A Quad Ride in the Desert Near Hurghada

Yess, we did another trip to lovely Hurghada and the need for some extra adrenalin made us booking a sunset tour on Quads into the Sesert about ten minutes outside Hurghada.

WHile driving in a Jeep, the last unfinished buildings fall away behind you, the asphalt turns to sand, and suddenly there is nothing but desert — flat, wide, and glowing amber in the late afternoon light. That's when I opened the throttle.

Everyone from our team got a Quad and we start hitting the sand.

^{pic by @Detlev}

I'd booked a privat sunset quad tour for just our group a with a local guide.

Hurghada is famous for the Red Sea — the diving, the snorkeling, the reefs — and the desert felt like an afterthought on every hotel flyer. It shouldn't be. The Eastern Desert begins practically at the edge of town, and riding into it as the day cools down turned out to be the highlight of my trip.

Getting Started

The quads themselves are simple machines: automatic, thumb throttle, one brake lever. See a pciture from our guide and his green machine.

^{pic by @Detlev}

If you can ride a bicycle, you can ride one of these. After a two-minute briefing — mostly "follow me" and "don't overtake" — we were off. The first stretch is cautious, everyone getting a feel for the steering, which is heavier than you expect. Quads don't lean like motorcycles; you muscle them through turns, and the front wheels fight back on rough ground.

^{pic by @Detlev}

Then the terrain opens up and caution evaporates.

Into the Desert

The desert near Hurghada isn't the Sahara of postcards — no towering dunes, no endless sand seas. It's harder and more dramatic than that: gravel plains, dry wadis, jagged hills rising purple in the distance toward the Red Sea Mountains. The surface changes constantly under your wheels. One minute you're skimming across hard-packed sand, smooth as a runway; the next you're rattling over washboard gravel that vibrates up through the handlebars and into your teeth.

And the dust. Nobody warns you properly about the dust. Riding in the middle of the group means eating the cloud kicked up by everyone ahead of you. The scarf they sell you at the start — the one that feels like a tourist-trap upsell — buy it. Wrap it tight. You will still find sand in your ears three showers later, and you will not care.

^{pic by @Detlev}

There's a particular joy to it that's hard to explain. The engine snarls, the wind pulls at your sleeves, the landscape blurs and streams past, and your whole world narrows down to the track ahead and the throttle under your thumb. No phone, no schedule, no thoughts. Just speed and sand.

This damn lonely Acacia tree

It stands completely alone. No other vegetation for as far as I could see — just sand, a rugged brown mountain ridge behind it, and this one tree spreading its branches wide like an umbrella against a sky so blue it almost didn't look real. The low morning light was throwing long shadows across the sand, ours included, and for a moment I just stood there taking it in before I even thought to reach for my phone.

What kind of tree survives out here?

This is almost certainly an Acacia tortilis — the umbrella thorn acacia, known locally as "Sayal." It's the defining tree species of the Egyptian and Arabian deserts, and honestly, the more I learned about it, the more impressive it became.

A root system built for survival. These trees send taproots down 30 to 60 meters in search of groundwater. That's the only real explanation for how something this size can grow in a place that looks completely lifeless. It gets around 120 to 200 years old!

The umbrella shape isn't an accident. That flat, wide canopy — the same one that stopped me in my tracks — minimizes water loss while casting the widest possible pool of shade. Form following function, desert-style.

A landmark, not just a tree. For Bedouins and desert wildlife alike, a tree like this is often the only shade for kilometers. It becomes a natural meeting point, a rest stop for caravans in the past, and today, apparently, a photo stop for safari tours like mine.

^{pic by @Detlev}

The stone circle around the trunk. I noticed rocks laid in a careful ring around the base — something I've seen at a few of these trees in the region. It's likely there to protect the roots from vehicle traffic and grazing, or simply to mark the tree as something worth protecting. Given how rare and how old these acacias can get — sometimes decades, even centuries — that feels earned.

More than just shade. The leaves and pods are an important food source for camels and goats, the wood has traditionally been used for tools, and the bark yields tannins used in leather-making.

Why it stuck with me

There's something quietly humbling about a single tree holding its ground in an entire landscape of nothing. Everyone in our group ended up gravitating toward it — not because anyone said to, but because it was simply the only thing in sight that felt alive. In a place defined by sand, rock, and heat, this acacia is proof that life finds a way, one deep root at a time for hundrets of years!

The Main Event

But the real reason to take the late tour is the sky.

About an hour in, the guide raised his hand and we rolled to a stop on a low ridge. Engines off. And then, silence — the kind of total, physical silence you forget exists. After an hour of engine noise, it was almost loud.

^{pic by @Detlev}

The sun was sitting just above the mountains, and the whole desert had changed color. The washed-out beige of midday was gone; everything was gold, then orange, then a deep burnt red. The hills in the distance turned violet. Long shadows stretched from every stone. We just stood there, a dozen strangers in dusty helmets, watching the sun slide behind the ridgeline while the temperature dropped and the light did things no photo would ever capture — though we all tried anyway.

^{pic by @Detlev}

The ride back was different. Cooler air, softer light, headlights flickering on one by one as dusk settled in. The pace was slower, almost meditative. By the time the lights of Hurghada reappeared on the horizon, the first stars were already out.

The Practical Bits

A few things I wish I'd known: take sunglasses even for a sunset tour — the low sun is blinding on the ride out. Wear closed shoes and clothes you don't love; they'll be a shade browner afterward. Bring a light jacket, because the desert cools fast once the sun drops. And check that your operator provides helmets and keeps their machines in decent shape — the quality between tour companies varies a lot, and it's worth paying a little more.

Would I do it again? Yes, yes and YES!
But next time I will bring some beer to share with my team at the heat of the desert

^{pic by @detlev}