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About this tool
Build a desert safari packing list with the water litres, night-time layers and sleeping bag rating worked out from the day-night temperature swing.
The Desert Safari Packing List Builder turns a desert trip into three numbers that matter — litres of water, the night-time low, and the sleeping bag rating that low demands — and then lists the kit around them. Water is sized from hours of exposure at roughly 0.75 litres an hour on top of a 1.5 litre baseline, capped at a safety ceiling, and weighed at 1 kg per litre. Layers are chosen from the night minimum, calculated as the daytime high minus the clear-sky diurnal swing, which in deserts commonly runs 15-25 °C.
Open Desert Safari Packing List Builder on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter 'Trip length (days)', Travellers, 'Daytime high (°C)', 'Day-to-night drop (°C)', 'Hours outdoors per day' and 'Nights camping in the desert', then tick 'Dune bashing by 4x4' or 'Walking on dunes'.
Read the 'Water to carry' litres headline with the per-person-per-day figure and its weight in kg, plus the 'Night low after sunset', 'Layers needed' advice and the sleeping bag comfort rating.
Tick items off the grouped packing checklist as you pack, then press 'Copy list' for a text version or Reset to clear the ticks.
Litres come from hours in the heat, not a flat guess, and are shown as kilograms to carry.
Layers are triggered by the day high minus the diurnal swing, which is where most desert packing goes wrong.
Includes electrolyte sachets by sweat hours, plus the goggles, gaiters and zip-locks that fine sand makes necessary.
Plan on about 1.5 litres of baseline intake plus roughly 0.75 litres for every hour you are active in the heat, so a six-hour excursion works out near 6 litres per person per day. Treat 12 litres a day as an upper bound — drinking far past your sweat losses dilutes blood sodium and causes its own problems.
Dry air and clear skies let heat radiate away after sunset, so night minima typically sit 15-25 °C below the day maximum. A 42 °C afternoon can still leave a night around 20 °C, while a 25 °C winter day can drop to freezing — which is why the layer set should be chosen from the low, not the high.
Loose, full-coverage clothing in light colours: long sleeves and full-length trousers keep the sun off skin and stay cooler than bare skin in dry heat, with a shemagh or scarf for the neck and a wide-brim hat with a chin cord. Closed shoes matter more than sandals, both for hot sand and for what comes out after dark.
Yes, once you are sweating heavily for several hours. Water alone replaces the fluid but not the sodium lost in sweat, so plan roughly one oral rehydration or electrolyte sachet per four hours of heat exposure. If anyone shows confusion, cramping or stops sweating, that is heat illness — get them cooled and seek medical help rather than treating it with a drink.