The Desert Has a Strange Effect on First-Time Visitors

You can spot if someone is looking at the desert for the first time.

Initially, they may treat it just like a beautiful view. Something to capture with a camera from a distance. A brief stop between the city attractions such as the Burj Khalifa, Dubai Mall, and a beach sunset afterward maybe. But when the car leaves the highway and the sand starts to stretch in all directions, there is a change in the atmosphere.

The city disappears quicker than expected by the people. The tall buildings hide themselves behind the low sand dunes. The roads become rarer. Soon it’s only the wind, the car, and the never-ending desert that doesn’t seem to bother the human time schedule.

And this is the time when tourists start to have questions. How far does the desert go?

Are there really people living out here? What if someone gets lost?

The desert tends to do that. It silently makes people intrigued. A big part of it is the vastness. UAE deserts are not empty as like in peoples imaginations. They are landscapes with subtle features – dunes that are shifting, vegetation that is scattered, the occasional camel that is observed lazily wandering across the horizon. Yet the deserts are so vast that your perception of distance changes.

Another bit is the silence.

Cities hardly ever permit authentic silence nowadays. Even at night, there will be traffic somewhere, a distant siren, a humming skyline. In the dunes, once the car is off, the silence seems almost tangible.

Tourists perceive it at once.

Some of them start going along the ridge of a dune just to check what effect their steps have on the sand. Others sit down and end up looking at the horizon for a long time unexpectedly. A few sandboarders even get a kick out of the deserts own brand of humor when gravity completely takes over.

Before long the sun is setting.

You do not stay there long and the light changes.

Gold turns into deep orange, shadows stretch across the dunes, and suddenly the same landscape that looked harsh in the afternoon feels calm and strangely beautiful.That momentwhen the desert cools and the sky starts filling with coloris usually when first-time visitors understand why people keep coming back.

Dubai is well known for its skyline. Abu Dhabi for its architecture.

But the desert?

Thats the serene core of the area.

You dont really know the Emirates until youve been on a dune at twilight and seen the wind altering the sand underneath your very eyes.

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