Empty Quarter Day 1
Jackamy
Paul & Derry Harper
Fri 11 Mar 2011 00:18
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Friday 11th March
We set off on an overnight trip
into the desert with Miss Tippy, Blue Magic and Sol Maria. Two 4WD vehicles
driven by Saeed and his son Ahmed collected us mid-morning. Our first stop
was Wadi Dowka, a vast plane littered with Frankincense trees.
Boswellia Sacra (The Frankincense
Tree) is one of the most important aspects of the Arabian Peninsula's history.
Sprouting from limestone rock, it is leafless and lifeless for much of the
year.
Frankincense is formed from
small beads of white or amber coloured sap that ooze from incisions made in the
bark, which are then left to harden in the sun.Tradition dictates that
the tree is a gift from Allah, it cannot be propagated, bought or sold, only
harvested if it happens to be on your plot of land.
  We stop for lunch at the town of
Thumrait. Before we set off again the boys feel they need to look the
part and go shopping for a headscarf known as a gutra.
  Thumrait, the middle of
nowhere.... Our drivers Saeed and Ahmed
We leave the main
Salalah-Thumrait Highway and travel the old Frankincense Trail towards the town
of Shisr. After 175 kilometres from Salalah we reach " The Lost
City of Ubar", discovered in 1992 through satellites, by
a team of Explorers led by Sir Ranulph Fiennes. According to legend, Ubar otherwise known as the Atlantis of the the
Sands, was the crossroads of the ancient Frankincense trail.
  The Quran states that God
destroyed Ubar because the people were decadent and had turned away from
religion, but archaeologists are more inclined to believe that it fell into a
collapsed limestone cavern.
  The ancient city, once buried
in the sands is now excavated, giving us a glimpse of history
The sealed road suddenly leads
onto a rougher graded road. We drive for another hour then turning
right, we head off road and into the desert.
   The tyres are deflated to give
the traction needed to drive through the dunes.
The Empty Quarter (Rub
al-Khali; the Abode of Silence). The sculptured sand dunes, for which the Empty
Quarter is famous, rise over 300 metres and form vast chains of dune ridges,
stretching over hundreds of Kilometres. Shifted by the wind, sand dunes can move
at a rate of up to 30 metres a year.
    Playing hide and seek in the
dunes
We drove deeper into the desert;
just before sunset we started looking for the ideal site to set up camp.
Rugs were laid out between the cars and the boys collected some
kindling to start a camp fire.
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