Mitch1978
15 april 2025
I wanted the archetypal desert camp experience - endless dunes, stargazing, camels etc but with air con and nice beds to pacify my wife and kids. I did a lot of background and thought I’d made the right choice with Desert Nights, so I was pretty horrified to read some recent TA reviews talking of “Mad Max” style quad bike racing and floodlit race tracks going on well into the night and fairly aggressive upselling of camp experiences. I actually looked into cancelling my booking, but it was too late. Which was a good thing, because our experience wasn’t anything like that at all. The camp was serene, there was no noise post about 8pm, we climbed the dunes by the camp at night and had the most beautiful sight of the night sky, the activities were fantastic and the food really excellent. I guess maybe the previous reviewers were unlucky - quad biking is advertised as available from 7am which is clearly too early for a noisy activity, but no idea what this floodlit race track referred to…. Overall I would highly recommend the camp, with one caveat - we did sunset on the dunes on arrival and stargazing that night, then a camel ride, quad bikes and dune bashing the next day and finally a dawn balloon ride (Royal Balloon Oman - a must do) the next morning. On our full day we’d finished the activities by 11am and there’s not much to do until the evening, no hotel pool and too hot to be outside for long. We drove to Wadi Bani Khalid just for something to do (it was fine, but as it was the weekend very busy). Given the time again I would arrive mid afternoon and pack all these events into late afternoon/evening and the next morning, so one night at the camp rather than two
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