Winding from southern deserts into snowcapped mountains towards northern beaches, the Route of Caravans offers adventurous travellers a stunning glimpse of the nation few tourists see.

"No route, no route!" said a smiling man wearing a long white robe and holding a stout shepherd's staff, his donkey in tow. He pointed over his shoulder, down the U-shaped canyon I had planned to follow to the nearest road, which was still several kilometres away. He then motioned towards the ground, indicating that the rough terrain my travel companion and I were pushing our bicycles over continued long into the canyon.

"That's okay," I said to him in French, shrugging in the direction we'd come from. "There's no route back that way, either." It wasn't precisely true. While the canyon trail we'd been traversing in Morocco's soaring High Atlas mountains wasn't exactly manicured, it was nevertheless part of a brand-new bikepacking route.

We had just set out on the 837km Route of Caravans: Morocco Traverse (North), the second leg of a recently completed two-tier cycling trail traversing the length of Morocco from the town of Tiznit on the country's south-western coast to Tangier in the north. Since a digital map of the route's northern leg debuted on the adventure-cycling website Bikepacking in autumn 2024, it has lured bikepackers (off-road cyclists who carry overnight gear) to wind, slalom and climb their way from the town of Imilchil in the High Atlas Mountains past rolling hills and alpine passes to the Mediterranean port city, where they can catch a ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Spain.

Tracing its arc from southern desert to northern beaches, the trail's two legs make use of ancient caravan roads trod by camels' hooves and shepherd paths used by the country's Indigenous Amazigh (long referred to as "Berber" by outsiders) communities who have called Morocco home for some 20,000 years. The route is the result of a long-held dream of a handful of adventurous international cyclists keen to forge a path through some of Morocco's least-visited regions.

Set Out

Set Out is a BBC Travel series that celebrates slow, self-propelled travel and invites readers to get outside and reconnect with the world in a safe and sustainable way.

To me, it felt like slipping through the country's backdoor and, occasionally, a bit like time travel. Following narrow paths through pastures where shepherds graze flocks on rain-fed grass, I got a firsthand glimpse of the seasonally nomadic lifestyle that still thrives in the mountains. In remote canyons, I met Amazigh women who piled their donkeys high with edible herbs and wildflowers foraged in meadows far from their mud-brick homes.

The Route of Caravans is one of many long-distance bikepacking routes sprouting up around the world in places like the Peruvian Andes, North America's Continental Divide and the Scottish Highlands where intrepid two-wheeled travellers can immerse themselves in stunning natural settings and remote communities. The challenges these routes present – such as terrain so rugged you may occasionally "hike-a-bike" instead of pedalling it – are all part of the appeal.

The new route also had a personal draw for me. Having travelled to Morocco decades earlier and following the classic tourist's itinerary between cities like Fez,........

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