An hour on a quad bike in the Dubai desert is the most direct way to trade the city for open sand. You are collected from central Dubai in a shared van in the mid-afternoon and driven out to the dunes, where a briefing covers the controls and the safety basics before you set off. The machines are automatic and genuinely easy to ride, so no previous experience is needed and most people are comfortable within a few minutes. From there it is sixty minutes of open dune driving: long runs along the ridgelines, dips into the bowls between them, and terrain that looks flat from the road and turns out to be anything but. Helmets are provided and an instructor rides with the group throughout. Single and double-seat quads are both available, so a passenger can ride along rather than drive.