Do NOT take this tour if you are prone to motion sickness. The person who booked it for us did not mention this. The desert is beautiful but I was sick the entire time.
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Do NOT take this tour if you are prone to motion sickness. The person who booked it for us did not mention this. The desert is beautiful but I was sick the entire time.
Along with the other great reviews of this experience, make sure that you get a good driver. We were on the tour with a few other cars, and 2 of them got stuck in the sand! Not ours...we had a good driver--we were the second car.
This activity is not for those with weak stomachs! I did feel a bit nauseous, but a bit of fresh air was all I needed to recover. Dinner was great! I thought that there would be a troupe of belly dancers, but there was only one. It was entertaining and she made the participants join in.
I went on the desert safari in July and suprisingly the temperature in the desert was not unbearable as I feared it might have been. I was picked up from my hotel at around 4:30pm and we picked up a few more people along the way arriving at the desert at around 6pm. Before we entered the desert we stopped off at some local shops where the driver partially deflated the tyres.
We were in the desert for about 45 mins driving up and down the dunes and stopped twice, once to take photos of the sunset which was magnificent and to go sandboarding. Basically, you sit in the middle of a sandboard and are pushed down a hill which you then have to walk up, which was a bit of a struggle. The view when you are in the desert is spectacular.
We were then taken to the camp site where I got to dress up in the burka and enjoy a barbeque and a performance from a belly dancer.
My wife and I got picked up in a 4x4 and of we went to get the rest of passengers for our jeep. From then on things got wild... sorry WILD!
You will be driven through the desert in manner i doubt you have ever experienced, unless you've been before! The drivers are skilled, confident, and well rehearsed, though you will still hold on for dear life as they take vehicle at angles and directions you never thought were possible!!
Personally my stomach was begging to be held still (the wife on the other hand had no such trouble) so on a serious note PLEASE do not do this if you have a weak heart, bad back etc etc. There are a couple of initial stops where you are allowed to walk and take in the most amazing atmosphere of sun, sand and well nothingness in the desert!
The final stop is a large camp site style area where the food is just amazing with shisha (hubbly bubbly) and belly dancing. Really enjoyed this evening and is probably the best memory from our honeymoon in Dubai!
There are several tour companies that offer this tour. I booked mine through Sunflower Tours. They picked us up at 4:30 in Toyota Land Cruisers and took us to the red sand desert of Al Habib. We spent about an hour charging through the sand dunes in a roller coaster like ride without the tracks. Near sundown, they drove us to their desert camp for cmel rides, trying on native costume, henna tattoos, belly dnacing and a barbeque dinner. The food was plentiful and very good. Taboule, hummus, samosas, rice, beans, and barbeque lamb and chicken. This is a great way to see the desert and I highly recommend it.
