Itinerary
Day 0: Motor City
If you booked the pre-night package, you can check-in at the Park-Inn Motor City hotel already the day before the event and take advantage of the onsite registration during calm hours. You can watch live car races and -trainings at Dubai Autodrome Racetrack just from your hotel room, explore Dubai on your own or just have a chat with your GBI friends at the bar while overlooking the Dubai marina skyline.
Day 1: Spinneys Dubai 92 Cycling Challenge
After the onsite registration at the Park Inn Motor City, we will leave the hotel and head downtown cycling mainly on cycling lanes in order to reach the start of the Spinneys Dubai 92 Cycling Challenge. We will enjoy this day by joining 1,500 other cyclists on roads closed to traffic and for 92 km in one of the most prosperous cities in the world, passing a lot of impressive buildings such as Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building (829 m), one of the largest malls Dubai Mall (350,000 m2), the Dubai Fountains (83,000 liters of water at once), Emaar Boulevard, Dubai Opera and many more landmarks.
Day 2: Dubai Al Qudra
After having breakfast at the Park Inn Motor City, we will leave Dubai heading south-east, enjoying the Al Qudra cycling path for the entire day. We will cycle all day long only on cycling paths, surrounded by palm trees, maintenance stations and sometimes coffee and dessert places. The cycling lane system provides a network of countless tracks of various distances for the day.
Day 3: Dubai - Mleiha
We’ll leave Park Inn hotel and the Dubai Emirate and we will cross the desert. If you haven’t cycled in the desert before, this will be a unique and unforgettable experience. Our maintenance cars guarantee that you won’t be left behind and that you will always have access to nutrition and technical support. We will stay in an UNESCO world heritage site overnight, the Mleiha Archaeological Centre, where we shall enjoy millions of stars of the Milky Way galaxy above our heads.
Day 4: Mleiha – Hatta
It starts to become hilly. Leaving Mleiha in the morning, we will cycle towards the borders of Oman and climb the Shawka mountain. After three days on the saddle already, we should be ready by now to climb some moderate hills and enjoy great views over the United Arab Emirates.
Day 5: Hatta – Khor Fakkan
We deserved it! Hatta is an amazing spot to start our cycling on the last day, where we will initially have a few climbs in the Kalba mountains of Fujairah, then our descente will take us alongside the coast of the Indian Ocean (Gulf of Oman) where we will have time to take a bath in the appealing waters of Khor Fakkan.
Day 6: Khor Fakkan - Dubai
No more cycling – what a pity! After our breakfast in the hotel, we’ll load our bicycles on a bike carrier and take the bus back to Dubai. The rest of the day can be spent to explore the city or whatever your plans are for the last day of your first GBI Emirates.
Track planning in draft only. Final tracks will be published second half of January 2022.
Route characteristics
We will mainly cycle on paved roads, which are mostly dedicated cycling lanes. During the Spinneys Dubai 92 Cycling Challenge, all the roads will be closed to traffic. On the second day, we will have some escorted road ride till we reach the Al Qudra cycling tracks which are only open for cyclists. On the other days, if possible, we cycle on minor roads. But some parts of the track see some heavy traffic and cycling lanes are sometimes missing. So sometimes it is inevitable to use major roads. The tracks are flat most of the time, except on the second last day when we’ll experience some climbs. The daily distances are moderate and typically less than 100 km.
