Morocco

The Marrakech medina was founded in 1070 AD and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985. It is nearly a thousand years old and has never been modernised — the same dyers, tanners, coppersmiths, and spice merchants who operated here in the 12th century still do, in the same locations, using the same techniques. The 9,000-alley network is genuinely disorienting without a guide, and genuinely extraordinary with one.

The Djemaa el-Fna square at dusk is one of the great travel spectacles — snake charmers, acrobats, henna artists, storytellers performing in Darija to packed circles of locals, and the greatest open-air street food theatre on Earth as hundreds of food stalls materialise simultaneously at sunset. The Majorelle Garden — Yves Saint Laurent's blue masterpiece in the new city — is the medina's quiet counterpoint, worth the taxi ride.

The hammam is Morocco's oldest social institution — a communal bathhouse that has been the centre of neighbourhood life for over a thousand years. A traditional hammam session begins in the steam room, where the heat opens your pores and your muscles begin to let go of something you didn't know they were holding. Then comes the kessa scrub — a rough mitt worked across every surface of your skin until the dead cells roll off in grey ribbons. Then black soap (beldi), made from olives and pressed into something between a paste and a cream. Then ghassoul clay mask, applied and left. Then argan oil massage.

The result is skin that feels entirely renewed. The experience takes 1.5–2 hours and costs between $20 and $60 depending on whether you go to a local neighbourhood hammam or a riad spa version. Both are excellent. The local version is more authentic and considerably cheaper.

A Marrakech riad rooftop at sunset is one of the finest dining settings in the world. The riads — traditional Moroccan houses built inward around a central courtyard — are invisible from the street, which makes emerging onto a rooftop terrace above the medina feel like a reveal: the whole city spreading out in every direction, the Koutoubia minaret cutting the skyline, the Atlas Mountains faintly visible to the south, the call to prayer beginning from seventeen directions simultaneously as the light turns amber.

The food — slow-cooked lamb tagine with preserved lemon and olives, pastilla (pigeon pie with cinnamon and almonds), harira soup, Moroccan salads, fresh msemen flatbread — is the finest expression of one of the world's great cuisines. Lanterns everywhere. The noise of the medina rising from below. A genuinely exceptional evening.

The Erg Chebbi dunes at Merzouga are among the most extraordinary landscapes on Earth — 150-metre ochre dunes rising from flat desert, shifting shape in the wind, completely silent. You arrive in the late afternoon, mount a camel, and ride for an hour into the dunes as the light turns the sand from gold to deep orange to red. At the private camp, there is Berber music and tea over a fire, a slow dinner of tagine, and then — after everyone else has gone to sleep — a sky so dense with stars that the Milky Way casts a faint shadow.

Wake before dawn, climb the highest dune, and watch the sunrise reverse the colours again: from grey to pink to gold to the blinding white of the full Saharan morning. The whole experience — from camel ride to sunrise — lasts about 16 hours and is one of the finest 16 hours available to a traveller anywhere on Earth.

Essaouira sits at the point where the Canary Current sweeps in from the Atlantic and meets the Moroccan coast — producing a reliable, powerful wind called the Alizé that blows 300 days a year and makes this one of the finest kitesurfing destinations on Earth. The beach is 5km of flat sand with consistent side-shore wind, shallow water for beginners, and enough power for experienced riders to get serious air. International kite schools operate year-round with equipment for all levels.

The town itself — a UNESCO-listed medina of blue-shuttered whitewashed houses, ramparts over the Atlantic, and the constant sound of Gnawa music from the squares — is one of Morocco's most immediately loveable places. Relaxed where Marrakech is intense, cool where the interior is hot, and completely its own thing. Three days here, alternating between the kite beach and the medina, is the perfect final act of any Morocco itinerary.