TL;DR: I made a playlist of videos here. I also made a map of the 4WD trip we did on the second day here.

On Friday 9/8/13 we did a roughly 500km 4WD trip starting in Dubai and heading southeast through Al Awir and Maleihah for some fun in the dunes before heading through the wadis (dry river beds) and mountains for the coast in the emirate of Fujeira. We also crossed through Shajah. This was an epic, exhausting trip. I'd never gone through dunes in ...anything really... before. A friend (I'll call him Jim) who came with us had done it 4 times before and basically used the UAE Offroad book as his starting point. We started with the Fossil Rock route in Hatta (an enclave of Dubai) and then tacked on some other routes taking us through the mountains. This is a very useful guide and I think one also exists for Oman which I'll use when I go there. Back to the dunes. It was amazing to see how the car (a Pathfinder) handled in the sand. It looked like we'd get bogged straight away but must have been reasonably solid as we went along tracks with ease, climbed hills without hiccup - except once ;-) We had been going fine since hitting the sand east of Al Awir and chewing along a track beside a powerline and then through Wadi Fayah. 

Jim was driving, looking for the next section of our route that started from a bend in the road near a large rock outcrop that the wadi bends south at. Because the dunes drift a reasonable amount over time, he initially didn't recognise where to turn off and so we tried to forge a way through. We got about 200m before realising we should turn back as there was no recognisable track and these dunes were fairly soft. So we happily turned around and aimed for the side of a dune we'd just come down. Unfortunately we weren't going fast enough and it just dug in. It's funny to see what the GPS track shows! It happened very quickly and it was immediately obvious we weren't going anywhere. Me: panic mode. Cursing, I jumped out and came up against another problem, burnt feet. I only brought thongs (this is Australian for flip flops) with me and let me tell you, running around in soft dunes in the UAE basically barefoot is pretty stressful. The soles of my feet were actually burned by the end of the day. So I jumped back in and Jim and my other friend Jim B set about clearing the sand from behind the wheels. Turns out it was the best way to get stuck in the sand. We were on a steep slope, it was easy to shift the sand out and Jim just stuck it in reverse and we eased backward. Without much fuss we were on our way again and despite my having a bit of a spit about safety over it I think it was good we had an experience early on of getting stuck and then how easy it can be to recover. It made our jaunt it seem less risky ultimately. Obviously if we had become stuck in soft sand on a horizontal surface things would have ended differently. We'd have had to call for help as we didn't have a winch (and would have had to bury the spare wheel if we did as there were no trees to hook it to). I forgot to mention that the sole of one of Jim B's shoes came unstuck due to the heat so basically we were looking pretty comical! I fear Jim will now have extra items to add to his list of requirements for people he brings on trips.

Just listened to Dichotomy from Absolace' Fractals album, not bad - god I am bad at reviewing music. I want to say it has some satisfying heft but that wouldn't cut it with Rolling Stone for sure).

So anyway we found the route we were supposed to take and headed off northeast toward Fossil Rock and another set of powerlines on the way. The only tracks we had to follow were what looked to be 4 moto riders. This made for a potentially dangerous example to follow though as a bike is feather light compared to 2 tons of Pathfinder. So we used the tracks as a general sign that it was possible to get SOMETHING through there but made sure we checked every dune for drop offs that they would have just jumped off but might have done something else to us. This is also obvious from the GPS track... I had it on constant recording of our position so every time you see it go crazy in one spot that's us checking we're not going to come a cropper over a crest...

An example of this type of problem which turned out being fun to approach (a sign Jim B and I became somewhat accustomed to this dune bashing business) was coming across a very steep long drop preceded by a gentle ascent from some surrounding dunes. The tricky bit though was that you couldn't drive directly over the top of the dune and down because to the left there was another drop off, much shorter but could easily roll us. Because we were in a tall 4WD, we couldn't see anything until over the crest and on the way down the slope. So we marked the way up with a couple of rocks and a line in the sand so Jim would know where to drive to avoid the drop to the left. Satisfied with our plan, we all got back inside (the slope to the bottom was about 40m and much too far to walk in the hot sand), Jim took aim, fired and we all said 'Right!' at the right moment, mildly terrified for the split second it took to pivot over the top, see the descent come into view properly lined up and straight down we went. It was so exhausting because we had to do this about 20 times to just get through about 5km of sand. I think we got into the swing of things though and I can see why Jim keeps going back.