The desert begins immediately east of Dubai, and an evening desert safari is the most popular excursion from the city — dozens of operators offer essentially the same package: a 4x4 drive into the dunes for "dune bashing" (high-speed driving over the sand ridges), followed by a sunset camel ride, a Bedouin-style camp dinner, and entertainment including belly dancing, falconry demonstrations, and stargazing.
The experience is packaged and unashamedly touristy, but the dunes themselves — particularly in the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve — are genuinely beautiful, especially at sunset when the light turns the sand from gold to deep orange to red. The conservation reserve also supports small populations of Arabian oryx and gazelles. For a more independent experience, some visitors hire 4x4s and drive themselves to Al Qudra lakes, a man-made wetland that has become a significant birdwatching destination 40 kilometres from the city.
story: > The Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, covering 225 square kilometres of banded dunes just east of the city, was created in 2000 largely at the initiative of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. It was the first national park in the UAE and home to the reintroduced Arabian oryx — an animal hunted to extinction in the wild by 1972. The Dubai reserve now holds several hundred oryx, successfully bred from captive animals and released back into the dunes.