Travel in Western Sahara: a coastal strip west of a mined berm

How visitors enter the Moroccan-administered west

What the entry rules say

Entry runs through Morocco. The British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), in advice updated on 29 June 2026 and still current on 16 October 2026, says British citizens can visit the Moroccan-administered parts of Western Sahara and Morocco without a visa for up to 90 days. It says the authorities in Western Sahara set and enforce the entry rules, refers questions about them to the Moroccan Consulate General in the United Kingdom and points travellers to Morocco's customs rules. Moroccan border control should stamp the passport on first arrival, the advice adds, because leaving without the stamp can be difficult.

The same advice calls travel restricted. Organised groups are generally permitted, and independent travellers could be turned back at the border. Three other publications describe who gets refused. A Congressional Research Service report updated on 8 October 2014 recorded that Morocco occasionally expels or denies entry to foreign visitors it deems overly sympathetic to the Polisario Front. Freedom House, in its report for 2024, describes international media as carefully vetted and scrutinised during visits to Moroccan-controlled territory, and records that foreign NGO representatives observing human rights there have been expelled. A BBC report counted some 146 journalists and activists arrested or expelled for reporting on the conflict since April 2016.

Scheduled flights use two airports. Britannica records regular air service between Laayoune and Dakhla, the former Villa Cisneros, and from Laayoune to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, to Nouakchott in Mauritania and to Casablanca. In December 2023 the vice-president of the Dakhla regional tourism council gave Médias24, a Moroccan business paper, a fuller list for Dakhla: two flights a day from Casablanca, three a week from Agadir, two a week each from Laayoune and Marrakech, and two direct flights a week to and from Paris and Las Palmas. The BBC's correspondent noted that flights always land in Dakhla at night and that passengers push their boards into the hotels' four-wheel-drive vehicles. Some of them, the report added, might notice the military convoys and the checkpoints along the route.

Which laws apply west of the berm

The FCDO describes Western Sahara as predominantly Muslim and sets out the laws a visitor there meets. Attempting to convert a Muslim to another faith is punishable by fines or up to three years in prison, and criticising Islam in public by heavy fines and up to two years. Sex between unmarried people is illegal, although the rule against unmarried couples sharing a hotel room does not generally apply to visiting foreign nationals. Same-sex sexual activity is illegal. Licensed hotels, restaurants and bars serve alcohol in tourist areas, and drinking anywhere else can lead to arrest.

Freedom House adds that Morocco's Press Code of 2016 prohibits challenges to "territorial integrity" in the territory Morocco controls, and that journalists accused of challenging it could face prison sentences of six months to two years. The FCDO asks visitors to stay away from political gatherings and demonstrations, and gives 150 as the emergency number for ambulance, fire and police.

Why the coast road crosses the buffer at Guerguerat

Overland, the way in is the road that connects Morocco to Mauritania through Western Sahara. Britannica notes that motorable tracks abound in the territory's flat terrain while paved roads are few, and a Ramsar Convention summary mentions the Tiznit-Dakhla Expressway beside one of the coastal wetlands north of Laayoune. Every year the association Nord Sud Action runs a car rally from Tangier to Dakhla, the Raid Tanja Lagouira. Its 15th edition, from 3 to 12 November 2023, had 72 participants from Spain, France, Belgium, Panama, Paraguay, the United States and Sweden, by the organiser's account to Médias24.

South of Dakhla the road reaches Guerguerat. There the main line of Morocco's sand berm starts on the coast near the Mauritanian town of Nouadhibou and runs east, and the road passes through the buffer strip that the United Nations monitors between Moroccan troops and Polisario fighters. The International Crisis Group, in a briefing of 11 March 2021, says Morocco paved the stretch in 2016 and deployed gendarmes inside the buffer zone, which the briefing counts as a violation of the ceasefire, and that incidents recurred there every year afterwards. On 4 January 2018 a small group of Polisario military personnel entered the strip to set up a monitoring station 500 metres from an observation post of MINURSO, the United Nations mission.

The road closed on 21 October 2020, when pro-Polisario civilians set up camp on it and blocked traffic. A small number of Polisario fighters joined them, which Crisis Group also counts as a violation. Morocco, which regards the region as vital to trade with sub-Saharan Africa, accused the Polisario Front of "carrying out acts of banditry" at Guerguerat. Moroccan troops entered the buffer strip on 13 November to reopen the road. Both sides fired heavy weapons and there were no casualties, because the civilians and the fighters pulled back almost at once. On 14 November the Polisario Front declared the ceasefire over. Morocco then announced that its troops would stay at Guerguerat indefinitely, a presence Crisis Group describes as designed to protect the passage of goods across the border with Mauritania, and on 24 January 2021 pro-Polisario forces shelled the area.

What brings kitesurfers to the Dakhla lagoon

Dakhla's draw is the wind. The BBC described one that blows for more than 300 days a year across a lagoon cut off from the Atlantic by dunes, a high season from April to November and "kitesurfing traffic jams" on the water. Richard Branson's Virgin group sponsored the Kitesurfing World Cup series of 2015, and Dakhla hosted its opening event. The Ramsar Convention gives the bay a length of 37 kilometres.

Omar El Alaoui El Balrhiti, the vice-president of the regional tourism council, listed the places visitors are taken in his interview with Médias24 in December 2023. The White Dune, 30 kilometres from the town, is a crescent of white sand inside the lagoon that becomes an island at high tide, and a haunt of flamingos and fiddler crabs. Dragon Island, also called Truk, is visited for its shells and its migrating birds. A hot spring 35 kilometres out in the desert, reached along a sand track, throws up a strong jet of water. At the far southern tip of the peninsula the fishing village of Lassarga lies between the lagoon and the Atlantic and has its own windsurfing and kitesurfing spot. Porto Rico and Puertito are the beaches he named.

The article also lists quad-bike and boat outings, treks over the sand, four-wheel-drive safaris and surf-casting. Two reserves were on his own list, one for monk seals at Guerguerat and one for Dorcas gazelles, along with the fossils of the Arguerguer mountains and the archaeological remains at Bir Anzarane. Dakhla also has a conference centre, which he presented as the base for business tourism.

How Dakhla's tourist nights are counted

The figures for the resort are published by Moroccan bodies, and they come in two series. The regional tourism council gave Médias24 its totals for 2022 and for the first nine months of 2023; the Observatoire du Tourisme published the figures for 2026, carried in a MAP dispatch of 30 September 2026, for classified tourist accommodation in the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab region.

The total for the first seven months of 2026 was 26% above the same months of 2025, at an occupancy of 64% across the period and 66% in July. Classified accommodation in Morocco as a whole recorded 25.85 million nights to the end of July 2026, 8% more than a year earlier, at 56% occupancy.

What the trade means is argued over in the reporting itself. Ghali, a Sahrawi who owns the Dakla Evasion hotel, told the BBC that he was happy with the Moroccan administration and called the place "safe and open". Herve Feron, a French member of parliament, called it "an illusion, a strategy". Abdellahi Ibikam, a former kitesurfing instructor in Dakhla now living in Paris, said the Moroccan authorities never gave him authorisation to open his own business and that "There are only two Sahrawi kitesurfing teachers left". A Sahrawi instructor who asked not to be named said he gave private lessons because hotels would not hire him. The same report quoted Amnesty International's concern that neither Morocco nor the Polisario Front lets outside observers investigate allegations of abuse, in the territory and in the camps respectively.

Which wetlands line the Atlantic coast

Four wetlands inside Western Sahara are on the Ramsar Convention's list, and the Convention's annotated summary files all four under Morocco. Protected Planet, the database of the world's protected areas, shows no protected area at all on its page for Western Sahara, read in October 2026.

The Dakhla bay holds beds of dwarf eelgrass that shelter more than 120 species of mollusc and 41 of fish, and it marks the northern limit of the Atlantic humpback dolphin's range; nearly 60,000 wintering waterbirds were recorded there between 1995 and 2000. Fishing and tourism drive the economy around it, by the summary's account, and their growth threatens it with pollution, while a harbour under construction 12 km away may upset its water and sediment.

At Sebkhat Imlili more than 160 permanent pools of salty or hypersaline water hold a locally endemic cichlid fish related to the Guinean tilapia. South of Boujdour a sea cliff 70 metres high overlooks a low furrow behind the beach and its mobile dunes, and an endemic gecko lives on the dry ground. The Saguia el-Hamra's lower valley at Laayoune drew more than 20,000 wintering waterbirds in 2008 and nearly 15,000 in 2014, and the summary lists leisure and tourism among its uses.

What Laayoune and Smara hold for visitors

Laayoune is the principal city and the old colonial capital, in Britannica's description. Since December 2019 it has also had foreign consulates. The Comoros opened one there on 18 December 2019 in support of Morocco's claim, Gabon opened a consulate general there in January 2020, The Gambia and Guinea opened consulates in Dakhla the same month, and the United States set up a temporary consulate post in Dakhla in January 2021. Canada's advice, updated on 26 May 2026, describes its own ability to give consular help in the territory as extremely limited.

Smara, which Britannica also spells Semara, was built at an inland oasis between 1898 and 1902 under Sheikh Ma al-Aynayn, whose partisans held up Spain's advance inland, and Spain occupied it and the rest of the interior only in 1934. Britannica lists its kasbah and mosque as major Muslim monuments of Western Sahara. The FCDO's latest update, of 29 June 2026, advises against all travel to the land within 40 kilometres north and west of the berm, the city of Es Semara included, and Canada advises against all travel within 30 kilometres west of the berm's militarised zone. Inland summer highs can reach 50 °C in places such as Smara, by Wikipedia's climate summary.

The FCDO describes medical facilities in Laayoune, Dakhla and Smara as adequate, each town with hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, and sends anyone needing scans or more sophisticated treatment to a major centre in Morocco or the Canary Islands. In desert areas, it says, medical facilities are almost non-existent. Canada's advice on remote areas asks travellers to keep to officially designated tourist areas, to hire only official guides recommended by hotels, travel agencies or local tourist authorities, and to drive off-road only in a four-wheel-drive vehicle carrying drinking water.

Why the land beyond the berm stays closed

The berm is a wall of sand and stone about 3 metres high, with bunkers, fences and landmines, and it runs for about 2,700 kilometres. Moroccan forces built it in six stages from 1980 and finished it on 16 April 1987. The FCDO describes 30-kilometre militarised zones on either side containing landmines, with many fatalities in them, and says cross-border rocket fire has occurred. Canada records fatalities from unexploded ordnance in the zone every year. East of the berm the FCDO notes a sparse population, other unexploded weapons and no diplomatic presence from any country. Its advice for remote areas asks drivers to keep to main roads or clearly identifiable tracks and to touch no metal or plastic object.

Mines lie away from the berm as well. A survey by Landmine Action UK near Bir Lahlou and Tifariti, in October 2005 and in February and March 2006, found the densest concentrations in front of the berms, laid in zigzags up to a metre apart and in places in three rows, and Wikipedia records towns in the Polisario-held east, Bir Lehlou and Tifariti among them, ringed by mines laid by Moroccan forces. Further berms stand inside the Moroccan-held zone, around Dakhla and in a line from Boujdour that takes in Smara.

The Polisario Front calls the eastern land its liberated territories, or the Free Zone, and holds its congresses and the sessions of the Sahrawi National Council there, at Tifariti and Bir Lehlou especially. Access is restricted even for Sahrawis, by Wikipedia's account, although nomads from the camps in Algeria and from Mauritania travel and live there. MINURSO, which describes itself as the only impartial observer deployed on both sides of the berm, runs a mine action programme.

Two yearly events bring outsiders to the berm and the land beyond it. ARTifariti, the International Art and Human Rights Meeting in Western Sahara, brings artists from around the world to Tifariti and the camps. The Thousand Column, a demonstration against the barrier held in the desert every year since 2008, drew more than 2,000 people into a human chain in 2008; in 2009 a teenage Sahrawi refugee lost half of his right leg to a landmine when young demonstrators crossed into a minefield.

How visitors reach the Sahrawi Republic's side

The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic runs its government and administration from Rabouni, one of the refugee camps near Tindouf in Algeria. The camps are divided into five wilayat named after towns in Western Sahara, El Aaiun, Awserd, Smara, Dakhla and Bojador, with a smaller camp called February 27 around a boarding school for women. The Laayoune, Smara and Awserd camps, February 27 and Rabouni all lie within an hour's drive of the Algerian city of Tindouf; the Dakhla camp is 170 kilometres to the south-east.

The camps have visitors of their own. FiSahara, an annual international film festival held in one of them, brings actors, directors and others from the film industry for a week of screenings and concerts. Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Pedro Almodóvar are among the Spanish film figures who have supported and attended it, and in 2013 it screened over 15 films, some of them made by refugees. Freedom House writes that reporters visiting Tindouf "are said to enjoy greater freedom of movement and inquiry", and calls such claims difficult to substantiate.

Crossing between the camps and the Moroccan-held towns is, in Wikipedia's account, virtually impossible: the berm blocks movement through Western Sahara, and Morocco's border with Algeria is closed, as Canada's advice also states. The United Nations organised the exception. In 2004 UNHCR ran an exchange of five-day family visits for a limited number of people, from the camps to the Moroccan-held territory and back, and the United Nations set up telephone and mail services between them. The Congressional Research Service recorded in October 2014 that the humanitarian family visit flights had resumed in April 2014 after a pause. MINURSO's own account of its work, last updated on 23 January 2026, says it has supported this confidence-building programme, which reunites separated Sahrawi families with relatives on the other side of the dividing line.

When the wind and the heat suit a visit

Rain is scarce in every season. Annual rainfall averages below 50 millimetres everywhere in Western Sahara, by Wikipedia's climate summary, although flash floods come in spring. On the Atlantic coast cool offshore currents keep temperatures steady through the year and bring fog and heavy dew. For Dakhla the tourism council's vice-president gave air temperatures from 15 °C in January to 29 °C in August and a sea of 15 to 22 °C, and named May to September as the best period, July and August above all for kitesurfers who want strong wind. The BBC put the kitesurfing high season at April to November.

Inland the year runs hotter. Average highs reach 43 to 45 °C in July and August, and winter days still average 25 to 30 °C, though in the north the thermometer can fall below 0 °C on rare nights in December and January. A hot, dusty sirocco can blow in winter and spring, and harmattan haze, which often cuts visibility, is present about 60% of the time. The Ramsar summaries' bird counts at the Dakhla bay and in the Saguia el-Hamra's lower valley are of wintering waterbirds.

Ramadan changes the day. During the month the FCDO asks visitors not to eat, drink, smoke or chew gum in public in daytime, a car included, and to dress to local codes, and warns that hotels serving food in fasting hours may screen foreign guests off from Muslim ones and that driving may be erratic around dusk. The record gives Western Sahara one time zone, Africa/El_Aaiun at UTC+00:00, the Moroccan dirham as its currency and +212 as its calling code.