OFF GRID // MOROCCO SPRING 2025
This Spring, Shackleton's Amelia Steele joined a Shackleton Challenges reconnaissance trip to Morocco covering over 200km through the Agafay desert and into the Atlas Mountains, discovering the joys of switching off and heading out.
There’s a moment, deep in the Agafay Desert, the horizon blurs, the high Atlas Mountains swallowed by sky, where the line between where you are and where you’re going ceases to matter. The sun drops low, staining the sky pink and gold, and for the first time in weeks, the noise of the modern world falls away. No signal. No distractions. Just the low crackle of a campfire, the crunch of tyres on sand, and the silence of something vast and ancient.
This was Morocco. Not the Morocco of bustling souks and sun-soaked terraces - but the spaces in between - the Morocco found only when you flick the switch and go off grid, those wild places where comfort falls away, and something braver takes its place. A land of shifting sands, arid riverbeds and red mountain crags stretching to snow-capped peaks. It was the perfect place to recce for a future Shackleton Challenge designed for those who seek the wild, the remote and the meaningful.
We left the edge of Marrakech in a convoy of Land Cruisers and Royal Enfield Himalayans, their engines growling with purpose as we carved a path across the parched earth of the Agafay. Camp came easily out there - a rooftop tent thrown open to the stars, a campfire lit against the creeping chill, and the simple joy of being nowhere in particular. The desert sky above, impossibly vast, stitched with constellations.
Morning brought the hum of engines as we rode out on the Himalayans. Threading through gorges, tracing the ghosts of old rivers, the sun hot on our backs, where the landscape clawed at the sky in burnt ochre and bone-white stone. The rhythm of the ride was primal - throttle, brake, breathe - our bodies absorbing the pulse of the terrain, our minds blissfully free. There was no path but the one we made, no plan but to keep going. And somewhere in the emptiness, we remembered what it feels like to move forward without looking back.
The land pulled us higher, into the Atlas Mountains, where the air thinned and the ground blushed red beneath our feet. We traded the bikes for boots and shouldered packs, climbing into the high country where rivers flow fed by the melt of recent snow. There, we hiked through gorges and scrambled up steep trails, burning both lungs and legs. At the edge of the Ourika Valley, we roped up, tracing sport routes up sun-warmed sandstone, before rappelling down into a stillness broken only by the wind and the occasional call of a bird wheeling overhead.
Out here, space, time, and silence become the ultimate luxuries. There’s no screen to check, no schedule to keep. Only the rise of the mountains, the shifting light, and the knowledge that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.
This is what Shackleton Challenges are built on - not the polished version of adventure, but the messy, honest, exhilarating pursuit of it. The kind that asks you to Live Courageously. To seek out the uncomfortable edges. To go further than you thought you could.
This year, we invite you to find your off grid. Whether it’s traversing the deserts of Oman, riding across the peaks in Nepal, or chasing the horizon in the Lofoten archipelago - there is a world out there waiting for you. To equip you for these journeys, we’ve expanded our warm weather range - lightweight, dependable layers designed to perform in the world’s most extreme locations.
In the end, it’s not the signal bars or the comforts we’ll remember - it’s the moments we dared to go beyond them.
