By Jay Benjamin · Stayed April 2026 · Published August 2026
Disclosure: This night was part of a seven-night Morocco itinerary booked and paid for through a luxury travel agency. No hosted stay, no press rate, no commercial relationship with the camp. The stay was bundled, so I never saw a standalone nightly rate — more on what that means below.
The Verdict, Upfront
Caravan by Our Habitas is a perfectly decent tented camp with one genuinely memorable novelty in the camel ride. The problem isn’t the camp. It’s the Agafay.
The landscape underwhelmed me, the whole operation felt more like a production line than the intimate escape the pictures promise, and my kids didn’t see the point. If I planned this trip again I’d cut the stop and get to the mountains a day sooner.
Book it if: riding a camel appeals to you as a thing to have done, and you like turning a transfer day into an experience.
Skip it if: you’re picturing Sahara dunes, solitude, or something your children will talk about afterward.
| When | April 2026, 1 night |
| Who | Two adults, two children (14 and 11) |
| Rooms | Two freestanding tents that happened to sit next to each other — no family tent available, so one adult and one child in each |
| Booked | Inside a bundled agency itinerary. No per-night rate disclosed. |
| Where it sat | Between four nights in Marrakech and two at Kasbah Tamadot in the High Atlas |
| Included activities | Camel ride, buggy ride, sunset henna, dinner |
| Location | Agafay Desert, about an hour from Marrakech |
A Note on What This Cost
I can’t tell you, and that’s a recurring problem with agency-booked travel that’s worth naming again. This night was quoted inside a single bundled figure covering hotels, guides, excursions, and ground transport, with no per-property breakdown. I slept here and I still don’t know what it cost.
If you’re booking through an agency, ask for a line-item breakdown before you sign. I didn’t, and the consequence is that a review I’d otherwise be able to price for you ends at “it was fine.” You cannot evaluate what you cannot price. I go into what that agency did and didn’t earn in a separate piece.
It’s a Desert. It’s Not the Desert You’re Picturing.
Let me be precise, because the loose version of this complaint is wrong. The Agafay is a desert by any reasonable definition — arid, sparse, very little rainfall. That’s not in dispute.
The problem is the picture the word puts in your head, and the picture the marketing leans on. There are no dunes. There is no sand sea. It’s a rocky, hilly, scrubby landscape, and the drama you’re imagining when someone says “a night in the desert outside Marrakech” is not what’s waiting for you.
We were there in early April, after some rain, and the hills were dotted with pale green grasses and a few flowers. Genuinely pretty in its way. Also nothing like the mental image that sold the night. The one properly beautiful thing in view is the Atlas range in the distance — which is to say the best part of the scenery is the place you’re driving to next.
If Sahara dunes are what you want, the Sahara is roughly a nine-hour drive from Marrakech, and the Agafay exists as a convenient substitute for it rather than a version of it. Go in knowing which one you booked.
The Intimacy Is Gone
The Agafay was a relatively undiscovered spot that people began touring a couple of decades ago. Then it went up on social media, camps multiplied across it, and the scarcity that made it special evaporated.
Two moments told me everything. On our camel ride I could see an entire second caravan of camels moving across the middle distance. On the buggy ride, another group was doing the identical thing a few hundred yards away.
You are not alone in the wild. You are one booking inside a well-run industry that has grown up to serve exactly this, and the marketing photography is very carefully framed to keep the other customers out of the shot.
That’s worth saying plainly because it’s the general shape of a certain kind of luxury experience: something becomes known for being rare, the rarity attracts supply, and the thing you’re paying a premium for is the memory of what it used to be.
The Camel Ride, and the Man Who Took the Photograph
The camel ride was the highlight, purely as novelty. You sit on a camel roped to the one in front, a guide walks you out and walks you back. It’s touristy in the most literal sense and it’s also something you can’t do at home, which counts for something.
Our guide took my phone, without being asked, walked to a specific spot he clearly knew, crouched, and shot the four of us against the light so the camels threw long shadows across the ground. It is the best photograph from our week in Morocco. He has taken it thousands of times. He knew the angle, the hour, and the framing the way a person knows their own kitchen.
That’s the whole place in one gesture. It is a production line, and the production line is genuinely good at its job. What it isn’t is a discovery.
The Buggy Ride
Genuinely fun, and completely portable. You could do it in Nevada, in Baja, in a field in Ohio. It didn’t need Morocco and it certainly didn’t need the Agafay. Which is the recurring problem here: strip out the camel, and almost nothing about this night required this place.
The Camp Itself
Fine, and I mean that as description rather than damnation.
There’s an open bar and an outdoor fire pit, both pleasant. The tents are modest freestanding rooms; the bathrooms do the job without impressing. There was no family tent available, so we took two separate tents that happened to be sited next to each other and split one adult with one child in each — the same arrangement we’d end up in two nights later at Kasbah Tamadot, for entirely different reasons.
The camp appeared to be run almost entirely by staff in their early twenties. I’m sure supervision existed somewhere; I never saw it. It didn’t cause a problem. It was just noticeable.
Dinner, Henna, and the Cold
Dinner was fine and slow — a couple of hours, outdoors, in April, and it got genuinely cold after dark. Bring more layers than the word “desert” suggests.
The best touch was a henna artist who came around at sunset. Our daughter had her hands painted and thought it was terrific. The camel rides launched from the same spot, which made the evening efficient.
The stars were good. We left early the next morning and weren’t there long enough to properly use them, which is its own comment on a one-night desert stop.
The Surprise That Never Came
Worth being precise about who promised what here, because it matters to how it was resolved.
Our travel agency — not the camp — had told us to expect entertainment at dinner. A fire-swallower, or possibly a juggler; the description was never precise. Nobody appeared. The camp, as far as I know, was never party to the promise.
Which is why the agency was the one that made it right. They comped a dinner two nights later at Kasbah Tamadot, without being chased about it. That’s the correct response to a promise not kept, and it’s worth recording alongside the complaint — particularly since I’ve been fairly hard on that agency elsewhere.
The transferable lesson: when an itinerary describes an experience in vague terms, ask who is actually delivering it. “There’ll be entertainment” from an agency is a different commitment than a line item on a camp’s own schedule.
What I’d Do Differently
Cut the stop. The honest answer. Go from Marrakech to the Atlas Mountains and add the night to Kasbah Tamadot, which is the one place in Morocco where I felt we left early.
If you keep it, do it for the camel and nothing else. Set expectations accordingly with anyone under fifteen.
Pack for cold. April nights out there are not warm and dinner is outdoors and long.
Ask for the itemized price. If it’s inside a bundle, you can’t judge whether it earned its place — which, conveniently for everyone except you, is also true of the agency’s recommendation to include it.
What’s Changed Since My Stay
Nothing I’m aware of as of publication. This reflects one night in early April 2026. The Agafay is developing quickly and the number of camps out there is the whole basis of my criticism, so it’s reasonable to assume it’s busier now rather than quieter.
The rest of this trip: Villa des Orangers in Marrakech, Kasbah Tamadot in the High Atlas, and whether the travel agency was worth what it cost.
FAQ
Is the Agafay Desert worth visiting?
For one night, as a novelty, maybe. It’s a rocky, hilly, arid landscape about an hour from Marrakech — a real desert, but not a sand-dune one, and after spring rain it was green enough to surprise us. It’s also crowded with camps now, so solitude isn’t on offer.
Is the Agafay Desert like the Sahara?
No. No dunes, no sand sea, no vast emptiness. The Sahara is a long drive from Marrakech and the Agafay exists as a convenient substitute. If dunes are what you’re picturing, you’ll be disappointed.
Is Caravan by Our Habitas good for families?
Mixed. The camel ride, the buggy ride, and the sunset henna all landed well. But there was no family tent — we took two separate tents sited next to each other — and overall our children didn’t enjoy the stop or understand why we’d made it.
How much does Caravan by Our Habitas cost?
I can’t tell you. Our night was bundled inside an agency itinerary with no per-property breakdown, which is common and which I’d push back on if I were booking again. Check the camp directly for current rates.
Should I add a desert night to a Morocco itinerary?
If it’s the Agafay, I’d think hard about it. It works as a way to break a transfer day into something, but the landscape isn’t remarkable and the experience is heavily trafficked. I’d give the night to the Atlas Mountains instead.
