A slightly different cycle path: The Al Qudra Cycling Course now runs 157 kilometers through the Dubai desert. You should leave early to avoid the heat.
Image: Christoph Moeskes
Cycling in Dubai – is it a good idea in the middle of the desert? There is an excellently developed cycle path, but that doesn’t make things any less sporty.
Ana Friday morning shortly after nine o’clock we were sitting in the shade of a bush south of Dubai, sucking the last of the water out of our plastic bottle amid increasingly ominous crackling and shriveling. We were completely sweaty and exhausted. Laura, on the other hand, was calm herself, took a small sip from her aluminum bottle and smiled. We must have made a worrying impression on the other cyclists sitting on the curb a few yards from the Al Qudra Cycling Course. “Are you all right?” shouted the well-trained men and women on their outrageously expensive carbon bikes as they hissed past us at a slightly slower pace. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Laura called back to them. But by then the ambitious amateur athletes had already picked up speed again.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to do the same as a moderately fit driver after all. Cycling in the desert? That can quickly go wrong, even when you have someone as circumspect and tour-tested as Laura Dianu at your side. Born in Romania, she works for a large architectural firm in Dubai and was introduced to us through friends of friends. Laura drove out to Al Qudra almost every Friday morning, they said, so you could definitely join her there. We were thrilled: Out of the 40 degree hot glittering moloch, away from the high-rise buildings wrapped around the freeway and into the quiet magic of the desert.