We covered the most famous tourist dune bashing areas with a distance of 80 km. Considering the weather during the daytime where the heat goes above 45 degrees, we decided to start our early in the morning at 5:45 am start time. Everyone reached on or before 5:30 am and started to deflate the tire pressure to 15 PSI, fixing the flag at the rear end.
Margam
The drive started exactly at 5:45 am, all the 4×4 systems were activated in all cars and the drive started at a slow pace to enter the desert. As always the Overlanding drives start at easy tracks to check the car’s 4×4 performance, warmup session for drivers as well.
Most of our drives are overlanding style, our common objective is to explore the scenic, learn dune bashing techniques, create memories and reach the end point with utmost safety in mind.
Al Fayah
In total, we were seven 4×4 cars – 2 FJ Cruisers, 2 Land Cruisers, 2 Nissan Xterra and 1 Jeep Wrangler. The day started with a scenic view where we saw many camels at the beginning of the drive and it is a routine walk for camels to search for food. Off Course, everyone took out their cameras, gopro started filming who will miss?
We covered many desert sections following Margam Sharjah – Jabal Nazwa – Big Red – Camel Rock – Al Fayah – Jabal Mulayḩah / Fossil Rock.
In the middle of the drive, one of the car tires (right side) popped out at the side sloping area. It gave all of us an opportunity to learn to fix the tyre back which took 45 min and the heat was shooted up already to 40 degrees.
Now, all set to continue our drive. The marshall who leads the convoy decided to take up an easy route avoiding big dunes and slide sloping areas to avoid cars getting stuck further or not allowing any damages to the car / passengers.
Jabal Nazwa
We also saw many road constructions going on in the desert areas. Remember the drives are fun with cautions and any small mistakes can make bad things like car rollover or accidents!
Always the thumb rule in dune bashing is the drive pattern should be decided based on the least experienced driver in the convoy. As said, the overlanding is not a race! The objective is to enjoy the drive and reach the destination with a lot of memories.
Al Fayah – Jabal Mulayḩah / Fossil Rock
All went fine without much difficulties and reached to top of the Jabal Mulayḩah / Fossil Rock, a famous tourist spot located in Sharjah. We all were happy to see each other that we reached the destination within planned time and the total desert drive took 4 hours, maximum elevation is 287 m!
Finally, we reached the fuel station to refill the tire pressures and said goodbye to all our fellow drivers to connect with the next drive…..
