Kelaat M'Gouna Rose Harvest Tour - the Valley of Roses in Bloom

Kelaat M'Gouna, on the road between Ouarzazate and the Dades Gorge, is the heart of Morocco's Valley of Roses. Damask roses, brought here centuries ago, grow in fragrant hedges between the fields and kasbahs, and every spring the whole region mobilises to pick them. This tour takes you into that harvest - one of the most beautiful and fragrant crop experiences anywhere in Morocco.

The rose harvest runs through April and May, when the flowers must be picked at dawn while the fragrance is strongest and before the heat opens them fully. You join or watch the pickers moving along the rose hedges, baskets filling with pink petals, and learn how the roses are grown between the valley's other crops on small family plots. The town celebrates the crop each May with a famous rose festival, or moussem, that fills the streets with flowers.

You then see how the petals are transformed - distilled into rosewater and the precious rose oil, dried for potpourri and tea, and worked into the soaps, creams and culinary rosewater the valley is known for. The host explains how rosewater flavours Moroccan pastries, tagines and tea, and how the cooperatives support local families. Set against the pink-earth kasbahs and the High Atlas, it is a sensory, seasonal window into a crop that scents an entire valley.