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Published: December 21st 2007
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Once again my obsession with this place drags me 500 odd kilometers into the barren wasteland to experince utter silence and stark beauty at its best. Pitch dark roadways, chattering cold tents, undies full of sand, rattle snake tracks and inflatable beds have become something I am starting to get comfortable with! I've done a lot of solos on this sector and always felt it was a long way from home. The road never seems to end. The constant humming of tires go on ceaselessly urging you to silently take a nap on the wheel. Add to it the fatigue of driving for four straight hours you know what you have. A perfect disaster! But this time, it was different. The drive didn't seem so long, I didn't feel so lonely and I ofcourse I didn't experince that special feeling of being absolutely with yourself in the middle of nowhere!
On the team this time was my trusty gang Kavita and Kaushal, who had nothing better to do than to hang around in UAE for these holidays. This is what happens when u don't plan in advance chumps!! I mentioned to them I was off this weekend to
Say what?
Discussing eveything under the sun or is it stars? liwa and the next thing we know we were on the road. The good thing abt them is they had absolute trust in me in where ever I took them. I mean it was the freakin Saudi border with not a light in sight. Pitch dark and I mean it!! About 500 kilometers away. 20 kilometers from a medical store or a food source But they never uttered a word. Maybe its their faith in me or that secret knife Kaushal may be hiding some where in his pack 😊
Anyways we hit the road at about 11pm after saying goodbyes to my girl (who BTW could not come coz of christmas preps at her home), drove for 200 odd kms and stopped for food in a fuel station. Drove another 200 odd kms and stopped by on a desolate stretch of road to get some car pics. The moment we looked up was the moment it all changed for us. It was Beautiful!! I have never seen so many start at one time in my life. It was the damn milky way puttin on a show for us. I counted atleast 5 shooting starts in 15 minutes, it
was like raining starts that day. We took our time admiring the starts and making silly wishes everytime a shooting star appeared. Sadly I did not get good enough pics, gotta work on that star photography now.
We took off after much grumling about the nose freezing cold and drove all the way to Madinat Zayed to look for cigaretts, which we didn't find resulting in a big frown on Kaushal's face. The only thing open in that small little town was Barber shops! Weird but anyways. After looking around in the bylanes we decided to rough it out without nicotine and off we went to the dunes. After one hour of driving in absolute darkness with an abyss on either side it tends to get on your nerves. You just dont know where you are headed and it was clearly pissing off Kavita. We didn't bother stopping or anything. Just went straight to the end of the road at Moreeb Dune, found a nice little camping place and pitched out tents, all with the help of one teeny weeny LED torch. I was impressed! I and kaushal took care of the tents and kavita filled out our inflatable
beds with her little magical pump. With that done we sat around the tents reviewing the pics we took on the way, enjoying the starry view, freezing a little bit and wondering why in the hell did we come here! Ofcourse I had to be blamed for that but I was just waiting for the sun to rise and show them my side of life. The untamed and unconquered. One hour into the night it got extremely cold. I had a thermal sleeping bag and decided to suck it up but Kaushal and Kavita had to retreat to the cozy warmth of the car to get through the night. Trust me, it was DAMN COLD! This was when I missed the fire wood, but our experince in Al Ain kinda made me apprehensive about it. Anyways we made through the freezer in one peice and Kavita woke us up in the moring as she does on all our outings. How does this girl manage to get up!! Or does she sleep at all?
We booted up, decided to leave our tents where we pitched them and headed for the dunes immediately. After twenty odd minutes of dragging ourselves across
the salt flats we reached the first big dune. Thats when we realized the enormity of the whole thing. From far it looked like any other dune but it took us forever to reach it and it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The clouds were gently touching the tops and it reminded me of all those hills back in India but wait a second this is a dune! How high can this be? One thousand feet! Yeah with a 50 degree angle its a bitch of a climb. There is a reason why they call it Moreeb Dune - Scary Mountain! No kiddin! I could see Kaushal's facial expression bordering somewhere near absolute happiness and pure paranoia. Since I was not particularly in a suicidal mood I decided to take the team to the next highest peak and made it up in fairly good time. But during the climb I had to leave Kavita at the foot of the dune and Kaushal just 30 feet shy of the summit. He decided to just sit and enjoy the vista than to slog it up. Everyman to himself so I kept going and reached the top 10 minutes later. Took
some awesome pics and realized I was sweating like mad even with wind temperature at 18 degrees!!
Slowly but reluctantly I made my way down to where Kaushal was and then we headed down towards Kavita who by now was nicely lying down on her Naga Shawl and day dreaming. We joined her on the make believe "Flying Carpet" for a well deserved rest. With our tummies making noises we decided its best to get some grub. So thats what we did, after another twenty minutes of trotting on the salt flats. Took our time with enjoying the sandwiches, fooling around and putting away the tents. By midday we were back on road, heading to Abu dhabi for lunch. After what seemed like a very long drive we made it into the town, stopped in the first Lebanese restaurant we could find and ordered some weird fish called "Ibrahim Sultan" and Kebabs. One thing about the restaurant, they had massive industrial size Flies!!! Man that was annoying. We took turns at swatting them flies and ate like there is no tommorow. Since it was Kav and Kau's first time in Abu Dhabi I though it would be a good
idea to show them around. So I took them to Corniche road and let them off to explore on sea coast while I take a desparately needed nap.
After an hour or so we were back on road and Kavita was in her worst nightmares by now. A maniac sleepy driver, a metal coffin hurtling down the highway at 190kmph!! Kaushal kept his cool no doubt, which I suspect was mainly coz he didn't have the front seat view of a suicide attempt that Kavita had! To add to the drama I acted like I am slipping off to sleep which made Kavita scream like a little 12 yr old girl. Hehe. All in all it was one hell of a trip which was rounded off with a beer and coffee at Kaushal's cribs. Phew! One more trip and back to the end of the world!
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Yathi
Yathi
U said it!!