Bahrain International Circuit
"An F1 grid on one side of the fence, camels grazing on the other."
A Formula 1 track dropped into the middle of the Sakhir desert, and one of the strangest things to stumble across when it isn't race weekend.
I hadn’t planned to visit the Bahrain International Circuit — I’m not much of a motorsport person — but a Bahraini colleague offered to drive me out to Sakhir on a quiet weekday and I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. The track sits in genuinely empty desert about thirty minutes south of Manama, and outside of race weekend in the spring, it’s eerily still: empty grandstands for fifty thousand people, a paddock building sitting silent under the desert sun, the whole compound looking like a stage set waiting for its actors.
They run circuit tours most days when there’s no event, and we did a lap in a regular rental car at regular speed, which sounds unremarkable until you’re actually on the tarmac where Formula 1 cars hit over 300 kilometers an hour, feeling the elevation changes and blind corners that look completely different from track level than they do on television. Bahrain was the first Gulf country to host a Grand Prix, back in 2004, built essentially as a statement of intent about where the country wanted to position itself regionally, and the facility still carries that slightly outsized ambition relative to the size of the island around it.
What stayed with me more than the track itself was the drive back, past a small herd of camels grazing along the perimeter fence, utterly indifferent to the multimillion-dollar racing infrastructure a few dozen meters away. That contrast — desert pastoralism and Formula 1 ambition sharing the same fence line — felt like a pretty accurate summary of modern Bahrain in miniature.
When to go: Outside the Grand Prix weekend (usually March), the circuit offers laid-back tours and even karting sessions on weekday afternoons. During race weekend itself, book well ahead — it’s the biggest event on Bahrain’s calendar.