An hour south of Doha the dunes run straight into the Gulf.
Which safari actually reaches Khor Al Adaid. What a Doha city loop costs once airport pickup is in it. Whether the northern fort drive beats the western desert when you have one free day. Every tour on sale in the country, reviewed.
A dune run, a city loop, the northern forts, one night under the sky.
The four bookings a first trip to Qatar is built out of. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The one everybody booksSafari, ATV, Camels, Sandboarding and Inland Sea TourDune bashing, a camel, a board down a slope, then the drive on to the Inland Sea. The busiest single trip in the country.
02The city half-dayGuided City Tour with Airport and Hotel PickupSouq Waqif, the Corniche and the museum, with hotel or airport pickup. The one to take between flights.
03The northern driveNorth Qatar Half-Day Tour: Al Zubarah, Purple Island & MangrovesAl Zubarah fort, the abandoned pearling village at Al Jumail and the mangrove channels at Purple Island.
04After darkDoha Night Desert Safari Stargazing And Camel RideOut to the sand at night for the fire, a camel and a sky the city keeps from you.
Half a day in the dunes is what most people fly into Doha for.
Every safari runs the same bones: a deflated tyre at the edge of the sand, a run over the dunes, a camel, a board down a slope. What changes is the hour you go out and how far south the driver takes you.
Qatar is one city and five drives out of it.
Doha holds the souq, the Corniche and the museums. Everything else is a road out: south to the dunes and the Inland Sea, north to the forts and the mangroves, west to the steel plates at Zekreet. Six kinds of day, and the best tour in each.
Doha does its sightseeing in one long afternoon.
Everything in Doha →
The souq, the dhow harbour on the Corniche and the museum shaped like a desert rose all sit within a few minutes of each other. One guided loop takes the lot, and the good ones finish after sunset, when Souq Waqif finally fills up.
Souq Waqif once the heat drops
Restored mud-brick lanes of spice sellers, falcon dealers and shisha terraces. It is dead at four in the afternoon and shoulder to shoulder by nine, so the hour you go is the whole decision.
Katara, the pigeon towers and the amphitheatre
A purpose-built cultural quarter on the bay with a Greek-style amphitheatre, two mosques worth the detour and the pigeon towers everyone photographs. Most city tours give it forty minutes.
An hour on a dhow off the Corniche
The wooden boats tied up along the Corniche are the old pearling fleet, now running short loops across the bay. Go at sunset and the West Bay towers light up behind you.
The Inland Sea is the one drive worth giving a whole afternoon to.
Ninety minutes south of Doha the dunes run out at a tidal arm of the Gulf that reaches inland almost to the Saudi border. Getting there means soft sand and a deflated tyre, which is why nobody drives it alone.
The Qatari days out that sell before the rest.
Every tour we have reviewed in Qatar →The trips more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what earns each one its slot.
1
Safari, ATV, Camels, Sandboarding and Inland Sea Tour
Spend four to five hours south of Doha with an English-speaking guide such as Asmat, Anwar, or Noufal. Ride a camel, race over dunes in a 4x4, sandboard, sip local tea, and visit Khor al Adaid. Hotel pickup is optional, and quad bikes or buggies cost extra.
From · $32
Read our review →
2
ATV, Quad/Buggy Dune Bashing, Camel Ride, Sandboarding
from $32
3
Desert safari, Dune bashing, sandboarding, camel, ATV Option
from $46
4
Qatar Gold Dune Safari, Dune Bashing,Camel Ride,Sand Boarding,Inland Sea Desert
from $44
5
Half Day Desert Safari | Camel Riding | ATV | Sand Surfing
from $58
6
Guided City Tour with Airport and Hotel Pickup
from $55
7
ATV,Quad or Buggy Dune Bashing,CamelRide & Sandboarding
from $63
8
Private Half Day Desert Safari
from $192
North Qatar is a fort, a village the sand took back, and a mangrove creek.
Al Zubarah was a pearling town until the water ran out and the sea silted up. The coast above it holds Al Jumail, abandoned in the 1970s, and the shallow mangrove channels around Purple Island. Half a day, almost all of it on tarmac.
Every northern tour →
What a day out in Qatar actually costs.
Every tour on the site grouped by price. The desert half-day, the thing most people fly in for, sits at the bottom of the ladder rather than the top.
Shared desert safaris, city loops and the transit tours built around a layover.
Full-day runs to the north and west, sunrise safaris and dhow evenings with dinner.
Private 4x4s with your own driver, overnight camps in the dunes and full-day charters.
- 1Private Half Day Desert Safarifrom $192
- 2Desert Safari & Keshta | (Private)from $178
- 3Private Full Day Desert Safarifrom $185
Three things that only happen in Qatar.
Dunes and gold souqs run the length of the Gulf. A tidal sea inside the desert, four steel plates a kilometre apart, and a racetrack where the jockeys are robots do not.
Khor Al Adaid
The Inland Sea is a shallow tidal inlet that pushes several kilometres into the dunes near the Saudi border, and it is one of very few places on earth where a desert meets a sea with nothing in between. There is no sealed road in. Convoys drop tyre pressure at the last petrol station and cross the soft sand together, which is why the whole thing is sold as a half or full day rather than a stop.
- 1Safari, ATV, Camels, Sandboarding and Inland Sea Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 5,291 reviews
- 2Qatar Gold Dune Safari, Dune Bashing,Camel Ride,Sand Boarding,Inland Sea Desert★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,807 reviews
- 3Inland Sea Tour, 4×4 Desert Safari/All Activities★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,875 reviews
East-West / West-East
Four steel plates, each over fourteen metres tall, stand in a line across a gypsum plateau on the Zekreet peninsula. They are set a kilometre apart, level with each other despite the ground rising and falling between them, so the tops read as one horizontal line. There is nothing else out there, which is the point, and the drive from Doha takes about an hour.
- 1Qatar West Coast tour to Richard Serra Sculpture and Mushroom Rock Formation★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 153 reviews
- 2Qatar West Coast tour, Zekreet, Richard Serra Sculpture, Mushroom Rock Formation★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 150 reviews
- 3West Coast tour, Zekreet, Richard Serra Sculpture, Mushroom Rock Formation★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 95 reviews
The camel racetrack
Racing camels run a track west of Doha with robot jockeys strapped to their humps, while owners drive alongside on a parallel road working the whips by remote control. The season runs through the cool months and the morning training laps are free to watch. Most visitors reach it on a west-coast tour that also takes in the sculptures and the mushroom rock.
- 1West Coast Qatar Tour, Sculptures, Camel Racing track★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 111 reviews
- 2Half-Day Private Guided Camel Race Tour in Qatar★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 73 reviews
- 3West Of Qatar, Mushroom Rocks, Camel Racing Track, Richard Serra★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 33 reviews
From May to September the middle of the day belongs to the air conditioning.
Peak summer runs past 45C and the humidity coming off the Gulf makes it worse. The answer is the one Qataris already use. Take the outdoor half at dawn or after dark, and give the middle of the day to a museum, a shaded souq lane or a long lunch.
Four Qatari bookings that will not wait.
Most desert safaris can be arranged from a hotel lobby the same morning. These four run on seasons, tides and vehicle counts that take no notice of when your flight lands.
- 01West Coast Qatar Tour, Sculptures, Camel Racing trackThe racing season runs through the cool months only. Outside it there is a track, a grandstand and nothing moving on it.
- 02North Qatar Half-Day Tour: Al Zubarah, Purple Island & MangrovesThe kayak channels only float on a high tide, so departures move with the tide table rather than with the clock.
- 03Private Overnight Desert Safari, Dune bashing, dinner & BreakfastA camp takes a fixed number of tents a night, and everyone wants the same cool-season weekends.
- 04Sunrise Desert Safari in Qatar: An Unforgettable AdventurePickup is well before dawn and each driver caps the run, so it is set the evening before at the latest.
By place, Doha and the four drives out of it
By kind of day, dune, city, coast or fort
Twelve hours between flights buys the souq, the museum and a dune.
From the airport
Souq Waqif
The museumThe newest Qatar tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Doha North Of Qatar Guided Tour with Pickup and Drop-Off
Read our review →
Night Desert Safari With Stargazing and Inland Sea
Read our review →
Doha Delights City Tour with Desert Safari and Inland Sea Visit
Read our review →
Private Dunes Bashing | Desert Safari | Sand Boarding
Read our review →
West Coast Tour Sculpture,Camel Racing Track Rock Formation
Read our review →
