Words By: Mike Nott
Photos By: Alf Wild, Heidi Cothron, Shaun Ellis, Mike Nott and Susie Harris
Having just read the title, you’re now probably asking yourself, “where?” The Al Maghrib is something of a well-kept secret, though once you realise it’s as far from Dubai as you can get in the UAE, you may begin to understand why. If you are reading this, you will probably have a penchant for the outdoors and the associated activities that take you there and, no doubt, you will have heard of Liwa. You may have visited and even driven through parts of it, or even all of it. Undoubtedly, the dunes of Liwa are the most imposing in the UAE, but Liwa is no longer the place it used to be.
If you decide to head down there for a bit of off-roading you will encounter some testing and sublime dunes, but if you want to do more than have a blast in a localised area, you will encounter recent developments that have rendered – in my eyes – Liwa a little bit passé now. Major road and track developments, oil and gas infrastructure and the new impenetrable fence-lines, including the forth coming railway is reducing Liwa to a shadow of its former “emptiness.” So, where should off-roaders go now in the UAE if they truly want to get away from it all? The answer to that is the Al Maghrib.
The Al Maghrib is the expanse of desert to the west of the Liwa crescent road. It is enclosed by the UAE-Saudi border to the west and south, by the Ghayathi to Arada road to the east and the Ghayathi to Um al Ishtan road in the north. It is a couple of times larger than the Liwa area; I have driven for over 200km in the Al Maghrib dunes and not seen another tyre track in the sand. This really is the place to get away from it all.
(Though my experiences of the Al Maghrib did not get off to an auspicious start).
My first attempt to cross the Al Maghrib was from bottom to top, a straight line distance of about 150km along the reasonably direct route I’d planned: starting at Al Birer, near the UAE-Saudi border, and finishing at Um Al Ishtan in the north. If I’d been cleverer, I would have realised that we’d be heading into the leeward side of the dunes and that by doing so, would encounter less than favourable driving conditions. Driving up, or trying to avoid ascending, slip faces is not a great plan. In fact, it was a terrible plan. There were 10 cars in total, which I’d split into two groups and after eight hours of driving we’d covered 4.5km! The sand conditions were atrocious. Sand that more closely resembled talcum powder was met at every turn and we had multiple bogg-ins. We traversed a dune bowl, from which three cars couldn’t get out. Another car burnt out its clutch and we had numerous cars with tyres off their rims – in short, something of a small disaster. And to add insult to injury, we camped on the first night almost in sight of the main road we’d left that morning.
The following day, I scouted out a route through the dunes on foot that was as simple as I could find back to the road. I marked the line of the route by drawing direction arrows in the sand and eventually reached the main road. I walked back, doing a final check of the route and then led everyone out. Ironically, we reached the road again in about 30 minutes. We then needed to rescue the car with the burnt out clutch. Towing was considered, but the intricacies of the dunes meant that that method was going to be the very last resort. Fortunately, this was the time when the road from Arada to Al Birer was being built and there was a lot of heavy plant being used. We managed to persuade a nearby road construction team to lend a hand and they drove their CAT D9 bulldozer the 4.5km back into the dunes to tow him out, for which we were very thankful.
Needless to say, I just had to go back and complete this crossing. Several months later I went back but with a smaller and more experienced group. This time we started from Um Al Ishtan, in the north of the Al Maghrib and headed south, which was a much better plan. On the first day, we’d covered 120km, camped in among some spectacular dunes and by the next day we had knocked the route off the list without any hiccoughs. There were some sights to be seen on that crossing. The dunes were stunning, but during the early stages, we encountered sandstone outcrops at the bottom of slip faces and these needed to be carefully avoided. We also encountered some stunning and lengthy dune plains separated by sublime dunes ridges, concealing long slip faces and tricky bowls.
We happened upon some isolated plantations, one in particular was memorable. It was in the bottom of a large bowl and had an enormous Ghaf tree to one side. The diameter of its trunk must have been at least four feet and in its shadow a very deep and active well. We even came across a buried GMC pick-up truck, which was way beyond help. We didn’t encounter anybody else, any tyre tracks, any roads or tracks along our route, not even into the plantations. From that first crossing I realised that this was the best desert area in the UAE and wished to see more of it. On subsequent trips, the routes became bigger and more tortuous in order to cover as much of the Al Maghrib as possible. Consequently, the planned route for the final exploration was over 230km of dune driving and was a series of ever increasing zigzags.
This is an area that is well worth the extra effort required to visit it. You can manage it in a weekend, but you will be driving for many hours and an extra day would make the whole experience more relaxing. The newly refurbished Ghayathi Guest House (02 874 1003) is near to the start point at Um al Ishtan, and the Liwa Hotel (02 882 2000) is not that far from the finish, but the best bit is the excellent camping in the dunes of the Al Maghrib. You are advised to take extra fuel, be prepared and be able to rescue yourselves if it all goes pear shaped. In fact, why not have a look in the guidebook, and do either Routes 1 or 2, depending on your ambitions.
