A wall of sand fills the windscreen, rising higher than my neck can crane and blurring into the heat-hazed horizon on either side. I swallow the grit sticking in my throat and give a pathetic cough. I don’t want to do this. I’ve said it several times but no one seems to be listening. My friend Marc is urging me on, filled with his own manic adrenaline rush. It’s okay for him. He didn’t roll the off-roader yesterday in training, and that was only on a 20-foot slope, into a soft ditch, with no one watching. Today, the golden wall stretches 320-feet up into a darkening sky. I’m second to the guide car on a sunset safari tour in Wahiba Sands, Oman, with eight Land Cruisers waiting impatiently behind me. Their camcorders are poised ready to post my tragic, if faintly stupid, death to the internet, and I’m terrified.
“You’re going to love this,” Marc says, bouncing in his seat like an excited child. I think I’m going to be sick and he’s not helping. “Remember, follow the guide’s tracks to the top. Keep the power on, high revs all the way, and for Christ’s sake don’t stop. You ready?”
I nod, fast and nervous, like a pecking chicken. Suspicious doubts flicker on his face as I put his Land Cruiser into first and then avoid his gaze. My heart is trying to thump through my ribs and sweat glistens on the steering wheel from my slippery palms. It’s now or forget it forever. “Perhaps we should…” Mark begins, but I jam my foot onto the accelerator and the sudden, high-pitched roar from engine drowns out his worries.
I’m hurtling at a sand dune taller than Big Ben, fighting against the giant car as it bounces through ruts trying to throw us off course. I’m sure we are going to slam into this over-sized beach and be swallowed alive by the desert. The revving becomes a painful wail and then we hit the slope and soar. A reckless, petrified mania takes over as we charge up the dune. My hands slip on the wheel and I’m sure the brute of a car is going to slide off the vertical line, dig its wheels in and flip over.
Marc is yelling instructions at me. “More speed! Come on. Everyone’s following you. Don’t touch the gearstick!” I stare wide-eyed at the fresh tyre ruts in front, desperate to follow the snaking line. “Straighten up. Watch it!” The wheel jerks in my wet hands, a violent lurch to the left as a tyre snags in a hole. I over-correct, slewing in drunken curves, wrestling to get back on course. My shirt is sticking to my back and sweat stings my eyes but I daren’t blink. Despite the mosquito-whine from the engine, we’re losing speed and I still can’t see the summit. “Go! Go!” he shouts. “I’m trying!” I yell back. We both start bouncing inside the car, willing it up the last few metres. If I get stuck, so does everyone else, and then there is only one way to travel. Reversing down a 300-foot dune is guaranteed to end in a sandy coffin.
I glimpse the indigo sky through clouds of dust. “Come on, come on!” I scream. Just as I’m giving up hope, we breach the top of the dune and sand billows across the car. Buckets of grit screech beneath the windscreen wipers, hiding the stunning views over eastern Oman.
I follow our guide over the top of the dunes, slewing left and right through deepening trails in the golden sand. Day turns into dusty twilight. “Watch the edge! Watch the edge!” Marc squeals, peering out of the window at our wheels spinning in space.
The endless desert blurs with a vast sky somewhere on the horizon and our convoy stops high on a ridge. Nestled at the foot of the dune, I can just make out the ramshackle tents of the Bedouin encampment we’ll be staying at tonight. As the sun dips towards distant hills, the cars empty and passengers watch for the dying sun’s green flash but my eyes are elsewhere.
Shadows cut into the tracks behind us; black lines in the vast sea of sand. It is desolate and beautiful, a constantly shifting painting and I can’t quite believe I made it here to see it.
About the Author:
I won New Travel Writer of the Year – 2013 from the British Guild of Travel Writers. I also won several short story competitions hosted by The Telegraph, Daggerville, and Creative Ink and was runner-up in several other competitions.
I worked for the Ministry of Defence in research and development, travelled and worked across the world as head of IT projects for an oil company, and then left to concentrate on writing.
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