We all cheered as our friend David climbed manfully up a sand dune in the Moroccan Sahara, just six weeks after a knee replacement. Luckily we had hijacked a passing camel to help us carry our stash of booze to the top, where we toasted both his recovery and the beauty of the pomegranate-red desert sunset.

There were eight of us, a disparate bunch of middle-aged mates (youngest 54, eldest 60-plus) on a four-wheel-drive adventure tour of Morocco. With no children to disapprove of our cringe-making antics, we were determined to enjoy ourselves. If we got too silly, too loud, or too drunk, so be it. We wanted fun in the sun.

We started out with a couple of days in Marrakesh, where we hooked up with Mehdi, our guide for the next five days, a man with near-perfect English and sky-blue eyes. He steered us slowly through the souk, where we shed a few pounds along the way, and that night he took us to Jemaa el Fna, the famed Marrakesh square which comes alive after sunset with an unforgettable writhing human mass of snake charmers, acrobats, herbalists and fortune-tellers. It’s one of the most thrilling spots on earth, enriched with a frisson of black magic, yet lost on the wide-eyed gap yearers nervously clutching their Lonely Planet guides.

Marrakesh is so obviously made for the middle-aged. It’s a magic carpet ride to our lost youth. We are the generation of Rizlas, Hendrix, Dylan and Joni. The square remains thick with the scent of spliff and patchouli, plus a sour top note of goat, just like those dreadful Afghan coats we once wore.

Still dizzy with the smells and idiosyncratic cries of the muezzin, we set off early next day on our private 4x4 tour of the High Atlas with trusty drivers Kader and Rasheed. As we left the suburbs and started to climb, the colour seeped out of the landscape and turned the mountains to a harsh shade of baked mud.

From our first comfort stop 2,260m (7,415ft) up at the top of the Tizi n’Tichka pass, the highest road in Morocco, we looked out on an alien environment of Cubist terracotta Berber villages hewn out of the hillsides. Only the white satellite dishes, perched like doves on every rooftop, connected them with the present.

Soon we lurched off-road onto a bone-jarring detour to Telouet, home to the magnificent crumbling kasbah of the Glaoui clan. We hung on Mehdi’s every word as he explained how the family of ruthless warlords ruled the south of the country with French approval until independence in 1956.

It took 300 craftsmen three years, working 24 hours a day, to build the palace at Telouet, now sadly in decline, but still a showcase for ornate traditional decoration in cedar wood, stucco and mosaic.

The days were long and off-roading was tough on bad backs, arthritic shoulders and new knees, but we revelled in the heat and dust and cheered when we hit 100F (almost 38C). After wine-fuelled lunches we nodded off as the Mars-like rocky desert slipped by. Sometimes the landscape was boring, but it could suddenly change to deep canyons as impressive as Arizona.

As we were always laughing, people seemed to like us. Would the restaurant in the Dadès gorge have set up a private table for us next to the river, under the silver birches, if there had only been two of us? As with every trip, it’s the human encounters that linger. We bought figs from black-eyed urchins at the roadside, had an impromptu Berber cooking lesson one day over lunch, and bumped into a convention of gay bikers called the Chopper Boys.

After five days on the road we said an exhausted and emotional farewell to Mehdi as he delivered us back to Marrakesh. We had purposely booked a small four-room riad in the heart of the Medina so we could have a private chill-out party at the end of the trip.

For 48 hours riad Dar R’Mane was our refuge from the heat, din, pushy street sellers and dog mess that can make the labyrinthine alleys hard to stomach. We had a cooling courtyard and staff to keep us topped up with orange juice, mint tea, cold beers and chilled soda to go with our digestifs.

We had a charming top-floor terrace with pomegranate trees and a pergola weighed down with bougainvillea and jasmine. There were enough sofas and cushions for eight lounging adults and sunbeds for those desperate for some final rays.

That night, as we stepped out for the last time into the human maelstrom of the Medina, donkey carts brushed our thighs, spice sellers filled the dusk with their earthy smells and hooded figures with painted smiles and no fixed gender swept down dim alleys. It was impossible to imagine the magical mystery of Marrakesh ever changing.

Need to know

Jill Hartley travelled with Kuoni (01306 747008, www.kuoni.co.uk), which can tailor-make a ten-night trip, including a High Atlas safari, with stays in Marrakesh, Tinghir and Ouarzarzate on half board, and three nights’ B&B at Dar R’Mane, from £640pp. The cost includes return BA flights from Gatwick.

What’s new in Morocco
Caroline Hendrie

British Airways (0870 8509850, www.ba.com) starts twice weekly, nonstop flights to Fes on October 30, from £150 return.
Rooms at the Murano Oriental (sister to the Murano Urban in Paris) in Palmeraie, Marrakesh cost from £209 (00 212 24 32 70 00, www.muranoresort.com).
Cazenove & Loyd (020-7384 2332, www.cazloyd.com) do private house parties for groups of six to 100 in riads, tented camps or villas.
For example, Riad Noir d’Ivoire in Marrakesh is from £479pp for three nights based on 12 sharing, including flights and B&B.
La Sultana, an 11-room hotel in Oualidia, on the Atlantic coast, with spa, indoor and outdoor pools, costs from £840pp for four nights including flights with The Best of Morocco (0845 0264588, www.realmorocco.com).

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