Vlog-style YouTube video by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting a Dubai desert safari experience. They drive ~45 minutes into the desert to the Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve, ride in a convoy of (antique) Land Rovers, watch a peregrine falcon demonstration, and spend an evening at a traditional desert camp where they sample camel milk, watch food (lamb) cooked underground, get henna tattoos, and eat a traditional dinner. The video mixes experiential narration, local cultural demonstrations, and practical travel impressions.
Questions this video answers
February 24, 2018
About 45 minutes
They have the largest collection of antique Land Rovers in the Middle East.
Chapters
Sam.
Good morning from our beautiful hotel in Dubai. I could really get used to this room with the motorized curtains, the espresso.
Machine, fuzzy robes, super comfortable bed. Yes.
Let's go.
It's a bit windy out here.
We just rode about 45min into the desert and it's just nuts how we just came from this, like futuristic skyscrapers, Dubai to just desert as far as you can see. We just got to this Dubai desert conservation reserve and we got goodie bags. I'm getting my headdress. Need lots of help.
One second.
Okay. Okay.
Yeah, it's a little bit tight. Okay.
It is tight. It's okay, though. After some time they will be loose. Okay, done.
No, one second.
Oh.
It'S good. Good.
This is like my dream come true. If you've paid really close attention in past episodes, you will know that an old Land Rover is my dream car. And we're about to spend the rest of the afternoon driving them through the desert.
Sam.
I don't know if I'm having more fun riding in the Land Rover or riding through the desert, but this has been absolutely incredible. The sun's starting to set, everything is golden. We've seen gazelles, we've seen orcs, which are the national animal. And we are also walking through the national. I guess you would call this a forest in the United Arab trees right here. I think this is probably as close as you get to a forest, but they're the national tree. And our driver told us it's because it's pretty much the only one that grows here. So we've got some time to take some pictures while it's sun setting and then we're jumping back in the car.
Sam.
Check out this fleet of Land Rovers. We learned that they have the largest collection of antique Land Rovers in the Middle East. They're all so cool. Now, we've just arrived at one of their camps in the middle of the desert and we are about to see a falcon ship.
So, Cristiano.
Yes. Thank you. They all think Nate's Cristiano Ronaldo.
Good afternoon, everybody. You might have heard of the peregrine falcon before. It is your most common fine falcon in the world.
We just finished the falcon demonstration. I enjoyed that so much more than I thought I was going to. It was basically this lady from South Africa with her falcon named Maria, and she had this cover over the falcon's eyes and it has a little GPS on her tail, too. And it was just hanging out on her arm. She told us all about it. They're the fastest Animals in the world. Then she spun around this thing of food, and it would swoop down and try to catch it. It was nut.
Wow.
She knows that she's caught it. Turns around, come to get her food. Well done.
Turn around.
Now we're going to get back in the Land Rover and go to another camp for a traditional dinner.
Yes.
This is where we're hanging out tonight. Not too bad.
So we just got a little tour of the camp after we were greeted with traditional coffee and rose water poured on our hands to clean them. And it is such a cool place. There's all this stuff going on.
There's a lady cooking traditional bread.
They're making the coffee that we were greeted with. So he's gonna crush it, and then he will boil it with water and mix it with some cardamom. They're cooking the food underneath the ground.
There's a lady doing henna tattoos. I'm totally getting one of those.
There are also a lot of local drinks, one of the most interesting being camel milk, which apparently it's served warm.
I just don't even really like regular milk. And so warm camel milk kind of weirds me out. Can you try it? Yeah.
Cheers.
It's salty. Yeah. Like, it kind of tastes buttery.
It's salty and really thick.
Kind of tastes like when you make easy Mac and you. You put too much water and there's that really thick juice.
I'm sorry.
That's what it tastes like. Like, I almost taste cheese.
Easy Mac, for those of you who don't know, is like, instant macaroni and cheese.
Where do we put these?
Thankfully, there's lots more drink options, including karak tea.
Which is black tea, tea with milk.
And.
You want me to do it again?
Thank you. One more, One more here, One more. See? See how that's you.
The secret.
It's time for the main course. The lamb was cooked underneath the ground, and then I literally pulled it out, pulled it off of the bone and onto my plate. I got a chicken skewer, rice, and yogurt sauce, and it looks like. Amazing.
Got my first human tattoo.
She was so fast. She literally did this in, like, two.
Minutes.
Since she's been making them for 11 years. So I'm sure she's done this, like, 10,000 times, but I'm super impressed. I just have to be really careful for a half hour.
Our night at the camp is coming to an end, but this has been such a good tour. Probably one of the best group tours that we've ever been on.
Yeah, it was just different. Like, they dropped us off here and it was like, do whatever you want. There's all these different things. Everybody was just hanging out.
And they did a fantastic job of just, like, intertwining a bunch of, like, the traditional desert things. So, like, if this was your one chance to, like, come experience the desert when you were in the Gulf States, I would say this is one of the best ways to do it.
And our guide said that he'd take us home whenever we were ready, which we need to do soon. We need to go to bed early tonight.
Big day tomorrow. Early day tomorrow.
Awesome day tomorrow.
Okay.
Because we had some people, like, smile, please. Are you smiling?
I can't see you. We smiling.
Enjoy.
Thank you.
Very soon, like you would travel with a cat or dog, you are going to buy your falcon a business class or first class seat next to you in the airport. Whereas in my case, you'll travel economical class so that your birds can fly business class. And then try to explain to cabin crew why you need to go through to go check on some birds, which she never gets old.
I also feel like I should confess that this is not my first kiddo tattoo. I got one on my lower middle back in eighth grade. It was a butterfly on spring break.
