NATURAL BEAUTY

Ever just want to get away from it all – leave the bright lights of the city behind and reconnect with nature? There’s one very special hotel that will let you do just that this holiday season, and it’s only a 90-minute drive from Dubai and 50 minutes from Abu Dhabi. ‘Inspired by luxury, immersed in privacy’, Al Wathba, a Luxury Collection Desert Resort & Spa is just what the doctor ordered – pure unadulterated escapism, where the worlds of nature and nurture collide. An intimate retreat suffused with natural beauty and tranquility, it’s here that time will stand still, allowing you all the time in the world for soulful reconnections.

Here, you can sink your toes in the sand to find your way back to nature or weave your way through Al Wathba’s quiet grounds to find the colonnaded infinity pool for a few moments of quiet reflection. One particularly memorable moment that will immerse you in nature can be found with the Desert Exploration offer, which will take you on an indigenous journey through the Arabian desert on horseback. You’ll experience the magic and mystique of staying in one of Al Wathba’s suites or villas, inspired by the local timeless design of Bedouin living, with breakfast at Bait Al Hanine, before exploring the magnificent dunes beyond the hotel for an hour’s adventure on an Arabian horse, to either see the sun rise or soak up the sun set. Finish your day with a starlit dinner on the terrace at Terra Secca, then retire to your suite or villa for a midnight swim in your own private pool under the starry skies.

If a visit to a desert retreat incites notions of escaping one’s daily routine and rewarding oneself with some essential ‘me time’, then the Saray Spa at Al Wathba Desert Resort & Spa promises to be the sanctuary you need. Enveloped in tranquility, this desert oasis is a beacon of wellness and an ode to transformation at the heart of the hotel, inviting guests to reconnect with nature, realign their mental wellbeing and rebalance their bodies. Specialising in Arabic healing rituals and traditions, Saray Spay combines them with the power of scientific product, which all culminate to create a truly practical and emotional experience.

Stretching over 2,200sqm, 11 treatment rooms weave their way around Saray Spa’s calming corridors, along with saunas, steam rooms, plunge pools, salt rooms, a snow cave, an ice-cold bucket room, traditional Turkish hammam and whirlpool. Choose between body scrubs and body wraps, facials and foot baths, massages and hammams. The spa uses only the best products, such as the beautiful La Vallée range, whose ingredients are directly sourced from the wild and beautiful landscapes of the Swiss Alps, and Hammamii, a female-led beauty brand, which blends timeless beauty traditions with a modern luxury twist. Hammamii uses only natural ingredients, such as camel milk from the deserts of Dubai, dates from Ras Al Khaimah and salts from the Arabian Sea.

Celebrate the holiday season by focusing on ‘you’, with Saray Spa’s Festive offer (available until December 31, 2022), where you can immerse yourself in the Enriched Oud Body Treatment. A deeply therapeutic treatment that uses Oud – one of the most fragrant substances in the world – the journey begins with an Oud body scrub to exfoliate and detoxify the skin, followed by a Dead Sea mud Oud wrap that will help facilitate blood circulation, whilst cooling and soothing the skin. And finishing with a Stress Relieving Massage that uses adaptive pressure to ease body tension and increase vitality.