Preparing for a mid-week camp and drive is always very rewarding knowing that while some folks are stuck in the city, we would have the whole desert to ourselves for Yoda’s Bowl drive.

Setting off mid-day there was many miles to cover to reach our entry spot near the border of Oman and Saudi in the famous Al Qua corner and taking almost 3 hours to reach me made great haste to get there with a few hours of daylight to enjoy a bit of dune surfing before setting up camp. We managed to make excellent time and after deflating explored a newer area towards a camp site settled in the middle of some golden red dunes with gorgeous views of the monster sand mountains, we intended to climb the next day.

Our camp was truly magnificent and the only sound that pieced the silence of this deep desert was the crackling of the fire and the sizzling of the grilling food. A truly satisfying experience around the fire in the cooler months enjoying nature, a great meal and some beverages, before hitting the sleeping bags for a good night’s rest to take on the next day’s challenges.

The next morning was an early rise and pack up to warm up the engines and start the drive. With a quick break breakfast and coffee, we hit the first dunes with nice warmup on a few bowls that got progressively bigger. a few sharp crests later the biggest dune in the area revealed itself at the base of a large salt pan, Y61 Hill. though this hill looked to be very popular with the locals to climb it seemed as if it had not been touched for a while, so we just had to put some track up, down and all along the side slopes. moving on along this row of blows had us finding some incredibly soft patches and sharp crests as well as a few very high-speed bowls.

Halfway through our route we ran into a military fence and decided to head to a better-known area, following some of our tracks made the day before to reach some of the very best diving dunes in Qua. the next 2 hours was spend burning fuel cresting massive sharp crests into endless bowl formations and being mid-week, the sands were trackless as well as the benefit of having them all to ourselves. This section turned out to be the highlight of the trip because of the smooth and fast transitions from one dune formation to the next, to the next, to the next……

As the mid-day sun was over head it was time to head towards the exit after 130km, inflate and head back to the mundane city life to prepare for the next Al Qua adventure. Thanks, Malcolm, for a great get away