The Empty Quarter (Rub Al Khali) is the largest sand desert in the world. We drove to Abu Dhabi and five of us stayed the night in a studio apartment. The plan was to wake up very early the next morning and meet the rest of the group at a gas station near the chosen entry point. It was a long, windy and dusty drive to Liwa, which gave us lots of time to consider everything that could go wrong in this massive desert. As everyone said his or her hellos, we filled up our tanks, took the air out of our tires and otherwise prepared the vehicles for the desert drive. Excitement and apprehension set in. The first climb was easy enough but the first drop was something I was not expecting. Before I knew it the words “holly F&^%” came out of mouth and I was clutching parts of the truck expecting it to flip down the enormous dune. At the bottom we found ourselves in an expansive flat area surrounded by tall steep dunes. From here we were able to appreciate the huge red dunes. The weather was windy and we combated blowing sand, which made driving even harder. The sun was hot and because of the blowing sand, reapplying sunscreen meant an exfoliation treatment at the same time. Much of the day was spent pushing, pulling and at one point attaching five tow ropes together to pull a vehicle out of a very deep sandy pit. When stress levels reached it’s highest a choice bottle was shared and although our spirits remained high and we didn’t stop smiling our priority became finding the other group of drivers and setting up camp. We got there in the end and we dined and drank until the sand in our underwear no longer chaffed.
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