Liwa desert camping

Go a little past the town of Madinat Zayed, past the last homely house, and you'll be in dune country. 

We followed our (more intrepid) friends there this weekend, driving into the desert in search of a quiet, empty place to camp. Steerforth was game.

Nick was pretty game, too. 

With significant coaching, he made it up to our campsite....

...on the third...

...or fourth try.

We didn't count too carefully. 

Relieved, we set up our tents (check out our fancy green sand tent!), and discovered that we had the dunes to ourselves.



Liwa is tremendous. Alone in the dunes, a few hundred meters away from our campsite, the desert was ours, and it was empty. We lay in the sand as it cooled down, and watched sun set and the stars pop out of the sky.

We've never seen so many. 

Liwa Oasis

After nearly a year of living in the desert, we finally made it to the desert proper!  Abu Dhabi consists of about 85% of the UAE by land mass, only a small portion of which is Abu Dhabi city.  Much of the inland area is known as the Empty Quarter, once the home of the Bedouin, and first mapped out by Wilfred Thesiger on foot in the 1940s, just as oil exploration was beginning.





The Empty Quarter is the largest sand desert in the world, but there are oases.

Oasis is a relative term -- there is a bit more sand than green.  The absence of the usual desert scruff means that the red sand can form incredible dunes.

The dunes are other-wordly -- they reminded us of Luke Skywalker's home planet. Apparently we aren't the first to think so; Star Wars was shot here in May.

In fact, the cast and crew rented out our entire hotel for a month.

It was very hot during the day, but grew more pleasant at sunset.  We scurried up some dunes to get the best view.

 We saw sand spiders....








...little lizards (too fast for our camera) and beetles.

But mostly just enjoyed playing in the beautiful sand formations as the sun set....and lolling in the warm dunes to watch the stars coming out. 

A quick jaunt to Oman

 

We should go to Oman more often, we concluded after our trip last weekend. It has everything. Huge rock formations....

 

 

Dinky towns that boast multiple castles.

 

 

Carpeted boats....

 

 

....fit for a young sultan....

 

...or even his lady.


These gentlemen are probably closer to being sultans than we are. When asked how many children he had, the man on the right first said he didn't know. Unsettled, the Dutch man who had asked inquired again, and got a vague mumble: "dozens." Nick had a brief conversation in Arabic with them, which involved much laughter.



We were on the Musandem peninsula, at the tip of the Arabian Peninsula. Though it is surrounded completely by the Emirates, it is part of Oman, a vestige of the tribal affiliations. And, unlike the northern emirate of the UAE, Ras al Khaimah, it is wonderfully empty.

Look carefully, and you'll see a tiny fishing town. No signs. No fancy hotels. Want to get there? You'll have to take your own boat, and you'd best speak Arabic.



There are other, more accessible towns, but they are almost as small and quiet as this one. And that means that their beaches are even quieter, though some are surrounded by little fishing boats. You can camp on many of them, including Bukha beach, with no questions asked. We will be back soon, sand tent in hand.


And when we do go back, we will take our new kayak, and will likely skip the carpeted boat. But the boat trip was marvelous. Here are butterfly fish (or so we're told), swarming to eat little pieces of apple.

 

And here are the peninsula's famous dolphins, playing nearby.

 

 

 

Perhaps they were more exciting in person.

 

The boat took us to Telegraph Island, which the British used to string wires to India in the 19th century.

 

 

We had a lovely hour of swimming in the coral reefs surrounding the island. We saw starfish, sea slugs, all sorts of medium sized fish, and a few different kinds of coral. And then it was back to Khasab, where there is a wonderful beach, just outside of town.

 

 

...with little huts to shelter in...

 

 

 
...lined by jagged rocks.


And populated by small children, a few people intently doing calisthenics, and some goats.

We ate dinner in the most beautiful parking lot on earth, surrounded by craggy cliffs, a crescent moon overhead, and calls to prayer ruffling the crowd mid-way through our meal.

 

 

We were happily reminded  of Washington's core strengths on the trip up.

 

 

No other apple comes close....but Oman's beaches will give Seattle's a run for their money.

 

Camping at Jebel Yibir

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.