Tickets and Tours for Morocco Experiences

Balloons fly over Marrakesh most mornings of the year, and it all happens before the city is awake. Pick-up is between four and six, depending on the season. Take-off is at first light, when the air is still. The flight lasts about an hour.

The fields are north and west of town, out past the Palmeraie. From the basket you get palm groves, the flat red plain, the Jbilet hills north and the Atlas wall south. On a winter morning the peaks are white. A balloon goes where the wind goes.

The morning runs to a pattern, and most of it is not flying.

• Pick-up. A minibus works round the riads in the dark.
• Inflation. Burners, fans and noise while the envelope fills. This is the part people photograph.
• The flight. About an hour, standing, a hundred to a thousand metres up.
• Landing. Wherever the wind puts you, with a chase vehicle behind.
• Breakfast. Under a tent afterwards: bread, honey, argan paste and mint tea. Back at the riad by ten or eleven.

Baskets vary more than the marketing suggests. A shared one carries between a dozen and two dozen people, in compartments. A private basket takes two to four and costs several times as much per head. Some operators add a quad bike hour afterwards.

Practical

• Wind. This is what cancels flights. The call comes the night before or at the field, and a cancelled flight is rebooked or refunded.
• Cold. Near freezing on the ground before dawn in winter, and the burners warm only your head.
• Time budget. An hour in the air costs about five hours of the morning, door to door.
• Standing. You are on your feet the whole flight, and the basket wall is chest high.
• Landing. It can be bumpy. They teach a brace position before take-off.
• Who is turned away. Late pregnancy, recent surgery and very small children are usually refused.
• Booking. Listings appear under both Marrakech and Marrakesh, and it is the same few operators either way.