The desert

You can’t really beat a nice beach. The sandy beaches in Skegness in the summer are pretty dammed good. However, it turns out that a whole desert of sand is even better! Cause let’s be honest all that water next to it just makes it all gooey and soggy and awkward to roll around in. That problem is solved with a desert.

So off we go… Turns out that Dubai is stuck right in the middle of the Arabian desert. Crew tour it is then via a 4×4 and the adventure starts…

We all set off in a convoy of about 20 or more 4×4’s. The built up areas of Dubai very quickly disappeared and we were soon what seemed like hundreds of miles from any sort of civilisation. Well, it turns out that we weren’t that far because our first stop was the eagle man who showed us a few tricks that his pet eagle could do… Fly and eat and swoop and bite and other bird like things. Quite cool but pretty hard to catch mid flight… Hence you get a nice bird pose instead…

This was all nice and sedate compared to what our drivers decided to do to us next. I mean some warning would be nice, but no… We climbed back into our trucks and our driver very kindly checked to make sure we had our seat belts on. We’re going to be heading further into the desert he says. Well that all seems pretty obvious I thought. I mean why would we leave just yet? What he didn’t mention to us is that we would be travelling at light speed up and down the biggest dunes known to man and the only warning we had prior to hitting the first drop was a quick glance round and a grin.

Everything that wasn’t pinned down went flying. My camera went from my lap to the ceiling to the front seat then back again. How I didn’t vomit…

The fairground ride did eventually come to an end about 20 minutes later and were free! Free in the middle of the desert to go running around like children. Climbing dunes in the sunset, taking photos and if you’re a doctor then maybe it’s the perfect opportunity to roll down the dunes and end up with sand in your underpants for the rest of the tour…

Another short trip in the vehicles led us to another stop where we could jump/climb onto the back of some camels and navigate the desert in the moonlight… It was somewhat of a camel party, traffic jam, mosh pit kind of exercise, and we could definitely have been overrun by the camel gang if they had wanted to… Camels are really quite smelly. We also had the opportunity to hold onto some birdies…

After this it was over to the BBQ area followed by a pretty stunning belly dancing routine… After all this they then turned all the lights off so it was totally pitch black and we just kinda gazed up at all the stars for 10-15mins…