Abu Dhabi Desert Safari: Emptier Dunes, and How It Differs from Dubai's

The desert outside Abu Dhabi is a different landscape from the one outside Dubai, and the safari reflects it.

The dunes here run higher and the camps sit further from the city, which means far fewer vehicles on the same sand. A Dubai evening safari in season can put several hundred 4x4s across one dune field; the Abu Dhabi equivalent is a fraction of that.

The other difference is what gets included. Abu Dhabi safaris more often visit a working camel farm rather than offering a roadside camel ride — a farm where the animals are actually kept and worked, which is a rarer and more interesting thing to see than three minutes on a saddle.

What is the same: the tyres come down at the dune line, there is half an hour of dune driving, then sandboarding, then sunset, then a camp with dinner and shows for the evening version.

The morning safari is cooler, quieter and better for photographs. The sand is ridged and untouched, the light is low, and there are almost no other vehicles. It suits photographers, families with small children, and anyone who wants the desert rather than the party.

The evening safari gives you the sunset over the dunes and the camp afterwards — barbecue dinner, tanoura and fire shows, shisha, and a genuinely dark sky. It is the more sociable version and the one most people book.

A four-hour half-day covers the driving, sandboarding and the camel farm without the camp evening. Six to seven hours adds the camp and dinner.

Quad biking is almost always an optional extra rather than part of the headline price. Decide at the option stage, because it is the single most common reason a cheap safari turns out to cost more than expected.

Dune bashing is deliberately rough. The driver takes the vehicle up dune faces and across them at an angle, and the lateral movement is real rather than theatrical.

If anyone in your group is pregnant, has back or neck problems, or is prone to motion sickness, tell us when booking. Every operator will run a gentler line on request and nobody is obliged to do the hard version — but it needs saying in advance rather than halfway up a dune.

Very young children are generally better on a morning safari without the dune driving, or not at all.

Two other practical notes. Between November and February the desert gets genuinely cold after dark and the camps are open-sided; a jacket makes the difference between enjoying the last two hours and enduring them. And alcohol is usually neither included nor available at the camps, which surprises people expecting a bar.