Imagine standing on the sand, listening to the impressive sounds of Arabic traditional music and watching the sun as goes down. Tasting the fresh vegetables and food with various kind of spices. This is what you get when you hop on the shuttle on the route from Dubai, straight to the desert.
There are many travel agencies that offer trips to the desert, weather you want to try desert rally, camel riding or just want to experience the piece of the world, where is hard to survive for people, animals and either for plants. When you think about taking this trip, you don’t have to book it in advance, I guess. It can be even more expensive doing it this way. For example, we booked our trip the evening before and paid around fifteen Euros. Another thing, your hotel may offer various trips, as well, but get ready to pay even more. Anything you do, it is always cheaper when you do it on your own, than somebody else. Find information, pick up the phone, make reservation and schedule the meeting. That’s it.
Making an appointment in Arabic country with Arabs may be little bit tough. We have already experienced it while our stay in Morocco. It is just way more complicated than you are used to from Europe or America. Mr. Mohammed had called us like 4 times to confirm our reservation 🙂 and when we scheduled our hotel pick up, he came 20 minutes earlier. Then he had to wait, since we weren’t ready yet. On trips like this you meet many people from whole world. Our group consist from seven people – German living in Dubai and his girlfriend that came to visit him. Then it was a guy from South Africa, from Cape Town and his, like ten years old, blonde daughter. And then us. Seventh guy was driver. The journey itself didn’t last long. We went like one hour through desert, with Dubai behind our backs. I remember it till now very fresh, when we had to stop the car on the road and wait, because a pointless camel was crossing the road. Moment like from the movie.
Finally here. Our trip was divided to two parts. The first one was the adrenaline bomb for us. I’m talking about desert rally. I have never tried rally before, so I didn’t know, what to expect. In case of anything, I had very light lunch. And you know what? Desert rely is awesome experience for people in any age. Hope so. We board big Jeep with big wheels and got a driver dressed up in traditional, white Arabic desert. This made our experience even more authentic. Dunes were high and we were riding up and down on them, with the speed of wind.
Sometimes, when we jumped off from one dune, I felt like we were flying. My stomach wasn’t very happy, but we made it. The other members of our group enjoyed this too, but sometimes, I though, the German woman sitting next to me was going to throw up. Fortunately, she didn’t. When we all were green enough, the driver stopped Jeep and let us to calm down a little. We made some nice shots of Sun setting down over the desert and then we got back to the car. To be shaked again. I very do recommend this experience to everyone. Let’s not be so serious.
The second part of this trip was more cultural, fortunately. We stopped by an area in the desert, where were a lot of tourist. This is called camp and here are many attractions for tourist. We could try camel riding, get some souvenirs, taste fresh fruit, have coffee or tea. There were many tables on the sand and our group ha reserved one of them. I was expecting the colder weather, since deserts are usually very windy, and I was right and felt very please that I took my sweater with me. Lukas didn’t and felt cold. I liked toilets here, since to my surprise, in that small clay house in the middle of dunes, there was flushing toilet and running water with soap. In the package we paid for this trip was diner included and I have never eaten that amount of food like here. Tables with rice, sausages, vegetables and everything you can imagine was here only for us. Traditional Arabic spicy food as well, of course sprite with cola included. What a paradise for that low price. And the absolute top of this evening was a Arabic belly dance show while smoking sisha. I wish, I could stay.
This was very unforgettable experience for both of us, and I believe that those Germans and guys from Cape Town enjoyed it too. Afternoon spent driving Jeep on sand dunes near Dubai and then gorgeous dinner, sisha and belly dance in desert camp is something, you will not see every day. Definitely recommend to anyone, for a very fair price much fun and full stomach. This is what us, Europeans like and Arabic people know it.
Milan Bardun 2014 – because it’s better to travel, than to arrive
