Dubai! A mind-blowing oasis in the middle of the desert! A city filled with innumerable places to visit, such as the Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall, Palm Jumeirah, Dubai Frame, Kite Beach etc.
One such highly popular activity is the Desert Safari. Depending in your service provider, you’ll be taken to a particular area of the desert (we were in the Lehbab Desert) in a 4X4 SUV for the dune bashing and a few other activities followed by dinner. A must experience activity, we would say! Read on to know about our Desert Safari experience.
Our Accommodation: Rove Trade Centre (Read our TripAdvisor Review Here)
Desert Safari Service Provider: Raptor Team Tourism (Read our TripAdvisor Review Here)
Location from Hotel: Approx. 1 Hour drive
Road Condition: Fantastic
Mode of Transport: Raptor Team Tourism’s Land Cruiser
Pick Up from Hotel
For your Desert Safari, you’ll be picked up from your hotel (or an agreed upon location) and dropped back as well. The time for the pick up will be confirmed well in advance. Our coordinator/driver, Shafeeq, picked us up from our hotel at around 02:00 PM in a Toyota Land Cruiser. We had another group with us from Brazil in the vehicle. Bringing the total to 7 of us in the entire vehicle making the ride extremely comfortable.
Once you cross the city area of
Dubai, you get to see the real desert, which is pretty much what you see for
miles and miles. For us, who have rarely been to the desert this was a
wonderful experience, making this drive extremely scenic (we know it’s all
sand, but does look amazing).
First Stop: Quad Biking
And the Desert Safari experience starts! This is an optional and chargeable activity. If you’re not on a tight budget, we definitely recommend this activity. Riding on a quad bike, (which is an ATV), in the desert climbing and descending small dunes all by yourself is a fantastic experience. It really doesn’t take much knowledge to operate these quad bikes. They are on 4 wheels and do not have any gears. Relatively easy. The fun is in navigating the terrain, which is the desert in this case. We took 1 quad bike each and drove around quite a bit.
Once done with the quad bike ride, Shaffeq, gave each of us a nice cool bottle of water. Very refreshing. And we were all set to experience a roller coaster ride with a twist – the dune bashing.
Second Activity: Dune Bashing
Most of us love roller coaster
rides! The adrenaline rush that a roller coaster ride brings is, to put simply,
just fantastic. Now picture experiencing the same feeling sitting in a Toyota
Land Cruiser while bashing sand dunes across the desert. Our young yet very
experienced driver, Shafeeq, was navigating the vehicle across the dunes
expertly. With the 4-wheel drive engaged, sliding and skidding over huge sand
dunes makes this ride quite exhilarating and entertaining.
After hitting the dunes for about 20 mins, we stopped at an extremely scenic location (right in the middle of the desert) to enjoy the sunset. It got extremely windy when we were there. So windy that Sukesh’s wayfarers were of no use!!
Post the photo-stop, we resumed the dune bashing for about 10 more minutes, this time in slightly fading light (not dark, just fading) and headed towards the camel farm to view how the camels are raised. We also had the opportunity to feed the camel. Cute animals.
Final Stop: The Desert Camp:
Now, there are many camps spread across the desert that cater to different service providers. This was the camp that we were taken to. Does look great, doesn’t it!
The first activity that we went for was the camel ride. A pretty short 5-minute ride but is worth a shot.
What followed was dinner and three performances, Tanoura Dance, Belly Dance and Fire Dance, all three of which were spectacular and impressive. We did manage to get a good picture of the fire dance.
Here, you also get to dress up in the local attire and click pics. Go on. Try it out. You’ve come all the way here. Do you think we can pull off the sheikh look?
Women can also get a mehendi (a temporary tattoo using a paste derived from a certain plant) done. Standard design is free of charge and custom designs are chargeable. You will also have a number of people trying to sell you souvenirs. Pick them up if you wish to but also remember that you might be able to get a similar item anywhere else in Dubai.
Dinner
The camp organizes a good enough dinner that you can enjoy along with unlimited soft drinks. You are free to purchase alcoholic drinks, if you wish to. This lasts for about an hour and a half and for most of the duration the buffet dinner is open. (except for the first 15 to 20 mins, when they’re setting up the food).
Pro Tip: Avoid the shawarma. That was the only thing that we didn’t like.
The camp is equipped with washroom facilities as well, which, surprisingly were extremely well maintained. So, nothing to worry about nature’s calls!
This pretty much marks the end of the desert safari and all that is left now is to head back to your hotel/home and get some sleep. If time permits and if your coordinator is enthusiastic like ours was, you might get an additional tour of some attraction in the city. Shafeeq took up quite close the Sheikh’s place and the view in night, when it was lit up, was pretty fascinating! After driving around for a bit, we were dropped of at our hotel, Rove Trade Centre, and we were so ready to just crash on the bed.
Important Tip: Hit the shower before to sleep irrespective of how tired or lazy you might feel. You, for sure, do not want to be sleeping on a sandy bed!