Abu Dhabi - Desert Safari - Day 6

We had booked our desert safari from the UK for today. The booking was for 2PM so we had the entire morning to ourselves. After making a slow start we all went out for lunch. The plan was to have lunch and then they would drop us off at the collection point for the desert safari. 

We went to a place called Gazebo. Sukant recommended it and said that we will just go and have biryani there. And thats exactly what we did. We were all starving as we did not have breakfast and the biryani was really very good. So we all dug in and ate our fill. We enjoyed it so much that none of us actually remembered to click a picture. 

We were all in Sudha's car, so after food she drove us to the drop off point. We reached there in time and got into the bus, which would take us to the camp site in the desert. Before sitting on the bus we upgraded our tickets to VIP for AED 40 per head. 

The bus ride was over 90 mins. We got off the bus and waited in a line to get on the Toyota Land-cruisers for dune bashing. These V8 powered cars were fast and just did not care about the sand under their tyres and just drove on as if they were on roads. It was good fun to feel the twists and bumps in the desert. 

The land cruiser dropped us off next to the camp site. We were then asked to go in and keep our stuff on a table so that we occupy that private table as part of our VIP package. We would sit on sofas and have separate food stalls and drink stalls compared to the normal tickets, which had floor seating and the food queues were massive. We were glad we opted for VIP tickets, thanks to Nimi. 

We then went on the quad bikes and drove them in the desert sand. Niki and I took one bike and Nimi and Deepika were on the other bike. I must say that driving those things was way too hard than what it seemed. After riding them for 20 mins my arms were aching. 

We were then given the option to do a camel ride, but it was way too short a ride to be worth it, so we decided not to do it. Instead we went climbing on a dune. It was about 30m high and we decided to climb it. 

It was a lot harder to climb than I had anticipated, but once we were at the top we sat there and enjoyed the view of the desert. After spending some time on top of the dune, we slid back to the bottom. Our shoes were filled with buckets of sand, which we poured out before entering the tent. 

We then had food and although I did not want to have any food. I just had some drinks and we ordered a shisha and had it on our table. There were 4 dance performances included in our package. 

We watched all the dance shows and then we walked our way back to our bus. When we were closer to the city I messaged Sudha and they came to pick us up from the same place they dropped us off in the afternoon. It was almost 10PM. 

We had some tea and then we all went to have dinner at a place outside Abu Dhabi Mall.