Tizi n'Tichka: A Gentle Guide to Morocco's Highest Road

Leave Marrakech in the morning and within an hour the city's pink walls and palm gardens are gone. The road tilts upward, the air cools, and the High Atlas closes in around you: bare ridges the colour of apricot and ash, walnut trees in the creases of the valleys, villages the same shade as the earth they stand on.

This is the N9, and its summit is Tizi n'Tichka — the highest major mountain pass in North Africa, at roughly 2,200 metres. Almost everyone who goes to Aït Benhaddou, Ouarzazate or the desert crosses it, and most of them barely see it. They doze through the hairpins, stop once for a hurried coffee, and remember only that the road was long.

We think that is a waste of a great mountain road. Treated as a destination rather than an obstacle — with a comfortable car, a driver who is happy to stop, and a whole day instead of half of one — Tizi n'Tichka is one of the most rewarding things you can do in Morocco without walking more than a few dozen steps.

A little history

Long before there was asphalt, this notch in the mountains was a caravan route. Camel trains carrying salt, dates, sugar and slaves came north from the Draa and Dades valleys, crossed the High Atlas here, and came down into Marrakech. Whoever controlled the pass controlled the trade, and for roughly sixty years — from the late nineteenth century until Moroccan independence in 1956 — that meant the el Glaoui family, whose stronghold at Telouet sits just a short detour from the modern road.

The road itself is younger than you might expect. It was built along the old caravan trail by the French military in 1936, and it remains the main link between Marrakech and the southern oases as National Route 9. For decades it had a fearsome reputation: narrow, crumbling at the edges, shared with overloaded lorries. A large widening and rebuilding programme in recent years has changed that considerably, with broader lanes, more passing room and guard rails along much of the climb. It is still a mountain road with real drops, but it is no longer the ordeal older guidebooks describe.

One small, sad footnote tells you how wild this country once was: the last known wild Barbary lion in Morocco was shot near Tizi n'Tichka in 1942.

A small town in the Atlas Mountains near the Tichka pass.

What to see

There is no museum here and no ticket office. The sights are the landscape and the villages strung along it, and the art of the day is simply stopping often.

The summit

The top of the pass is marked by a sign, a cluster of cafés and souvenir stalls, and a view that runs away in both directions along the spine of the Atlas. It is flat, easy underfoot, and usually ten to fifteen degrees cooler than Marrakech. Stand on the southern side and you can see the land change character completely: greener and more wooded behind you, dry and reddish ahead, the first hint of the Sahara.

The northern hairpins and Taddert

The climb from the Marrakech side is the dramatic half — tight serpentines stacked above one another, with the road you drove ten minutes ago visible far below. Taddert is the last village of any size on this side, built into the mountainside above a stream, and almost every bus and shared taxi pauses here or just above it.

Adrar Tircht and the high ridges

Near the summit the limestone peak of Adrar Tircht (also called Bou Ouriol) rises sharply beside the road. You do not need to climb anything to enjoy it; the best views are from the roadside pull-offs, and a good driver will know which ones have room to park safely.

Ighrem n'Ougdal

About 20 kilometres down the southern side, this village is known for its igherm — a fortified communal granary built by the local Amazigh community, thought to date from the late seventeenth century. It is a rare and very atmospheric survival of a building type that once stored a whole village's grain and valuables.

Roadside cooperatives

Several small shops and cooperatives along the route sell argan oil, local honey, nuts and handwoven rugs. Quality varies enormously, so buy what you like the look and smell of, and feel free to decline the hard sell.

The peak of Adrar Tircht (Bou Ouriol) in the High Atlas at Tizi n'Tichka.

The drive, bend by bend

From Marrakech, the first 45 minutes or so are gentle: flat farmland, roadside stalls, the mountains growing on the horizon. Then the road begins to climb in earnest, and for the next hour and a half it is almost continuous curves up to the summit. The descent south towards Ouarzazate takes a little longer again but feels calmer — longer straights, wider views, and a steady change from mountain to desert.

Allow about three and a half to four and a half hours for the full Marrakech–Ouarzazate run of roughly 200 kilometres if you drive it without lingering. We would rather you didn't. Build in five or six hours with proper stops, or better still split the journey and sleep in the south.

One practical note: if you have a choice of direction, travelling south in the morning puts the sun behind you on the climb and gives the best light on the big southern views in the early afternoon.

Serpentines on the northern approach to the Tichka pass.

A day trip nearby: Telouet and its kasbah

If you add just one detour, make it Telouet. A signposted side road leaves the N9 a little south of the summit and runs about 20 kilometres on narrow but paved tarmac to the village. The round trip adds roughly an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how long you stay.

What waits there is the Dar Glaoui kasbah, the grandest of the fortresses belonging to the el Glaoui clan who ruled much of southern Morocco from the late 1800s until independence. From outside it looks like a vast mud ruin slumping back into the hillside. Inside, a few rooms survive almost intact: zellige tilework, carved plaster and painted cedar ceilings made by master craftsmen brought from Fes. The contrast between the crumbling walls and those jewel-box interiors is genuinely moving.

Be aware that it is a partial ruin. Floors are uneven, there are stairs without handrails, and parts are closed off. Visitors with unsteady balance can still enjoy the setting and the courtyard without going up to the decorated salons.

Further south, the UNESCO-listed ksar of Aït Benhaddou lies about 30 kilometres north-west of Ouarzazate and makes an excellent overnight stop at the end of the drive.

Honest advice for comfortable travel

• Hire a car with a driver. This is our firmest recommendation. The driving is not frightening any more, but it is constant concentration, and a local driver will stop where there is space, point out what you would have missed, and turn back if the weather closes in.
• Avoid shared grand taxis on this route. They are cramped, often full, and stop only where the driver chooses. The CTM and Supratours coaches are far more comfortable and include a rest halt, but they will not stop for photographs.
• Front seat, and go slowly. Winding roads unsettle many people. Sit in front if you can, keep a window slightly open, and take motion-sickness tablets before you start rather than after you feel unwell.
• The altitude is mild but real. At around 2,200 metres you may notice a little breathlessness on any short slope. Walk slowly at the summit, drink water, and don't rush.
• Pack a warm layer, even in July. It can be hot in Marrakech and genuinely cold and windy at the top, and the weather can change within a few kilometres.
• Facilities are basic. Toilets exist at the summit cafés, at Taddert and in a few roadside restaurants, but they are simple. Carry tissues, hand gel and any medication with you rather than in the boot.
• Very little walking is required. The viewpoints are at the roadside and essentially flat. Only Telouet kasbah and the lanes of hillside villages involve rough ground and steps.
• Don't try to reach the desert in one day. Marrakech to Merzouga over this pass is far too much. Sleep in Aït Benhaddou or Ouarzazate instead, and you will enjoy both ends of the journey.
• Travel in daylight, and ask about snow in winter. Between roughly November and March, fog, ice or snow can briefly close the summit; your driver or hotel can check before you set out.

High Atlas scenery photographed from the Tizi n'Tichka pass road during a bus stop.

What to eat

Mountain food here is simple, slow and warming — exactly right after an hour of hairpins. Roadside restaurants in Taddert and at the summit cook tagines over charcoal: chicken with preserved lemon and olives, lamb with prunes and almonds, or vegetable tagine thick with carrot, potato and courgette. Grilled lamb or kefta skewers with bread and a plate of tomato-and-onion salad are the other staple, and harira, the tomato and lentil soup, appears whenever the weather turns cold.

Breakfast on the road usually means bread with olive oil, honey, soft cheese and a Berber omelette cooked in a tagine dish, all washed down with sweet mint tea poured from a great height. The walnuts and almonds sold at stalls along the pass are often local, and the honey is worth a jar.

Two gentle warnings. Tagines are cooked to order and take 30 to 45 minutes, so order as soon as you arrive rather than when you are starving. And at the busiest roadside stops, choose a place that is full of Moroccan drivers — that is always the best sign.

Route N9 crossing the High Atlas near Taddert, on the Marrakech–Ouarzazate road.

Getting there

Our verdict

Tizi n'Tichka is not a lesser-known place in the sense that nobody goes there — thousands of people cross it every day. It is lesser known because almost nobody stops. That is precisely why it rewards travellers who have the time and the sense to do things slowly.

For anyone over 60, it is also unusually forgiving. There are no staircases to climb, no cobbled hills, no queues in the sun. The effort is simply sitting in a comfortable car for a few hours, and the reward is one of the great mountain crossings of Africa, with a kasbah, a seventeenth-century granary and a charcoal-cooked lunch along the way.

Go with a driver, go in spring or autumn, give it a whole day, and let the mountains do the work.

“Cross it slowly, and the High Atlas stops being a road between two cities and becomes the reason you came.”

Photo credits

• Tizi Tichka-matthew-h-01: Matthew Harrigan, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• DSCN1353v2: Lluket, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• Tizi n-Tiszka, szczyt Adrar Tircht bou Ouriol: IceBerries420, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• 2013.Tishka.Pass.N2: Ekem, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• High Atlas Mountains 2359585494: Michal Osmenda from Brussels, Belgium, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
• N9 Haute Atlas Taddert: Levente32, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons