$7.99City Highlights
Dubai Audio Walking Tours
Self-guided, narrated walks through Dubai. Buy a tour once, download it, and hear the story at each stop while you walk at your own pace.
Tours from $7.99
Friends walk free. One purchase covers everyone on your walk. Start the tour, invite your friends to join, and it plays on every phone in your group.
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Dubai audio tours
Each tour is a mapped route with narration at every stop. Buy it once and it is yours to keep, no subscription.
$7.99City Highlights
$8.99City HighlightsWhat to expect on a Dubai audio walking tour
A Dubai audio walk takes you back to the town before the towers, through wind-tower lanes and covered souks on both banks of the Creek, with wooden abras still crossing the water the way they have for generations.
The Al Fahidi & Creek Walk starts on the waterfront at Al Seef, winds through the shaded lanes of the Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood with their coral-stone walls and wind towers, and passes the Grand Mosque and the covered Textile Souk. It stops at the Bur Dubai abra station, where wooden water taxis cross to Deira, and finishes at Al Shindagha, the strip of restored houses where Dubai's ruling family first settled in 1833. It covers 2.5 kilometers, about 34 minutes, over 6 stops.
The Deira Souks Walk starts at Al Ahmadiya School, the city's first school, then works through the Spice Souk, the Gold Souk and the Perfume Souk before reaching Naif Souk and the working dhow wharves along the Creek. It finishes at Baniyas Square, once the commercial heart of the city. It runs 3.1 kilometers, about 43 minutes, over 7 stops, all on flat, busy streets.
Both walks follow the same stretch of water from opposite banks, Bur Dubai's quieter heritage lanes against Deira's working souks, and either crosses the Creek by abra if you want to link them into one longer outing. Evenings from November to March suit both best, when the heat has faded and the gold shop windows and spice stalls are at their liveliest.
Where to walk in Dubai
A few of the stops you will pass, and why they are worth slowing down for.
Al Shindagha
This strip of restored coral-stone houses at the old mouth of the Creek is where modern Dubai began. In 1833 a group of around eight hundred people from the Al Bu Falasah, a branch of the Bani Yas tribe, settled here from Abu Dhabi, and the Al Maktoum family have ruled Dubai ever since. Shindagha became home to the ruling family and to wealthy merchants, close to the water and the trade that fed the town, and the courtyard house of Sheikh Saeed bin Maktoum, ruler from 1912 to 1958, still overlooks the Creek as part of the restored district. Today the quarter forms the Al Shindagha Museum, telling the story of Dubai and its Creek across a string of houses and pavilions.
Al Fahidi's Wind Towers
Square towers like this one rise above the Al Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood's rooftops, old Gulf air conditioning known as barjeel, open on all four sides at the top to catch the breeze from any direction and push it down into the rooms below while warm air escapes. The quarter was long known as Bastakiya, after Bastak in southern Persia, and merchant families from that coast moved here in the early 1900s when Dubai's ruler made the town more welcoming to traders with lower duties. The walls are coral stone and gypsum, with roofs laid on poles of mangrove wood, and today the restored courtyard houses hold galleries, small museums, cafes and guest rooms.
Bur Dubai Textile Souk
A long arcade of timber beams and arches shades this lane, with bolts of silk, cotton, brocade and sequined cloth spilling out of the shopfronts toward the walkway. This has been a market street for generations, its trade looking across the sea to India, and many of the shops are run by families from India and Pakistan, with tailors nearby able to turn a length of fabric into a shirt or dress in a few days. Alongside the cloth you will find pashmina shawls, embroidered slippers and lamps. Haggling is normal here: ask the price, offer a fair amount lower, and meet somewhere in the middle, keeping it friendly throughout.
The Spice Souk
Open sacks and baskets line both sides of this covered lane, piled with chilies, turmeric, cinnamon bark, cardamom pods, rose petals, hibiscus flowers and the little black dried limes called loomi, which Gulf cooks drop whole into rice and stews for a sharp, smoky sourness. The pale, glassy resin in some bowls is frankincense, the dried sap of a tree from southern Arabia and the Horn of Africa, burned for its fragrant smoke since ancient times. Cardamom is the heart of Arabic coffee, gahwa, poured in small cups as a sign of welcome across the Emirates, and many of the traders here have family roots in Iran and India, the two coasts this market has always connected.
The Dhow Wharves
Wooden dhows line the quay here, sometimes several deep, their high curved bows facing the water with cargo piled on the dockside waiting to be loaded by hand: tires, refrigerators, sacks of rice and crates of food, stacked high on deck. From here dhows still sail to ports in Iran, Pakistan, India and East Africa, much as boats from this Creek have for centuries, and many of the crews come from those same coasts, often living aboard while their boats are in port. Hulls built by eye by master craftsmen still carry this trade even in an age of container ships, one of the most remarkable working sights anywhere in the city.
Get the Audio Tour in 3 Simple Steps
All in the free Walk With Me app, and the first stops of every tour are free to try.
Tap the Gold Headphones and Pick a Tour
01
Walk It Solo or Invite Someone
02
Press Play and Walk
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Handcrafted for Your Time in the City
These tours aren't a checklist of sights. They're made to be walked slowly, headphones on, eyes on the city.
Meditative and Immersive
Each story is told where it happened. The app chimes when you reach a stop, one tap starts the story, and the stretch between stops is yours to take in at your own pace.
Handcrafted With Care
We choose every route and every stop ourselves and shape each story with care, so the time you have in the city goes to the places most worth seeing.
Better With Someone
Every walk is better with someone beside you, so if you can bring a friend, we really hope you do. That's why one purchase covers everyone you invite: they join your tour free.