dunes, Dar Azawad is a desert camp where luxury is less about excess and more about detail. Tents are spacious and considered, each with a private bathroom and hot shower, their interiors softened by lantern light and inventive touches like tank-style sinks.

The adjoining hotel complex deepens this design philosophy. The Saharien Suites open out onto private balconies, their king-sized beds framed in tadelakt plaster and zellige tile, with sabra fabrics draping across windows and bejmat terracotta tiles cooling the floor under sculpted Tataouine-style ceilings. 

The Suites of the Dunes carry the same artisanal lingo but stretch wider for families, while the Sultan’s Rooms and Saharien Rooms sit shaded under tamarisk and acacia trees, miniature casbahs built with traditional materials. The Nomade Rooms, meanwhile, echo the form of Berber tents. Yet, whatever the scale of the suite, the common denominator is craft and a celebration of Moroccan design traditions.

Facilities extend this balance between wilderness and comfort. Beyond the dune-side tents and the hotel’s casbahs, guests can cool off in an outdoor swimming pool fringed with loungers, or retreat to a spa offering hammam rituals, massages, and hydrotherapy treatments. 

But the desert itself is the real itinerary. Sunrise camel rides paint the dunes in copper, 4×4 excursions cut deeper into Erg Chegaga, and guided walks uncover fossils underfoot while caravan stories are retold in memory’s cadence. Though, most guests simply choose to remain in camp, watching light reshape the landscape hour by hour.

The staff, many from nomadic families, fold scarves against the sun, point out constellations, and make the Sahara legible. At night, guests step outside to a sky too crowded with stars. The Milky Way arcs overhead, constellations double and triple themselves, and the scale of the desert reframes everything.

For all its comforts, Dar Azawad is about that encounter; not softening the Sahara’s vastness, but inviting you to meet it with grace.