The gentleman who knows each individual sand dune in the desert
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Liwa Desert, Abu Dhabi (News4Social) — When Salam Almazrouei was a boy, he and his friends would play a recreation out in the desert that most people today would come across terrifying.
In the dead of night time, inspite of currently being as well younger to generate in most international locations, they would choose cars out into the massive sea of sand dunes stretching from Abu Dhabi to Saudi Arabia, then convert the headlights off.
With only the moon to gentle the way, they would then race to see who could make it home in the swiftest time.
It was obviously a video game fraught with peril. Choose a improper turn, crack down or get stuck in gentle sand and you’d be on your very own, miles from civilization, left to the mercy of a mounting desert solar that could convey oven-like temperatures through the day.
“But we by no means obtained shed,” he says.
For Almazrouei, these seemingly equivalent dunes, stretching as significantly as the eye can see, are as familiar as streets are to a town dweller. Despite the fact that occasional significant winds can blow the sands close to, the terrain, he states, by no means loses its familiarity.
This corner of Liwa Desert, also acknowledged as Rub’ al Khali or the Vacant Quarter, has been home to Almazrouei’s Bedouin spouse and children for generations. Whilst they’ve now established up houses and businesses in Abu Dhabi’s cities and metropolitan areas, the desert stays in their hearts and they return regularly.
And now the 46-calendar year-old desires to share it. Motivated by his individual intensive travels as a college student and engineer, he’s attempted to brainstorm approaches to enable folks from over and above the UAE engage with and take pleasure in the magic of Liwa.
“At initially, I came up with the thought of placing up a camp in the US, in California, comprehensive with 70 Arabian camels,” he states. “But they did not allow for it simply because of problems more than foot and mouth sickness. And so we then said, ‘let’s set it up below.'”
Swallowed by sand
Liwa Nights characteristics just a handful of tents pitched on a mild slope.
Barry Neild/Information4Social
“Below” is a location of practically otherworldly attractiveness. A smooth blanket of sand that carefully ruffles out as far as the eye can see. At night, it basks less than inky skies alive with stars. Throughout the working day, vibrant daylight and blue skies.
It can be really the middle of nowhere. It really is a two-hour generate south and west from downtown Abu Dhabi, as a result of the small metropolis of Zayed and then an additional hour south until finally the highway reaches just about its final mile right before it can be swallowed by sand.
To accommodate website visitors, Almazrouei has, with the backing of his father, Ibrahim Almazrouei, established Liwa Evenings — an tasteful tented desert camp that sprawls throughout a gentle slope on the edge of the Empty Quarter.
On the outside, the tents’ white, sandstorm-battered exteriors appear functional. Inside, they give pure glamping luxurious.
Ripping back the Velcro-sealed doorway reveals an aircon-cooled interior, lined with plush drapes, carpeted by a traditional rug and lit from above by an elegant lamp dangling from the tent’s lofty ceiling.
You will find a large, snug double mattress produced up with great cotton sheets, a dresser, a wardrobe, a whole-size mirror and a espresso table and chairs. A aspect curtain components to reveal a suitable toilet, total with flushing toilet and a shower kitted out with posh soaps.
If you can pull you absent from considering the extensive emptiness and regulate to the muffled silence of remaining so far from civilization, a excellent night’s slumber is a robust probability.
“I you should not think about it as a resort, but an knowledge,” says Almazrouei. “When you get to your area, you will be amazed that everything has been made by us. When you are in your tent you are in luxury, but stage outside the house and you’re in the desert.”
The tents are furnished with lavish comforts.
Division of Culture and Tourism — Abu Dhabi
For foodstuff and amusement,Almazrouei has constructed a more long term construction close by. Built to glimpse like a conventional Center Eastern household from the 1800s, applying imported African wooden, it has a eating area, bar, indoor and out of doors seating and a memento shop.
On heat nights, illuminated by fairy lights or a flickering campfire fanned by refreshing breezes, it truly is the great area to collect for a great consume to listen to tales of the desert. In the daytime, it’s the meeting position for pursuits including camel treks, falconry or dune bashing 4×4 drives.
The finest time to pay a visit to is through cooler months from October to March. The location stays shut in the course of summer months when it truly is far too very hot. The temperatures only relent, it can be stated, in late August when a vibrant star identified as Sulhail appears over the southern horizon.
Roller coaster trip
If Almazrouei is behind the wheel for a Liwa dune bashing excursion, be well prepared for a roller coaster trip. Utilizing skills honed in the course of his moonlit desert races, he’s a laid-back daredevil, plunging his dune buggy down in close proximity to-vertical descents, or tilting it sideways alongside ridges, nearly to tipping place.
He navigates by the colour of the sand, the vegetation and the condition of the terrain, building a beeline for Moreeb Dune, a colossal slope of sand that towers earlier mentioned a flat basic. Crowds assemble here as soon as a 12 months for the times-lengthy Liwa Festival, which includes 4×4 races up the dune. This year’s function is scheduled from November 22 to December 4.
On the way back, Almazrouei parks the buggy on a dune above the Liwa Nights camp. Listed here, poking out of the sand, is one particular of quite a few large bladders which are consistently loaded with drinking water to supply the tents. It is trucked in as regionally sourced H2O is way also salty.
This is just one of the few indications of human effects on the bordering scenery, which Almazrouei is keen to preserve. Prior to developing the camp, he suggests he employed 60 people to operate for two weeks to get rid of piles of trash remaining on the web site by men and women camping for former Liwa festivals.
He is presently setting up ranks of solar panels with the goal of creating it 100% reliant on sustainable power. And, he claims, he is put in extra than 700 palm trees in the earlier year as portion of an ongoing planting program to increase shade and really encourage wildlife in the location.
And though govt officials who collaborated with him setting up the camp were, he claims, encouraging him to insert 10 or 20 tents to the 10 he presently rents out for about US$750 a night time, he prefers to hold it tiny — evidently not in it to make critical money.
“We want to make it genuine and romantic and hold it as a location to occur and switch off for a number of times,” he suggests.
Amy Zhao, a US-primarily based engineer recently on assignment in Abu Dhabi, is among the all those who have sampled Almazrouei’s hospitality at Liwa Evenings — and liked a somewhat considerably less stress-free journey in his dune buggy.
“I seriously like it,” she says. “It truly is an thrilling and one of a kind practical experience. The tents ended up astounding.”
Liwa Desert, Abu Dhabi (News4Social) — When Salam Almazrouei was a boy, he and his friends would play a recreation out in the desert that most people today would come across terrifying.
In the dead of night time, inspite of currently being as well younger to generate in most international locations, they would choose cars out into the massive sea of sand dunes stretching from Abu Dhabi to Saudi Arabia, then convert the headlights off.
With only the moon to gentle the way, they would then race to see who could make it home in the swiftest time.
It was obviously a video game fraught with peril. Choose a improper turn, crack down or get stuck in gentle sand and you’d be on your very own, miles from civilization, left to the mercy of a mounting desert solar that could convey oven-like temperatures through the day.
“But we by no means obtained shed,” he says.
For Almazrouei, these seemingly equivalent dunes, stretching as significantly as the eye can see, are as familiar as streets are to a town dweller. Despite the fact that occasional significant winds can blow the sands close to, the terrain, he states, by no means loses its familiarity.
This corner of Liwa Desert, also acknowledged as Rub’ al Khali or the Vacant Quarter, has been home to Almazrouei’s Bedouin spouse and children for generations. Whilst they’ve now established up houses and businesses in Abu Dhabi’s cities and metropolitan areas, the desert stays in their hearts and they return regularly.
And now the 46-calendar year-old desires to share it. Motivated by his individual intensive travels as a college student and engineer, he’s attempted to brainstorm approaches to enable folks from over and above the UAE engage with and take pleasure in the magic of Liwa.
“At initially, I came up with the thought of placing up a camp in the US, in California, comprehensive with 70 Arabian camels,” he states. “But they did not allow for it simply because of problems more than foot and mouth sickness. And so we then said, ‘let’s set it up below.'”
Swallowed by sand
Liwa Nights characteristics just a handful of tents pitched on a mild slope.
Barry Neild/Information4Social
“Below” is a location of practically otherworldly attractiveness. A smooth blanket of sand that carefully ruffles out as far as the eye can see. At night, it basks less than inky skies alive with stars. Throughout the working day, vibrant daylight and blue skies.
It can be really the middle of nowhere. It really is a two-hour generate south and west from downtown Abu Dhabi, as a result of the small metropolis of Zayed and then an additional hour south until finally the highway reaches just about its final mile right before it can be swallowed by sand.
On the outside, the tents’ white, sandstorm-battered exteriors appear functional. Inside, they give pure glamping luxurious.
Ripping back the Velcro-sealed doorway reveals an aircon-cooled interior, lined with plush drapes, carpeted by a traditional rug and lit from above by an elegant lamp dangling from the tent’s lofty ceiling.
You will find a large, snug double mattress produced up with great cotton sheets, a dresser, a wardrobe, a whole-size mirror and a espresso table and chairs. A aspect curtain components to reveal a suitable toilet, total with flushing toilet and a shower kitted out with posh soaps.
If you can pull you absent from considering the extensive emptiness and regulate to the muffled silence of remaining so far from civilization, a excellent night’s slumber is a robust probability.
“I you should not think about it as a resort, but an knowledge,” says Almazrouei. “When you get to your area, you will be amazed that everything has been made by us. When you are in your tent you are in luxury, but stage outside the house and you’re in the desert.”
The tents are furnished with lavish comforts.
Division of Culture and Tourism — Abu Dhabi
For foodstuff and amusement,Almazrouei has constructed a more long term construction close by. Built to glimpse like a conventional Center Eastern household from the 1800s, applying imported African wooden, it has a eating area, bar, indoor and out of doors seating and a memento shop.
On heat nights, illuminated by fairy lights or a flickering campfire fanned by refreshing breezes, it truly is the great area to collect for a great consume to listen to tales of the desert. In the daytime, it’s the meeting position for pursuits including camel treks, falconry or dune bashing 4×4 drives.
The finest time to pay a visit to is through cooler months from October to March. The location stays shut in the course of summer months when it truly is far too very hot. The temperatures only relent, it can be stated, in late August when a vibrant star identified as Sulhail appears over the southern horizon.
Roller coaster trip
If Almazrouei is behind the wheel for a Liwa dune bashing excursion, be well prepared for a roller coaster trip. Utilizing skills honed in the course of his moonlit desert races, he’s a laid-back daredevil, plunging his dune buggy down in close proximity to-vertical descents, or tilting it sideways alongside ridges, nearly to tipping place.
He navigates by the colour of the sand, the vegetation and the condition of the terrain, building a beeline for Moreeb Dune, a colossal slope of sand that towers earlier mentioned a flat basic. Crowds assemble here as soon as a 12 months for the times-lengthy Liwa Festival, which includes 4×4 races up the dune. This year’s function is scheduled from November 22 to December 4.
On the way back, Almazrouei parks the buggy on a dune above the Liwa Nights camp. Listed here, poking out of the sand, is one particular of quite a few large bladders which are consistently loaded with drinking water to supply the tents. It is trucked in as regionally sourced H2O is way also salty.
This is just one of the few indications of human effects on the bordering scenery, which Almazrouei is keen to preserve. Prior to developing the camp, he suggests he employed 60 people to operate for two weeks to get rid of piles of trash remaining on the web site by men and women camping for former Liwa festivals.
He is presently setting up ranks of solar panels with the goal of creating it 100% reliant on sustainable power. And, he claims, he is put in extra than 700 palm trees in the earlier year as portion of an ongoing planting program to increase shade and really encourage wildlife in the location.
And though govt officials who collaborated with him setting up the camp were, he claims, encouraging him to insert 10 or 20 tents to the 10 he presently rents out for about US$750 a night time, he prefers to hold it tiny — evidently not in it to make critical money.
“We want to make it genuine and romantic and hold it as a location to occur and switch off for a number of times,” he suggests.
Amy Zhao, a US-primarily based engineer recently on assignment in Abu Dhabi, is among the all those who have sampled Almazrouei’s hospitality at Liwa Evenings — and liked a somewhat considerably less stress-free journey in his dune buggy.
“I seriously like it,” she says. “It truly is an thrilling and one of a kind practical experience. The tents ended up astounding.”