Panic in the sandpit
By Kendall Hill | smh.com.au | 08 March
The English translation of Rub al-Khali is the Empty Quarter but when you are stranded in the midst of its endless desolation it feels less like a quarter than a bewildering, perilous whole.
Located in the parched heart of the Arabian Peninsula and spread between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen, at its broadest points the Rub al-Khali desert spans 1000 kilometres west to east and 800 kilometres north to south. It is the largest continuous stretch of sandy solitude in the world. And with summer temperatures that leap to 60 degrees at noon then plummet to zero overnight, it would be very easy to die here if you came unprepared.
Fortunately, I have desert veteran Fouad Saimouah looking after me today, and a robust Chevrolet 4WD equipped with fridge and ample liquids. Given the clear and present dangers of this hostile place, another vehicle and driver - James, the affable Kenyan - shadow every kilometre of our journey.
Unfortunately, we spend less than an hour amid the forbidding beauty of the Rub al-Khali when Fouad becomes hopelessly bogged in a pit of sand. All around us are imposing dunes in golds and dusky pinks, shimmering a little silver in the sunlight. It's picturesque but hard to appreciate when you're in a state of mild panic.
"Why he go that way?" asks an incredulous James when he sees our doomed vehicle. "This is danger!"
When I met Fouad at nine that morning in the foyer of the plush new Shangri-La Abu Dhabi, he seemed a little gruff (he'd slept in, he admitted later). He was polite enough - all the Arabs I met were unfailingly polite - but not warm. I wondered how much fun I'd have, stuck in the desert with him for five hours. It turned out I needn't have worried.
The wasteland seems to begin almost immediately on leaving the boundaries of the modern metropolis of Abu Dhabi, its skyscrapers and luxury hotels giving way to a pancake-flat drabness of oil refineries, highways and five-winged power transformers marching across the landscape to bring life to a once lifeless land.
Just 40 years ago Abu Dhabi was nothing more than sand and Bedouin tents, until the visionary Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan began transforming his arid fishing village into a thriving Middle Eastern hub. He even tried to turn the land green by ordering the planting of 150 million trees.
Abu Dhabi is taking a more considered, arguably more cultured approach to the future than neighbouring Dubai. With impending civic projects from the likes of Zaha Hadid, Norman Foster, Frank Gehry and Jean Nouvel, this will be a city to watch in the next decade.
En route to the Rub al-Khali lies a hangar-like building that houses the classic car collection of Abu Dhabi's "Rainbow Sheik", Hamad bin Hamdan al-Nahyan. He is known as the Rainbow Sheik because the Mercedes car company reportedly interrupted its production line to turn out seven different-coloured Mercedes, one for each day of the week, then presented the candy-coloured convoy to the sheikh on the occasion of his wedding. The Mercs, including one striped like a rainbow, have fridges, televisions and telephones and occupy pride of place in the museum - just beneath the world's biggest truck, a Dodge Power wagon that is astonishingly high (it's four times the size of the original) and weighs perhaps 50 tonnes. I was allowed a rare peek inside and saw bedrooms, a comfortable majlis or meeting area, bathrooms and a kitchen. Remarkably, this monstrous vehicle actually goes.
Other highlights of the sheik's eclectic collection are toy cars (tiny Fiat Bambinos, Citroen CX2s, all manner of Minis), tanks, jeeps and a very early Model T Ford from 1908 or thereabouts. In black, of course.
Back on the freeway, heading towards Saudi Arabia, a Lamborghini blurs past us so quickly - the speed limit is 160kmh - that I can't say for sure what colour it is. I'm guessing red.
In contrast to the cabaret of the car museum, the desert reveals its charms more subtly. Here and there along the highway are tree farms established by Sheik Zayed and tended by hardy Afghans or Pakistanis who've swapped their home desert for another, more lucrative, desert. Occasionally, too, we see camel farms containing free-roaming dromedaries.
The Empty Quarter starts near the border with Saudi Arabia and is marked by a gate in a fence. Fouad and James drive through the gate and then stop to let air out of their tyres. It's meant to give the vehicles better traction in the treacherous sand - except in our case.
As Fouad sits trapped in a basin of soft red sand, his wheels spinning angrily, James and I stand on the rim watching glumly. James, a usually cheerful Maasai, is not happy.
"This is very dangerous," he scowls. "The car is going down, down ... it's sinking!"
So it is. It does quite a bit more sinking before Fouad, a wily Syrian who knows the desert well, manages to roar free of the dry quicksand. James is still not happy. He can't believe Fouad could do something so foolish. For my part, I'm more shocked when, after a bout of dune-bashing during which we hoon up and down sand slopes, past tiny oases farming the ubiquitous date palms, Fouad and I sit perched atop a 100-metre, near-vertical dune.
"We're going down this?" I squeak.
Fouad just smiles, switches gears and points the Chevy southwards. As we slowly, painstakingly dismount the enormous dune, I break into a sweat. I would have screamed if I hadn't been paralysed by fear. After the descent, when I'd regained the power of speech, I ask Fouad if any of his previous passengers had ever vomited out of sheer terror.
"Some of them do throw up!" he says. "Other times screaming, crying, begging me to stop!"
It's hard to believe someone once laid eyes on this patch of emptiness and thought, "This would be a great place to start an adventure tourism company that specialises in scaring the wits out of well-heeled tourists." But someone did, and tourists flocked, and desert safaris are now a standard of the United Arab Emirates experience.
Fouad has navigated this terrain countless times, which makes it all the more surprising that we seem to get lost frequently. He takes several wrong turns (quite forgiveable in an environment where there are no landmarks, roads or signs) and more than once we have to retrace our tracks after accidentally arriving at the brink of a terrifying sand mountain. As well, we have to dodge military police guarding the nation's oil installations, and come within striking distance of oil wells several times. The one thing we don't encounter is oryx, the native antelope. Still, it's an action-packed adventure.
Eventually we leave the dunes for the oasis of Liwa, a collection of 52 villages blessed with groundwater, agriculture and shade. We lunch at the Liwa Hotel on Lebanese-style kebabs and stews, but Fouad's and James's attention is locked throughout on an obese young Arab sitting by the pool entertaining a young woman who they guess is from Ukraine. The drivers pretend to be scornful but they can't take their eyes off the couple's scandalous behaviour.
After lunch James leaves us for the drive to Dubai, where the Emirates-owned Arabian Adventures is based. Fouad and I set off in the opposite direction, along the 160kmh highway bound for Abu Dhabi. He urges me to have a nap. "We'll stop at the halfway mark, about 120 kilometres from here. So I'll wake you in 40 minutes." The desert behind us, it's back to life in the fast lane.
Fast facts
Getting there
Etihad flies direct from Sydney to Abu Dhabi from $2030.
Arabian Adventures operates tours in all seven emirates.
As well as the Empty Quarter and Liwa tour, there are excursions to the oasis city of Al Ain, city tours and a popular evening desert tour that includes dune driving, camel rides and a sunset barbecue. It is also possible to stay overnight in a Bedouin tent.
In Abu Dhabi, contact Arabian Adventures at Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Street; phone +971/2691 1711 or see arabian-adventures.com.
Kendall Hill travelled courtesy of the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority.
First published by Smh.com.au on March 08 2008
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