Draa Valley Drive by Jim Keeble

It’s probably my favourite drive in the world. You begin in scorched Ouarzazate in southern Morocco, more accessible than it sounds and full of tour buses, and end in the first sands of the Sahara. In between are burned mountains, red-clay villages that seem to have grown from the earth, and the valley of the river Draa with its string of thick palm oases where crocodiles once lurked.

I’m in a Ford Fiesta, top of the range for Moroccan car rental. There’s no air conditioning and with the windows down it’s like travelling in a very fast hair-dryer. By the small town of Agdz I’ve lost most of my body liquid. I stop for a mint tea. The waiter wears a vest under his shirt and jacket.

"Not hot?" I ask.

"Non Monsieur. Hot is in summer. Then it is fifty degrees." That’s 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

The first oasis is a relief from brown rock. Ahead is a blaze of green palms, a glint of blue river. Across the river rises the ksour of Tamnougalt, a red-clay fortress mighty as a French Chateau or at least a giant sandcastle. For the next hour I drive through bigger oases, past baked red villages that seemed ruined and abandoned until on closer inspection I spot a freshly painted doorway, or satellite dish. Dark faces peak out, revealing Africa not Arabia.

Zagora is as far as most tourists go. Once a forgotten Foreign Legion outpost it’s now a construction boomtown, thanks to governmental decisions to make it the regional administrative centre. Fifty miles from the Sahara you can used cash point machines.

12 miles further south I park and climb the great dune at Tinfou which seems to have been dropped in the flat plain by mistake, a graceful curve of sand in the middle of nowhere, before continuing south along the single lane P31. An hour from Zagora is the end of the road - the dusty settlement of M’hamid where the Hotel Sahara offers tea and shade and the majestic services of M’barak Naamani - six foot three, dark flowing hair, white flowing robes. For a small fee he will show you around town.

It hasn’t rained in five years in M’hamid. Sand seems to be encroaching at every turn despite government-erected barriers. M’barak laughs.

"What do these Arabs know? Sand is our companion, our friend, our mentor." We stop and stare at the dunes slipping away towards Mali.

"When I stand here, I feel like going on, further," says M’barak.

I look at the Ford Fiesta, think for a moment, thank him, and head back towards civilization.