Desert Safari
I’m finally writing about the safari we did at the end of April when my sister-in-law came to visit us. There are a lot of different companies that arrange desert safaris here in Dubai, and after reading the reviews I decided to go with the Arabian Nights Tours —we also had an Entertainer coupon (buy one get one free). Originally it was 300 dirhams, but we were 4 people and with the coupons we paid 150 dirhams per person.
It works like this: The car comes and picks you up at around 15:30, and goes directly to the desert. You first do the “desert dune bashing”, where you basically go up and down the sand dunes at high speed with an expert driver in a Toyota Land Cruiser, and it gets quite jumpy :). Then you make a couple of stops in the desert to take photos. Finally you move to the campsite which is built in the bedouin style, where you can do camel riding, try on local clothing, get henna tattoos, enjoy a belly dancing show and eat barbecue.
This is the henna design I had —it came off in a week or so:
And here’s the camel riding part of the safari (I’m on the first camel from the left, with my husband!):
We enjoyed it a lot, but I’ve heard others who thought it was boring. I guess I like touristy stuff and I do believe that if you come to Dubai, this is a must. I’d recommend the company, Arabian Nights Tours, as well, and when we have guests over, we’ll probably arrange the same tour again!
I didn’t bring my camera to the safari since my sister-in-law already had one, so the following photos are taken by her.
