I had a free morning in Doha before I needed to head to the airport to begin my long journey home. I could have visited the Museum of Islamic Art, the Souk or one of the other tourist sites in town, but instead I decided to go out into the desert in the 108 degree temperatures.

I booked a desert safari tour through Get Your Guide. The tour provider was actually OceanAir Travels, but Get Your Guide provided the booking and payment platform. I took a short Uber ride (around $2) to the National Museum metro stop to meet the guide.

There were three of us on the tour in an SUV with the driver/guide. The other two travelers were a Filipino woman traveling back to her home in Belgium from the Philippines and a Korean woman traveling to Switzerland from Korea. Both were on overnight layovers like me.

We headed out into the desert on a deserted highway that had been built for the World Cup in 2022. We actually passed two different World Cup stadiums on the way as well as some industrial facilities which I assume were for natural gas or oil.

It took us about 50 minutes to reach our first stop: ATV riding. The women declined to participate, but I was looking forward to this. I was given a quick tutorial and rode out to the dunes behind a guide. My only issue was that I was wearing shorts (it was 108!) and got some minor burns on my legs where the heat of the engine mixed with the desert heat and sand.

The next stop was for camel riding and I passed on this one while the two women went on a short ride. I was given lots of bottled water and shade while our driver went to deflate his tires for the ride across the sand to come.

From there, we went right across the sand and started bashing the dunes. I couldn’t really get decent pictures of the actual dune bashing as the windows, the glare and the sand along with the motion made it difficult.

We stopped at the top of a large dune and our driver brought out a sandboard, which basically looked like a snowboard. I gave it a try, but the sand quickly came over the lip of the board and oh by the way, I was wearing sandals and the sand was really hot! It felt like I burned my toes and I had to pour a bottle of water over my feet to cool them off. Here’s a funny picture the driver took at the top of the dune.

Our final stop was at the inland sea which is an estuary off the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. We actually got to put our feet in the water and I even found a shell for my wife.

We headed all the way back to the camel riding spot and our driver got the tires reinflated to get back on the highway. He ended up dropping each of us of at our hotels which wasn’t included in the tour description. The guy told us he does this twice a day, seven days per week. I ended up giving him a tip in USD as I didn’t have any Qatari Riyals due to my short visit.

I really enjoyed the tour (minus the burns which healed quickly). If you decide to take a tour like this, even in the summer, wear long pants if you do the ATV ride and closed toed shoes if you do the sandboarding. It was fun to get out in the desert for a few hours and see another side of the Middle East.

Up Next: Qatar Airways Al-Safwa Lounge Review

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