Dune bashing in the Empty Quarter of Dubai
It would be rather inglorious of me to complain, so I won’t, but if you are a professional travel writer and accept an invitation to join a press trip from a tourism board then you have to accept the good with the bad. For instance, let’s start with the fact that every single trip a travel writer ever receives will include a mandatory visit to a museum, usually found at the top of the list. I have nothing in particular against museums, or at least I didn’t for the first fifty or so of them I visited, but I am forced to admit I have seen more than my fair share of museums in my life and in all honesty often I would rather have gone to the mortuary instead. Some are fabulous, some are not, but no matter what is shown on the itinerary you have to attend or else pretend that you have a fatal illness or contagious disease.
In retrospect, never mind the boredom of going to endless museums, what is known as “dune bashing” has taken pride of honour on my list of “don’t ever do such a stupid thing again.” I was on a media trip to Dubai, a member country of the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East. I will confess that my only reason for going to Dubai was that I had never been to the Middle East before and might never do so again, but Islamic culture is finding its way to the western world through various terrorist activities and what is a burka anyway? The itinerary wasn’t very interesting. Dubai is one of the fastest growing cities in the world, with the world’s highest building, soon to be the world’s largest airport, world’s largest shopping mall, those sorts of tourist activities. We went to the top of the world’s tallest building. We went skiing indoors. For some reason we went go-karting. I didn’t pay any attention to the mention about dune bashing because it was tucked away as the last item on the itinerary and I had no idea what it was.
The first item on the Dubai itinerary was the mandatory visit to the local museum, of course. Ha ha, didn’t I just complain about that? Evidently Dubai as a dwelling place never existed until the discovery of oil (and air conditioning) because human beings can’t actually exist in a region like Dubai. This has something to do with the temperature. In summer in snuggles up to 55 degrees Centigrade, which can’t be translated into English because it scares small children and boggles the mind of global warming skeptics, but I believe it’s about 150 degree Fahrenheit. It was a very short museum visit to what amounted to a faded old tent and a carpet hidden behind a bush where Mohammad used to tie his camel. Evidently some brave people went pearl fishing in the old days in the creek, maybe to make money but probably as a way to get out of the godawful heat.
We were rounded up for our dune bashing adventure at our hotel by a gentleman wearing a wraparound white garment and driving a very large white SUV. All SUVs in the UAR are white and the people in Dubai are very tanned. The deployment for our group every day always went the same way. We would gather and stand in the lobby where it was very, very air conditioned. The car, limo, bus or SUV would park as close as possible to the front door, pre-conditioned to sub-Arctic levels. We would rush to the vehicle as quickly as possible in a mad scramble, taking about 15 seconds to complete the task, and then collapse inside saying: “My God it’s hot out there.” Or maybe we said: “”By Allah, it’s hot.” I forget now. Our white SUV on this dune bashing day was enormous, with three rows of seats big enough to seat 8 people and room for lots of luggage. Add a machine gun mount on the roof and you could have invaded a small country with it.
Our group featured an extremely large lady from Los Angeles. In fact she was so obese she could only wear sweat pants and a sweat shirt as her daily attire, usually sporting large sweat rings under each arm. She was also loud, strident and deliberately obnoxious. On this occasion she jumped happily into the front seat and yelled out: “I claim first dibs.” Our driver explained to her gently that we needed to allocate the weight evenly throughout the vehicle so as to prevent it from rolling over as we attacked the sand dunes and requested that she sit in the back seat. He pointed to me with my video camera already rolling and said I should sit in the front instead to shoot footage. I weighed more than the large lady but I guess I smelled a lot better.
It was about an hour’s drive from our 5-star luxury resort in Dubai out to the Empty Quarter. All of Dubai and most of the United Arab Republic is scrub, a bleak desert enlivened only in the city itself with planted palm trees and some very expensive green grass carefully watered at great expense near the hotels. The Empty Quarter, on the other hand, is what you might imagine a real desert to look like, long rolling hills of red sand shaped by the wind, nature’s roller coaster, mile after mile of playground receding off into the distance where they keep the vestal virgins. It was eerily beautiful. Nobody lived there of course. There was no water and no shade. The difference in temperature between the interior of the SUV and outside was at least 50 degrees F. You only opened the window once for “fresh air” and never did it again.
We arrived at the edge of the rolling hills (“dunes”) and waited. For some reason I had assumed that our group would be alone, one car with 5 terrified writers and a driver/guide versus the mighty desert, but not so. Soon there was a cavalcade of cars lined up behind us, about 30 giant white SUVs with green tinted windows, motors purring to keep the air conditioning howling. Apparently our driver was either the owner of the company or the manager or a position of authority, because he pulled out a radio and started barking orders. This left me, the videographer, at the very front of the entire pack with an excellent viewpoint and thereby not eating thin red dust as every other passenger behind us would soon be doing.
The driver put away his radio and turned to address us. “It is important that we discuss emergency matters before we proceed,” he said in his ever-polite style. Emergency matters? We all sat up and paid attention. It was a long way back to a hospital from way out in the void.
“First you must know that you must keep your seat belts on and fastened tightly at all times,” he said, tugging on his own belt as an example. “Secondly, and more important, is that under no circumstances whatsoever are you to puke inside the car. If you are going to puke, you must yell immediately and I will stop the car immediately. I hope you understand this instruction correctly.”
With that we were off, attacking the first dune with extreme vigour. There were no paths or indicators where we should go. The dune was over a hundred yards high and we simply plunged at it full speed but on a slight right angle. As we approached the top it occurred to me that the driver might not know what was on the other side. If so, what would happen then? Within a second we were airborne, a giant car flying through the air with the greatest of ease to the accompaniment of some serious screaming in the back, which was quickly followed by a yell demanding that the vehicle be stopped immediately, whereupon Bruce from Ottawa yanked upon the back door and deposited his breakfast in the fine red sand.
“Yes, very good,” said our driver, “that is the right way. Anyone feels sick, just give a shout.”
Sitting in the front seat while attempting to film, my own challenge was to stop my face from bouncing off the front dashboard. I had one hand on the camera and the other bracing myself on the roof so as to not be launched through the windshield. I saw through the rear mirror that everyone in the back was holding on to a window strap with one hand and the other jammed against the roof to stop from breaking their necks, stark fear stitched deeply onto their faces. I wasn’t sure if the puking was due to the physical dynamics, which felt like a roller coaster that had gone off the rails, or the sure terror of wondering if or when we were going to die. My own stomach was perched right underneath my chin looking for an escape route.
“How do you know which route to drive?” I asked through gritted teeth. “Have you been here before? Have you memorized the trails?”
“I come here every day,” he replied cheerfully, turning the a/c up a notch to sub-zero. “The wind changes the dunes every day, so there is no path. I come here for several years. I just drive by feeling it. Every driver behind, they all follow me. If we don’t crash, they know it safe.”
For some reason this re-assurance did not accomplish what I hoped it would. I remembered a description in a magazine I had read about “extreme skiing,” where highly experienced skiers threw themselves off remote mountain peaks where no one had ever skied before, not knowing where they were going to land, an idiotic passion that seemed akin to attempted suicide. Why would anyone do such a stupid thing? Here I was doing the same thing myself, not in fluffy white powder but in a huge car in the middle of a blisteringly hot desert closely followed by 30 other cars all performing ridiculously similar stunts just for the sake of raw thrills. It was beyond stupid.
“If you don’t know where you are going,” I asked, clearing my throat nervously as we sped up the side of a sand mountain so steep I wondered if we were going to flip over backwards, “how do you know where to land? Have you ever rolled a car before?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” he replied as we flew through the air, “several times I have rolled the car, but not lately. That is why I give the warning about having the seat belts.”
The casual fashion in which he shared this valuable information did not calm my nerves either. The car slid sickeningly sideways as he fought a long slow drift downhill, the sideways motion eliciting loud moans from the rear, followed by shrieks as we crested the next peak and flew into the void of the other side. We were leaving a vapor trail behind us of fine red dust and I wondered how those drivers following could possibly see where they were going. I gritted my teeth and kept on shooting video while saying nothing, thinking that if I had taken the trouble to ascertain in advance the exact nature of this adventure then I could have stayed behind and wandered around the world’s largest shopping mall and enjoyed a bit of serious people watching, some women wearing the full bedsheet and veil and others wearing red hot mini-skirts and pushup bras. Dubai is very modern. They don’t throw you in jail for wearing short pants and they won’t execute you for blaspheming the king, although I think turning off the air conditioner is a capital offense.
When our driver ascertained that our group had reached a state of utter dread and might possibly puke in the back seat of his luxury automobile en masse he announced a break for “lunch,” parking on a fairly flat spot soon followed by 30 other SUVs totally caked in red dust. The passengers staggered out, about 200 of us looking like we had been in a fire fight with ISIS, as we all collapsed on the ground for want of a better idea of what to do. In no time at all sandwiches and bottles of cold water had been handed out, and the drivers all sat in the shade next to their SUVs where it was only 140 degrees and chatted while the rest of us sat stunned in the sand and full sun and wondered why we were still alive.
After a short break we all climbed back in the vehicles for a second go-round before we died of sunstroke, this time grimly aware of what was going to happen to us, the only uncertainty being who was going to get killed first. Once again we flew through the air with the greatest of ease, this time our driver adding some serious skids and sideways slides just to liven up the affair and to make sure we got our money’s worth. When the screaming died down to a mere crying for help he called it a day and announced it was now time to go ride some camels.
I don’t know about you, but if I have somehow survived a day trying to kill myself in the front seat of a large car driven by a homicidal maniac, when the nearest hospital is far away and if you run out of gas or water bottles you will die before sundown, then riding a camel is very high on my list. Far more relaxing, although the beasts have large teeth and are known to spit and bite. We drove out to an “oasis,” which consisted of a few shrubs that somehow clung to life, parked our all-white army, and waited our turn to climb on and ride a camel for 30 seconds as a photo opp to show folks back home just how intrepid a traveler you really are, like Lawrence of Arabia, although I think a puke camera in the back seat of any of the SUVs would score far more hits on social media. I gave my camera to our still-shaking tour leader so she could snag a quick shot of me riding a camel, ha ha, which is why the photo is somewhat out of focus. The feeling was like riding a horse, only with longer strides and much smoother, without your gonads being whacked relentlessly and your voice subsequently rising with each bounce.
The best aspect of this so-called oasis was encountering the world’s largest carpet surrounded by barbeque pits and toilets for which there was a scramble. Evidently, as the sun went down, we were going to be treated to both a banquet and a belly dancing show. If they had added a cold beer to the mix I wouldn’t have minded, but no booze in Dubai. The carpet was about the size of JFK airport, and around it were placed hundreds of tables on the sand, with the barbeque pits behind the tables roasting various bits of the meat of unknown animals. Glancing around, I noted that most of the tourists appeared far more roasted than the meat. There was no shade. The temperature had dropped to about 120 F and those without enough sunblock looked ready to expire. I held up my hands and watched with wonder as 10 little waterfalls fell from my fingers. This is an excellent weight loss opportunity that I can recommend to anyone not subject to heat prostration.
The sun drops quickly near the equator at dusk, otherwise tourists sitting outside of an air conditioned car will die by the minute. I grabbed a paper plate of some religiously-approved meat (not pork, that’s for sure), along with some greens of an uncertain nature, and yet another cold bottle of water, and enjoyed as fine a belly dancing show as I had ever seen, which is to say it was the first and last one I have ever seen. After a day of harsh physical abuse, this was the first opportunity to actually relax, if you don’t include “melting” in that category. The belly dancers did all the sweating, which was a considerable amount indeed. I think if any person did the belly dance in the Empty Quarter of Dubai for half an hour, that person should quality for the James Brown Sweat Hall of Fame.
All good things must come to an end, and after surviving a day of near death in the savage heat of the Lost Quarter we climbed back into the same seats we had enjoyed earlier in the day. There was definitely an odour in the air, not necessarily eau de camel but something very close. The morbidly fat lady from Los Angeles had been rendered comatose from multiple plates of food and was now even more odiferous. The rest of us were rather ripe ourselves. The lure of our fine 5-star hotel rooms and cool showers back in Dubai kept us going. I kept my fingers away from the a/c which was actively blowing a part in my hair that had never existed before. I was looking forward to a good sleep in a plush bed.
“The problem with the wind changing every day,” said our guide, cranking the a/c up to maximum impact levels, “is that you never know which way the car will roll on the dunes. For instance, if it blows from the northeast, then you know the crest will form on the southwest….” And so it went. It was a long drive back, but I am pleased to report at least the road was flat. I am also pleased to know that nobody puked inside the car, which I understand is definitely a beheading offence in the region, if you don’t die from heat stroke, eating dust, or a a camel bite first.