7 Oct 2025
I have always carried one car fantasy in my heart: a 1980s Porsche 911 SC Targa. That taut roof, the mechanical purity, the way it turns every corner into a ballet — it is the automotive equivalent of a handwritten love letter. I can’t afford it yet (unless I sell a kidney), but when a chance arises to spend a day driving something close to that dream, I am first in line. Sunday’s Porsche Farmhouse Escape, behind the wheel of a 911 Carrera Coupe, was one of those days.
Porsche Centre Dubai isn’t doing another showroom parade; they are offering an all-day lifestyle journey. Called Farmhouse Escape, the experience combines driving, gastronomy, culture and nature into a single loop. It runs from September 26 to October 19, 2025, and features 12 Porsche high-performance models, waiting for participants to pick their steed.
Porsche 911 Carrera Coupe
I want more of this kind of brand experience — where you don’t just feel admiration for the product, you feel reconnection with place. Porsche’s route is carefully drawn through the Hajar Mountains, stopping at heritage, geological wonders, oasis villages, until culminating in a farmhouse brunch retreat. The 911 Targa GTS is on offer too, for those who want to flirt with the roof-off ideal.
Porsche 911 Targa GTS
The first major stop is Buhais Geology Park, about 50 km southeast of Sharjah. The structure itself is a work of art — five interconnected pods by Hopkins Architects (inspired by fossilised sea urchins) that appear to hover over the desert floor. The pods lightly rest on concrete discs so as to disturb the fragile terrain as little as possible.
Inside, you are transported through time. Fossils, immersive theatre, interactive displays show the region’s marine past when it was underwater, then the tectonic forces that raised the Hajar Mountains. Outside, walking trails slice past ancient burial tombs from the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages tied into the Jebel Buhais necropolis. The park has won architecture awards (MasterPrize, WAN, etc.). I could linger there all day, but the engine was calling.
By the way, Hopkins Architects also designed the Turtle Sanctuary on Al Qurum Beach — a project so discreet and poetic it almost hides from attention. Both Buhais and the sanctuary share the same DNA: low-impact, sculptural forms that echo nature’s logic. Where Buhais mimics fossilised sea urchins, the sanctuary resembles shifting dunes, housing rescued sea turtles before they return to the Gulf. It is a rare case when modern design doesn’t fight with the desert — it hums along with it.
From Buhais, we drive deeper into the mountains, curves where a Porsche feels less like a machine and more like an extension of your will. The road climbs, dips, throws dust at your mirrors, and demands control. It is not just driving — it is a conversation with asphalt and air.
Then we arrive at Hatta Heritage Village, perched among stone walls, watchtowers, and old courtyards. It is the kind of place where your phone silences itself for humility. You wander through rooms with artefacts, silences, creaking doors, wind whispers — reminders of a UAE before glass, steel, megamalls. It is beautiful in contrast: modern car meets ancestral stillness.
But the heart of the journey is Villa 891 Retreat. Porsche has transformed a traditional farmhouse into something magical. You step through a courtyard, birds overhead, palms, cool breeze. Then the food begins. A brunch so good I ignored every calorie, every macro, every inner fitness coach that screamed “account for it.” The local salmon there deserves its own tribute poem.
Between courses: live acoustic music, rooms where you can try local honey, press biscuits, even make your own candles. A swimming pool where mountain peaks blush at your reflections. Jenga games in shaded nooks. Books. Quiet. The kind of luxury that doesn’t shout — it whispers.
And for those who enjoy slow, quiet moments — Pair Boutique’s Cigar Experience: hand-rolled cigars paired with layered aromas, set against the calm of the mountains.
By late afternoon, I sat poolside next to the Carrera Coupe, its silhouette smeared by sunset. The mountain ridges behind it looked like geological sketches coming alive. The drive back to Dubai felt slow, in the nicest possible way.
By the time I reached back to Dubai, the city’s chaos felt somehow quieter — or maybe I just stopped fighting it. That is what a Porsche does to you: not just speed, but perspective. The Farmhouse Escape reminded me that the real luxury isn’t horsepower or design (though, let’s be honest, those help) — it is the ability to slow down in a place that is built to move too fast. The drive was a loop on the map, but it felt like a reset in the mind. And if Porsche ever decides to turn this escape into a permanent retreat, I will be the first to sign up — not for the brunch, not even for the car, but for the silence between the gears.
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