Practically all the tourists to Dubai go on a Desert Safari a.k.a. Dune-Bashing , but generally they go only once. Nobody wants to repeat the experience.

This attraction is in the same category as climbing the ‘Jhulta Minar’ in Ahmedabad, or going into the dark, narrow caverns at Mawsmai, Shillong without a guide. You do them once and thank your stars that you came out of those adventures intact. You do NOT do it a second time.

Our Desert Safari was made livelier by the presence of two school-going kids in the party. Whether it is a circus, a Desert Safari, a water-park or a roller-coaster ride, kids are an essential ingredient to having fun. Adults’ enjoyment is more in watching the kids having fun rather than having fun themselves.

The tour companies take you to the golden sand dunes about one hour away from Dubai by a 4X4.

You are wondering about what is this 4X4 and whether I meant this as a swear-word?

I was familiar with 2X2, which is simply a type of fabric, which we used for making blouses, but I had to ask about 4X4 to Avi.

The 4X4 simply means ‘four-wheel-drive’. The ‘normal’ cars that run on smooth tarmac roads have a ‘two-wheel-drive’ i.e. the engine ‘drives’ only two wheels. (Generally the rear wheels.) The 4X4 are SUVs (Sports Utility Vehicle) which are meant for tougher terrain, and so the engine ‘drives’ all the four wheels.

When we reached the dunes, the driver of the 4X4 let out some air from the tires of the vehicle, because that makes driving on the sand easier.

There were some 40-50 SUVs waiting their turn to go into the desert. The 4x4s go into the dunes in a group, never singly. That is because the chances of a 4X4 turning turtle among the dunes are quite high and in such a case, the other cars help.

The euphoria among the tourists was quite high. This became evident when a tourist couple danced an impromptu jig on the soft, golden sand. A few kids gleefully used a gentle, shallow dune as a slide, but found it difficult to climb up again.

Our turn to go into the desert came and the driver advised all of us to put on the seat-belts and hang on to the straps for dear life.

Despite these precautions, the drive was anything but smooth. The car has to traverse at 45 degrees to the vertical when climbing up a dune and the people in the car are scared that it is going to topple any moment now. They are even more scared when their visibility drops to zero because the car is churning up a regular sand-storm and the car’s window-panes become obscured by flying sand.

Add to this, the din caused by the shrieks of delight let out by the children and groans and protests by the adults and you will get a fairly good idea of the cacophony that reigned in the car.

Totally unaffected by all this, the driver of the car went about his business peacefully and skillfully.

Going down a sand-dune is not any easier. Your body is going down in the car but your stomach, being the perverse organ that it is, has decided to go in the opposite direction, i.e. up. Here you come to know that your different body parts have a mind of their own and occasionally CAN rebel against the brain’s commands.

Yours truly is a brave hearted but a weak-stomached and weak-kneed creature.

When the drive was over and other people were telling each other how much they enjoyed it, I started collecting my far-flung limbs, stomach and other body-parts and putting them together. I felt like a regular ‘Terminator’ while I built myself up again.


After a rest-stop and a “photo-op” to shoot the “sunset over the dunes”, all the cars headed towards the Desert Camp.

I gave a miss to ‘henna’ and ‘sheesha’ but when I told Avi that I wanted to ride the camel; he cracked all kinds of PJs about ‘Untawarche Shahane’ and ‘untpetang batein’.

Undeterred by his criticism, I made a bee-line towards the camels.

After cracking all these unseemly jokes, he meekly followed.

There were two camels and each camel could seat two people. I suppose by the time our turn came to climb upon the camel, the camels were tired because the camel at the back growled.

“I am fed up of carrying all these people. I quit.” said the camel to the camel-driver. The camel-driver just hit the camel gently and urged him to sit down.

I climbed in the back seat and Avi shamelessly climbed in the front seat (after cracking all those silly jokes, mind you!) of the leading camel, which appeared more docile of the two.

The camel at the back again protested vociferously He was very near my rear. I looked back in apprehension, but was relieved to find that the camel’s mouth was bound by a bag and he could not bite.

There is a lot of laughter when a camel gets up from the sitting position and when he sits down again because invariably, the people’s expressions register a mix of apprehension and fun.

The term ‘ship of the desert’ is more than apt for the camel because the undulating movement of its walk reminds you of a boat being tossed on waves.


By the time we finished our camel-ride, the dance-floor was occupied by the tourists gyrating to the tunes from Arabic, Western and Indian films.

At 8:30 PM, the dance-floor was cleared of tourists, the strobe-lights dimmed, the loud music turned into soft, lilting tones of the Arabic music and the Belly-dancer in all her finery, appeared on the stage.

Please note the term ‘finery’, because what she had on could hardly be described as ‘clothes’. Essentially, she was wearing a shiny, sequined bikini with a transparent ‘ghagra’.

For the next half an hour, she entertained us by the movements of her belly and belly is not a ‘sexy’ organ, so the belly-dance is not an ‘erotic’ dance. It does titillate, but it is not vulgar.

The dinner after the belly-dance proved to me once again that I am not only weak-stomached and weak-kneed but also weak-willed creature, because I could not resist the ‘kababs’ and the ‘firni’ – both high-calorie items.

Our best thrill was yet to come. When the driver of our vehicle started the car, it jumped in the air, and then hopped, skipped and jumped merrily for half a kilometer on the sandy road. The driver explained apologetically that he had taken the car to a service-station and filled the air in the tires to ‘normal’ pressure.

When we came back to the hotel, I thought that all that sand must have made us dirty and so decided to have a tub-bath. To my surprise, not even a speck of sand was sticking to my body, because the water remained clear even after my bath. I believe the dryness of the air does not let the sand stick to you.

Thus ended our day of Dubai Thrills.