Rub’ al Khali (Day 83)
The Rub’ al Khali is the largest continuous sand desert in the world. It is natural, empty, and unchanged by the centuries — in many ways, the polar opposite of Dubai. The kids simply viewed it as the world’s biggest sandbox.
About 32 times the size of Massachusetts, the Rub’ al Khali has almost no water and very little life. Even today, few people attempt to cross it by foot or camel. Stretching across Saudi Arabia, UAE, Yemen, and Oman, it is so otherworldly that many movies are filmed here, including Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was shot about 20 minutes from our hotel.
When we arrived, we were excited to explore! This is only only desert stop on the trip, so we wanted to make the most of it. We took a beautiful morning walk, watching the sunrise over the sand dunes.
Then we decided to take an adventurous 4 wheel drive “dune bashing” ride.
That was awesome — until both kids started feeling sick
Later, Jamie had fun exploring the dunes on a fat tire bike.
We wanted to do a camel ride, but the kids refused at first, saying they were scared of camels. It turned out that they had heard (correctly) that camels can spit on you if they sense danger! We promised them that these were friendly camels, and, after a while, off we went on our camel ride.
Did you know that when a camel finds water, it can drink over 50 gallons in 3 minutes? Or that they have 3 sets of eyelids and 2 rows of eyelashes to keep out sandstorms?
The desert was glorious at sunset. And nice for sunset yoga.
We also did a desert night walk, seeing the best starry sky of our lives. There was no light and no noise - not even any bug or animal noise since it is so desolate. Just pure silence and millions of stars. But there were also no pictures because it was so dark!
*****
Falcon Show
We loved seeing a desert falcon show, where we learned so much about these amazing birds.
The peregrine falcon is the fastest animal on earth. It can dive at over 240 mph, more than 3 times as fast as a cheetah!
A falcon can see 8 times as far as a human, allowing it to spot prey up to 2 miles away.
The falcon trainer wields a long stick with a lure on the end. The falcon dives at the lure as the trainer tries to whip it away.
Here, a falcon swoops over our heads.
Here, another falcon comes over us in slow mo.
The Falcon is the national bird of the UAE. It has long been used for hunting and was a sign of royalty. Today, falcons are crazy status symbols in the UAE. Falcons can cost $20,000 — much more for a racing falcon. There is even a special falcon hospital where your falcon can have a feather transplant if she is injured.
People take their falcons to other countries to hunt because falcon hunting is banned in the UAE. All these traveling falcons have lead the UAE to require every falcon to get a passport. Really! The UAE has issued over 30,000 of them. Not surprisingly, many falcons fly in first or business.
