Erg Chebbi or Erg Chigaga?

Two great dune fields, both genuinely the Sahara. Erg Chebbi sits outside Merzouga, 9 hours' drive from Marrakech via the Tizi n'Tichka pass, the rose-stained kasbahs of Skoura, and the Todgha Gorge. The dunes rise to 150 metres, the orange is the orange of every postcard, and you can drive to the edge of the sand in a normal car. Roughly 80 camps operate, from 30-euro Berber tents to 400-euro luxury domes with plunge pools.

Erg Chigaga is further, harder, emptier. Reached from M'Hamid (a 10-hour drive plus a final 60 km of off-piste track), the dunes are higher (over 300 m), the camps fewer (perhaps 15), and the experience closer to the Sahara as travellers found it in the 1960s. You need a 4x4 with a driver who knows the route — the track is not marked and GPS without offline maps will fail.

Practical: book through your riad, not Jemaa el-Fnaa touts. A three-day Marrakech–Erg Chebbi round trip in a shared minivan runs 1,800 to 3,000 MAD per person; Erg Chigaga starts at 4,500 MAD. The night sky is the same in both.