Dune Bashing

Bundle yourself and your friends into a four-wheel drive and hold on tight as the driver fearlessly speeds you off onto the dusty desert dunes for the bumpiest ride of your life!

This is an exciting Dubai excursion, not for the faint-hearted, although thoroughly enjoyed by many children – it really depends on your propensity for adventure. Dune bashing can be combined with a number of other desert-related Dubai activities such as quad biking, camel rides, barbecue and belly dancing for a truly fantastic day out.

Wild Wadi

The Wild Wadi water park is part of the Jumeirah Beach Resort. Residents of the Jumeirah Beach Hotel have unlimited access but anyone can visit for a real Dubai holiday treat.

You’ll feel like a carefree child as you battle the 1.5 metre wave machine, swish through endless tunnels and water shoots and – if you’re feeling brave – mount the largest water slide outside North America – all in the brilliant sunshine!

Additional benefits to this Dubai excursion include Wild Wadi snacks including tasty burgers – made all the more delicious by ravenous swimmer’s hunger – and a host of unusual extras such as surfing machines and an 18 foot waterfall that goes off every ten minutes to scare the kids! The fearful should watch out, though, for the rather scary ‘tunnel of doom’.

Champagne Brunch

Most Dubai residents work hard from Sunday to Thursday – then party hard on their treasured days off! Friday brunches, which take place all over the city, are a very chilled afternoon out and sociable Dubai luxury holiday activity. Most start around 12pm and go on until at least 3pm, sometimes into the evening.

Yalumba restaurant’s indulgent champagne brunch at Dubai’s Le Meridien Hotel is renowned for its unlimited Bollinger champagne, sushi, lobster, a la carte options and sinfully sweet desserts. This is one of the swankiest Dubai activities and guests often dress up for an afternoon of glamorous mingling in the sunshine.

Shopping at the Mall of Emirates

It seems as though nothing can exist in Dubai without being the largest, tallest or best of something, and Dubai’s Mall of Emirates is no exception. This mammoth building – the mall takes around 6.5 million square feet – has the title of the largest shopping mall in the Middle East.

The Mall of Emirates is a popular meeting place and is packed with a huge variety of shops, from designer gear to local goods to your regular high street outlets, as well as a large supermarket and plenty of spots to eat, drink and take part in yet more extraordinary Dubai activities. The perfect place to shop your heart out on a Dubai luxury holiday.

Ski Dubai

Ski Dubai offers the super-surreal experience of skiing in the desert on real snow and – if you’re brave – charging down the world’s first indoor black run slope! This mountain resort-themed ski centre is massively enjoyable as a special Dubai excursion or simply as part of your shopping trip, as Ski Dubai is actually inside the Mall of Emirates.

One of the largest indoor ski resorts in the world (no surprises there then), with 22,500-square metres of indoor ski area, Ski Dubai is kept at a chilly -1º to -2º. But don’t worry – the necessary thermal gear is handed out to visitors at the entrance, along with a set of skis or a snowboard. Afterwards head to Ski Dubai’s stylish St Moritz Café to top off this luxury Dubai holiday experience with après-ski cocktails or a slap-up meal.

While it’s unlikely that you’ll be staying in the desert for any length of time during a luxury holiday to Dubai, it is the perfect place to stay for a night or two, or visit as a day trip. As well as being a visually striking and fascinating place to explore, it’ll also give you the chance to take part in some unique holiday activities…

Camel riding

Camel rides are an essential part of any visit to the desert, and will give you the chance to do your best Lawrence of Arabia impression as you trot across the sand dunes. There are plenty of Dubai holiday companies that run camel riding trips in the desert, ranging from half hour tasters to day long treks. They’ll be able to run you through the basics of camel handling, but here’s my top tip: when a camel stands up, it first raises its back legs, then its front legs. This means you need to lean back first then forwards as the camel stands up, or you could be sent flying!

Dune Bashing

If you take a trip to the desert during your luxury holiday to Dubai you’ll inevitably go dune bashing, a favourite activity for travellers with stomachs that are strong enough to take it! The premise of dune bashing is simple: get into a 4×4, go to the desert, and start driving over the towering sand dunes. Tearing across, up and down these sand dunes is tremendous fun; and with the absence of roads, it is pretty much the only way to get anywhere in the desert! It is also very safe – although it looks haphazard, any good tour company will employ good drivers and robust vehicles.

Sand Skiing

Yet another weird and wonderful activity to take part in while on holiday in Dubai, sand skiing is exactly what it sounds like. Out in the desert, many of the sand dunes have sand that is smooth enough to travel down on “snowboards”. It is tremendous fun, and falling over into warm sand is much less painful than taking a tumble into ice, snow and rock!

Desert BBQ

If you’d like to spend a night out in the desert as part of a luxury holiday to Dubai, one option is overnight camping, Bedouin style. It may not have all the mod cons of a Dubai luxury hotel, but you’ll be treated to Arabic cuisine, entertained by traditional music and belly dancing, then get to sleep beneath the stars in the desert – a truly unforgettable experience.