Arabian Peninsula, Dubai to Amman, Winter 2024

In mapping out the world for potential future travel destinations, the Arabian Peninsula has not been high on my list. Maybe I got my fill of the Arab World 20 years ago when I worked for most of the year 2004 as a trip leader in Egypt and Jordan for a British adventure travel company. The United Arab Emirates and Oman have long seemed like potential destinations, and Qatar and Bahrain are quite visitable as well. But most tours I’ve seen over the years to that part of the world have been quite expensive. It’s a part of the world too where traveling independently seems possible but involves some struggle. For Thanksgiving 2023 my brother Doug and sister-in-law Aviva went to Dubai for a week and very much enjoyed it. That got me thinking about the Gulf Countries as a possible destination and looking into trips online. Lo and behold what came up! Among others there was a two-month Arabian Peninsula overland trip covering seven countries – United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. It is something the likes of which I had never seen advertised before, made possible by Saudi Arabia’s opening up to tourism. No, it’s not a comprehensive trip around the peninsula; nowadays it’s not possible to visit Yemen, a country that was a potential travel destination up through the mid-2000s. The tour company, Madventures, is affiliated with Dragoman, the British overland company with which I have done numerous trips to remote parts of the world. I inquired in March, put a deposit down in April, and received confirmation in July that the tour is running. This is exciting – to go to a part of the world (Saudi Arabia) I never thought I’d be able to see. It has also been ten years since I have done a participatory camping overland truck trip of this nature. The tour starts in Dubai and ends in Amman, Jordan 60 days later. That’s a lot of time to spend in the desert! I am writing this several months before the tour begins, but I plan to head out early to spend about ten days or so in Dubai and some spots in the United Arab Emirates before the tour begins. The plan is to get a timeshare trade for a week in Dubai.

Planned Dates

2024-11-15 to 2025-01-21

Countries

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