Despite a previous trip to the Northern Emirates, it was still odd to get an email from a friend suggesting we take a trip to the highest peak in the UAE, Jebel Yibir. Isn't the highest point in Dubai?
It takes about three hours to get to the middle of nowhere, UAE. (A bit less if you're not particular about the view.) To get there, take the bypass road to the Dubai bypass road. Despite the double bypass you will have performed, expect to find traffic. But there is happier traffic, as well: dozens of camels happily lolling beside the road. Then, pass through a few small towns, on the lookout for any goats who may wish to cross the road. If you're hungry, stop off at one of the many Pakistani restaurants, where you can get delicious biryani, daal, fresh bread and tea with condensed milk -- but you'll have the wait until the Friday prayers are over. Even the "24 hour" restaurants are abandoned during prayer time.
After some wadi wandering, we found a flat place for our tents. It must have been a construction site at some point -- we found pallets and old metal doors with the UAE falcon, which were useful wind screens for the fire.
We went for a scramble downhill to a wadi, and up a cliff face the next day. Near the wadis there are amazing wildflowers.
From the wadi, we scrambled up our mountain...
...from which we had views of both the east and west coasts of the UAE.
On the way home we stopped off at some crazily orange dunes on the way to the UAE's (heavily irrigated) farmland. The dunes first appeared as a deep orange glow about the horizon....and slowly materialized, into burnt orange sand, stretching in every direction.
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