Touring Taroudant

January 1^st-4^th, 2026 

It was another beautiful sunny morning again today.  What a great way to start off 2026!

Hopefully 2026 won't be baaaah-d!

After a somewhat leisurely morning, I got on the road to head to city of Taroudant.  It wasn’t a city that was originally on my radar, but it looked like a good spot to break up my drive towards Ouarzazate, the Hollywood of Morocco, that I did want to visit.

Leaving Tafraoute.

What a good start to 2026!

Looking back from where I came.

The drive took me back up to the mountain pass with the big antennas where I had seen the two German paraglider pilots flying a few days earlier.

The Painted Rocks are on the other side of the mountain to the right of Octi.

My turn.

Starting out on the highlands.

Getting closer to those mountains in the previous photo.

Ten kilometres later, I took a branch in the road to the northeast, so I was now travelling some new terrain.  The road curved back and forth and up and down around large hills and the occasional small mountain that were mainly covered in rocks.  There were a few bushes here and there, but it definitely had a desert-like feel.  I couldn’t help but imagine how hot it must get here in the summer.

Only YOU can prevent forest fires!

This village looked deserted, but a lot of them do.

This forest fire sign seemed even more ridiculous than the one in the previous video.

I passed by two dogs in the middle of the road, facing away from each other.  It was a poor amorous couple who got stuck together.  I snapped this pic as I passed by...poor guys.  I couldn't help but look up online about it later and there's nothing you can really do for them.  Within half an hour or so, they should be naturally unstuck.

A few hours later, I reached the end of the Anti-Atlas mountain range and descended to the plains that extended to the west to Agadir, and to the east towards the city of Taroudant.

Reaching the plains, looking over at the Atlas Mountains.

Scanning the plains.

It was about 4 pm when I reached the outskirts of Taroudant.  Originally, I though that I would do a quick one-hour tour of the city’s kasbah as the place boasts a few kilometres of crenulated walls, but I decided to head straight to the campsite that I had selected as I was a bit tired.  The campground was east of the city, so I circumvented most of Taroudant from the south to the east.  I figured that I’d check it out the following day.

 

The campground was right beside the relatively busy highway, but it did have tall concrete walls that helped abate the traffic noise.  The camp spots were neatly arranged in rows with small shrubs and trees to delineate the sites.  There were three different service buildings with toilets, showers and dish washing areas.  The place was quite well set up, and the main manager was friendly and helpful.

 

That evening, I decided to try and finish off my annual bookkeeping, as I thought I was only about an hour away from finishing.  Strangely, my main spreadsheet on my laptop showed that it hadn’t been updated since December 17^th!  What?!?  I had about 10 spreadsheets, but this was a critical one that took the most time to complete.  I had the thing on “autosave” and it was supposed to be continually uploading to the cloud.  I checked my Microsoft OneDrive online and unfortunately it also showed a copy from December 17^th.  I then looked at the status of the file on my laptop, and it stated that it had last uploaded 3 hours ago.  Huh?!?  So where’s that copy?  I started to panic a bit…had I just lost a bunch of work?

 

After checking this and that, I finally resigned myself to the fact that I had a lot of work to redo.  Thankfully some metadata was on some of the other spreadsheets, so I was not starting from scratch, but it still took me almost two days of work to replace what I lost, and to finish my books.  What a way to start 2026!  Thankfully the weather wasn’t that great with lots of rain for a few days as there was Storm Francis affecting the area and the authorities were recommending to travel only if necessary.

 

The following day, before the rain arrived, I decided to take that dry window to pop into Taroudant to check it out.  When I passed by the outskirts of the city yesterday, I did see the long, ancient walls of the fortified city and it looked fantastic with the Atlas Mountains in the background.  Unfortunately today, with it being a mostly cloudy day, the mountains weren’t as clear and stunning as they were the day before.

Driving through the gate of the walled city...I felt like I was breaching the entrance.

I followed my app’s direction to a dried mud parking lot on the outside wall of the kasbah, which was inside the main city walls.  I talked with the parking attendant and as is often the case in Morocco, the parking fee was at my discretion, essentially a tip to him that he told I could pay when I was leaving.

I rounded the corner and there was an entrance into the kasbah which then turned 90 degrees and there was another gate, a typical setup for entering a fortification.  

Interestingly inside of the kasbah, it was just like a regular Moroccan neighborhood, with homes packed densely together.  I wandered into the maze, making the odd left turn and the odd right one, but heading generally in the same direction, hoping I’d find another way out of the kasbah.  I eventually gave up, not knowing if there was in fact another way out.  So I retraced my steps.

I walked to the outside perimeter of the old walled city, snapped a few photos, wandered over to a long shallow pool lined with palm trees which was an attraction listed on Google Maps and snapped a few more.  At this point I’d ambled around for about an hour and didn’t really know what else there was to see…turns out, not much.

That's the entrance I came through in Octi in the earlier video.

On the outside of the fortification.

That's the highest peak on the visible range in the background...but again, not as nice as it was yesterday.

I was tempted to find out how much to rent one of those babies!

Across the street from the big wall was this gate...I wondered what was behind it...

...the answer:  garbage.

There was some interesting grafitti along that wall though...

The fancy pool for a photo with a minaret in the distance.

I hopped back in Octi and headed back to the campground where I stayed for another full day in rainy and windy weather before it was time to move on to Ouarzazate.