Hi everyone! In Dubai many companies offer such a service as safari. It includes different set and scope of services, but at the same time the list is about the same. Our programme consisted of:
- transfer from and to the hotel
- riding on SUVs in the desert (Toyota Land Cruiser) with a number of stops (snowboarding on the sand, photo on the dunes, photo with the sunset, etc.).)
- visiting a Bedouin camp
- camel riding
- eastern dancing
- fire show
- photographing in national dress
- dinner.
- Not everything turned out as I imagined. About it a little further.
The cost of the trip – 100$ for 2 adults (me and a young man). The trip pays for itself 100%.
At 1pm our driver-guide picked us up at the hotel and called us from the reception.
The driver turned out to be an Arab, but he spoke perfect English. On the way he showed us the sights, and already on the spot, in the desert, he helped us to take photos and told us what we would do in this or that point.
Off-road vehicles
After boarding the car we went to another hotel nearby, and we were joined by a company of 4 more guys.
Afterwards we went “to the base” where we met up with 3 more cars.
The cars in our convoy were white 200 Cruisers, three of which were first restyle (2012-15) and one was second restyle (2015-20), the most problematic, perhaps because of the driver.
The interior is red leather. The interior is spacious, clean, cars well maintained. Suspension is soft, comfortable for passengers. Air conditioning works perfectly. Autos are equipped with a safety cage.
Three full rows of seats (no boot). Driver is a real pro, drives carefully on the motorway and does amazing things in the desert!
The paintwork on the front of the car is peeling off in chunks due to hitting sand blocks.
The car has a roomy fridge under the shared armrest between the driver and front passenger. There are about 10 0.5 litre bottles of water, which our guide gave out throughout the journey to those who wanted them (free of charge).
Bedouin camp, acquaintance with camels
We reached almost to the border with Oman. The drive took about an hour.
The guide showed us the camel pens and said that one costs about $2-3,000.
Honestly, if I were them, I would eliminate this item or get the animals cleaned up. Camels have badly streaming eyes.
Knees knocked into meat, some have brown crusts. Lots of open deep wounds with maggots and flies swarming in them – sorry for the details.
Of the less adequate – a pen with newborn camel cubs and their mums. But the one-month-old already had a small abscess on his leg.
A small market
Between the camels and the market is about a kilometre long stretch of desert, a demo so to speak. As the driver said, it’s 10% of what comes next. I wouldn’t say that. It was at this point that the uncontrollable free fall after the slides reached its peak. What followed was also steep, but in a different way.
In the market you could walk around the rows with small shops (2 rows in total), stand in the shade, drink fresh coke water straight from the coconut, visit the bathroom with a huge queue (and finally wash your hands after camels) and ride quad bikes – hot bikes – for an extra fee.
The time to depart at this point is 40 minutes. So we decided to take a ticket for a 30-minute quadricycle ride.
“Pleasure” was not cheap – a ticket for 1 person cost 150 dirhams. On the plus side, it was possible to ride one bike with two people and it did not affect the cost. But it wasn’t worth it.
Desert photo
We were dropped off and everyone dispersed to the barchans. The guide offered to take photos together and everyone took some groovy slow motion slo-mo videos of the sand. I don’t like photos of myself, so I got into desert photography:
The sand is unreal beautiful! Not at all like on the beach. Reddish, small and gentle.
Somewhere between the 3rd and 4th stop two people in the 4th car got rolled.
Actually, a safari is driving sideways off a sandy ridge, when the car is covered with sand and you can’t see anything. Riding at an incline as if the car is travelling on a vertical surface. Hitting the sand sharply, bouncing, etc.
In terms of emotions such a ride is unreal! Fun, interesting, in some places scary, surprising, beautiful.
From the physiological point of view – problematic for people with weak vestibular apparatus. And if you eat well beforehand or go hungry – the result will not wait long and you will get seasick very quickly.
The cars stopped, we waited until people let go, and then 3 out of 4, including us, left. After a while the 4th car caught up with us. Either people came to their senses or they were dropped off and taken back by another car.
About half an hour later the same car had a problem with a wheel. It took about 5-7 minutes to fix it. The other 3 cars were waiting as the drivers helped their mate.
Snowboarding on the sand
There’s not much to describe in detail. Everyone gets out and starts riding down the slide. 4 snowboards, which before each ride are cleaned from sand and waxed for better glide. You can ride 1-3 times, if you want. You can stand (just straight, you can’t catch the edge, you fall), sit on the board with your back to the slide and face the guide who launches you (“eye to eye”), or face the slide.
I rode once, yelled the most, it seemed that I will fly off the board and fall face down in the sand, but everything went fine)))
Sunset photo
My phone is not good for anything in the evening, so I didn’t understand why I had to stand around for 15 minutes.
By the way, if you think the ride won’t last long, it won’t. The ride through the desert, including stops, is about 3 hours. At some point emotions go away because of monotony and you think “when will it end? enough drifting, let’s just get there already”.
At 18.30 I got hungry (I hadn’t eaten anything since about 11.30) and started to feel very nauseous. I had some almonds with me, but they didn’t make me feel any worse or better. Fortunately, there wasn’t much longer to be patient.
While people were enjoying the sunset, the cars were being manipulated again:
Camp
Actually, the camp was halfway back to Dubai, completely out of the way of the desert. It was already deeply dark at that point, about 7pm in time.
What does it consist of? A space surrounded by shops and a fence.
At the entrance are two-humped camels. You can sit on two of them and they’ll take you for a minute round and round. They’ve got the same nonsense with their knees, it’s a shame. But these are like elite, tall. The Bedouins had small ones.
Inside there is a stage. A girl-dancer performs on it and shows a fire show.
Tables with a lot of visitors stand around.
At the entrance you can drink Arabic coffee (for a fee) and try on Arabic clothes (free of charge). At the same time, you have to take a photo right there. There’s zero lighting, in front of the crowd. I didn’t even consider this option, I thought they would give me clothes in the desert for beautiful daytime photos. Anyway, it turned out the same way as with Sheikh Zayed’s mosque)))
You can pay and sit in the VIP-zone. It is really far from the stage, but with separate tables (here common for people from 1 car, ie 6 people).
Free of charge offer girls to make a henna tattoo on the hand (for 10 seconds), and men – to smoke hookah (“shisha”). The tattoo left an unpleasant tinge on my arm like from iodine, although I held it for a long time, so – well that)
We were also given plaids, as it got a bit chilly.
Almost immediately, water in individual sealed glasses, some sort of shawarma (pita with chicken, I didn’t eat), and a local dessert – sweet balls – were brought to the table. I pounced on them and ate as many as two)))
We were informed that we arrived early, our show would start in about 10-15 minutes and only after that we could go to the buffet, where the local cuisine was presented.
The show didn’t last long. The girl danced quite pretty but monotonously to 3 tracks:
The fire show consisted of 2 short performances. I’m not really into that sort of thing, but beautiful, well done:
Afterwards we went for food. There was an even longer queue of 4 rows to 2 long tables. We were each given a plastic plate and sent along the table. I took 2 kinds of rice, salad with cabbage, hummus with tortillas and some boiled beetroot. You could take this stuff on your own, but the meat was handed out personally. We didn’t know what they put on the plate from the pot, and a second before the meat appeared on the plate we managed to shout “Wedgetherian” Actually we eat fish, but they didn’t offer it there)
From drinks – tea, coffee, local soda (like Sprite and Coke).
When we had dinner, we went home and already at 20 we were in the hotel. Although they originally said 21 – but I’m glad it was over sooner. Long journeys are tiring.
I recommend going on safari only to those who have everything normal with vestibular apparatus. It is better to eat before the trip 1,5 hours in advance, so that you will not be hungry and the food will have time to digest. You can bring something for a snack.
In general, off-road safari is an opportunity to see the fabulous desert, as in cartoons about Aladdin, and experience vivid emotions from riding on the dunes!
