The Gorge Walk

The Todra Gorge road passes through the most dramatic section of the canyon for about a kilometre. You can walk this stretch at any hour, but early morning or late afternoon offers the best light and the fewest tour buses. The paved road is shared with the occasional 4x4 and motorbike, but the gorge is narrow enough that you are always close to the walls.

Beyond the famous constriction the road continues north into a broader canyon, opening into Berber villages and terraced agriculture. The walk upstream to the hamlet of Aït Baha takes about ninety minutes one way and gives a sense of how the gorge gradually softens into inhabited landscape. You can arrange a donkey or mule for the return if you'd rather not walk back.

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At its narrowest the gorge squeezes to barely ten metres wide, and the walls — nearly 300 metres of sheer red and orange limestone — blot out all but a corridor of sky. When the morning sun hits the eastern face it turns the stone a startling amber while the opposite wall stays in deep shadow, a contrast that makes even a quick phone photo look composed.