After leaving the market, we drove through the town of Boumalne du Dades.

We were heading through the idyllic Dades valley, with its picturesque farmland and adobe dwellings.

Soon the landscape turned more rugged.

Just in case you didn’t get the scale of these rock formations, here is an enlarged detail of the dwelling (or kasbah or other structure) in the lower third, toward the center, of the above picture.

In the foreground is part of the formation that our guide Hicham called “the monkey’s paws.” Here is the whole thing:

After this, we followed the road out of the Dades gorge…

…and back into farmland to continue our journey.