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Dubai's outdoor season: plans with friends from the desert to the mountains

By the TruFriend team · · 7 min read

When the heat breaks in late October, Dubai moves outside. The story of one small group’s first season, from Al Qudra to Hatta and Jebel Jais.

Picture a group chat that has been quiet since May. Five people, loosely connected: two met in a walking group, one is a colleague of one of them, two are friends of friends who said "let me know if you ever go anywhere" and meant it more than anyone realised. All summer the chat carried nothing but the odd photo of a thermometer.

Then one evening in late October, Maya steps out of her building expecting the usual wet heat and it is simply not there. She types four words into the chat: "Desert walk, Saturday, sunrise?" Three people say yes within the hour. That message, it turns out, is the beginning of their season.

This is a story about that season, told as a composite rather than about anyone in particular. It is about what happens when a handful of people who half-know each other start doing things outdoors together, and why it works so much better than it has any right to.

The morning the city comes back outside

Anyone who has spent a summer here knows the change. For months the city lives indoors, moving between cold rooms by car. Then, over a couple of weeks, the evenings soften, the beach paths fill before sunrise and the parks are suddenly full of people who seem to have been waiting.

The first Saturday, four of them meet on the edge of the desert near Al Qudra a little before six. Nobody really knows the plan beyond walking up the nearest dune and watching the light arrive. It is cold enough for a jumper. The sand is firm in the early morning and hard work anyway. Someone forgot water and drinks from everyone else's bottle.

They are back at the cars by eight. It was, objectively, a short walk up some sand. It is also the first time the five of them feel like a group rather than a list of names.

Al Qudra, and the pleasure of doing it again

Two weeks later they go back, this time to the Al Qudra Lakes, the man-made lakes out in the desert south of the city, where the long cycle track runs through the dunes and the water draws birds and weekend picnickers in equal measure. Karim brings a bike. The others walk the edge of the water and argue about whether a distant pink smudge is flamingos or a plastic bag. (It is flamingos, this time.)

What matters is not the lakes. It is that this is the second time. The first outing is always a bit polite. The second has in-jokes: the forgotten water, the jumper, who was late. Research by Jeffrey Hall at the University of Kansas suggests it takes something like 50 hours together to move from acquaintance to casual friend, and around 90 to become a friend. A morning in the desert is three or four of those hours, spent side by side, with a good excuse to be quiet whenever you want to be.

Why shared effort bonds people

There is a reason a hard walk with someone does more than a nice dinner. At dinner you sit opposite each other and the conversation has to carry everything. Outside you walk beside each other, looking at the same view, and talking becomes optional. The silences are comfortable because there is something to do.

And effort does something of its own. When a slope is steeper than anyone expected, you see how people behave: who waits, who offers the last of their water, who makes a joke when everyone is flagging. Those are exactly the things you want to know about a potential friend, and they are almost impossible to learn over a table. By the time you reach the top, you have been through something together, however small, and it becomes a shared story.

The sociologist Rebecca Adams describes three conditions that friendships have always depended on: proximity, repeated interaction that nobody has to plan, and a setting where people relax enough to confide. A regular outing supplies all three. The drive home, windows down, tired and slightly sunburnt, is often where the real conversation happens.

Hatta: the first proper day out

By mid-November the group is confident enough for a whole day. Hatta is the obvious choice: roughly an hour and a half from the city, up in the Hajar Mountains, and a different landscape entirely. They start early, stop for coffee on the way, and are at the dam before the car parks fill.

The water at Hatta Dam is a startling green-blue against the brown rock, and kayaks can be hired to paddle between the cliffs. Hannah and Omar share a double kayak and discover within minutes that they have completely different ideas about steering. It becomes the story of the day.

Afterwards they walk one of the marked trails around Hatta Wadi Hub, where routes are graded and signposted, then eat a late lunch in the shade. Too tired to perform, the conversation turns real: jobs, families far away, what they miss about home. A long day with a shared goal does in eight hours what a dozen polite coffees might not.

Up into the cold on Jebel Jais

In December someone suggests Ras Al Khaimah. Jebel Jais, whose slopes carry the highest point in the UAE, is reached by a winding mountain road, and at the top the air is noticeably colder than on the coast. The group arrives with the wrong clothes, as everyone does once. They walk a short section of trail, stand at a viewing point looking down on folded ridges that seem to go on forever, and pass around a flask of karak someone had the foresight to bring.

It is a long drive for a short walk, and nobody minds. Mountain days have a way of making a group feel like a group, perhaps because the landscape is so indifferent to all of you.

The small plans in between

The big days get the photographs, but the season is really held together by the small ones. A beach morning at Kite Beach at seven, coffee afterwards, home by nine with the whole Saturday still ahead. A picnic in Safa Park on a Friday afternoon, a blanket, a frisbee nobody is good at, and two new people someone invited along. A slow walk through Mushrif Park, where the trees make it feel briefly like somewhere else.

These are the plans that fit into a working week, and they matter more than any mountain. Robin Dunbar's work on friendship suggests that relationships decay without regular contact, however good they once were. One spectacular trip does not hold a group together. Something ordinary every week or two does.

Being sensible without being dull

Outdoor plans in the UAE are easy and mostly safe, but the environment is less forgiving than it looks from an air-conditioned car. Our five learned a few basics, some of them the hard way.

Start early, even in winter, because the sun is still strong by late morning. Take more water than feels necessary, plus something salty to eat. Tell someone who is not coming where you are going and when you expect to be back. Stick to public, popular and marked routes, especially in the mountains, and turn back when the group's slowest person has had enough rather than when the fastest has. And check official weather guidance before you set off: rain in the mountains can send water rushing through wadis quickly, and conditions change faster than people expect.

If you are meeting people you do not know well yet, keep the first outings short and in busy places. A dawn walk at a popular spot is a far better first plan than a remote trail. We have written more about meeting new friends safely if you want the longer version.

What the season leaves behind

By March, when the evenings start warming again, the group chat looks completely different. It has a running joke about kayak steering, a pinned photo from Jebel Jais, and plans that nobody has to chase: someone just says "beach, Saturday" and three people turn up. Two of the five now see each other midweek without the others. One brought a new colleague on a walk, and she has become a regular.

None of it required anyone to be especially outgoing. It required one person to send a specific message, a handful of people to say yes, and the weather to cooperate for six months. That last part, in Dubai, is the one thing you can count on.

Where TruFriend fits

The hardest part of that story is the beginning: having five people to message at all. That is what TruFriend is for. Tru, our assistant, learns what you enjoy, when you are free and how far you will travel, then introduces you to a few people nearby who fit, with the reasons you might get along. A conversation opens only when you both say yes, and every member's photo is checked, so everyone you meet is a real person.

Our circles are made for this season. The outdoors circle, walks and runs, and photo walks are small groups where any member can start a plan, with a day, a time, a public meeting place and a number of spaces, and others join until it is full. On a morning when the weather is perfect and your diary is empty, "Free today" lets your circle know you are up for something.

Friendship only, for grown-ups aged 18 and over, and free for founding members. Request an invite and we will email you a personal invitation.

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