Three weeks of planning, 30 Kilograms of meat, 7 kilograms of chicken, 8 boxes of water, 4 boxes of soda, 1 Landcruiser, 2 FJ Cruisers, and 7 guys. That is what it took to make an adventure of a lifetime. The perfect group of people to take a nomad trip to the most beautiful desert in Saudi, sleeping outside in the night sky is amazing, the sky is so clear you don’t need lights at night, the moon lights up the whole area its fantastic. You feel your chest clearing up from all the fresh air coming in, no telephone signal in the areas we were in. First night we came in and found our main camp site, and for each night we had a different camp site going in deeper and deeper into the desert. We had the Garmin 276c with the updated Saudi Desert maps, so we can coordinate our locations, walkie talkies are a must for these trips, and all the fighting takes place across the radio waves.

Took us about 5-6 hours to get to the first camp site, we started the fire to get some tea going, the smartest thing we did was have dinner before heading out to Saudi. You need a certain list of equipment for the cars, cooking, sleeping, precautions, and emergencies. I had an Iridium Satellite phone which was only to be used during emergencies, it looked like something out of 24 to call those bomber planes in the air. Then there was the air pump, jump start cables, battery charge unit, and tow cables. The tow cables I got were rated at 30’000 lbs with huge hooks at the end, they look menacing and we had to use it once because of an incident but I won’t mention that. Then there was a case that I was facing a flat tire in the rear tire, but we kept pumping up the tire and it would last the whole day so I decided not to change the tire, but when we got to Kuwait I found that the tire had two screws and one piece of would in it, those Yokomahas are tough tires, not the best but they did a fantastic job.

There were stretches of sand that we were flying over 100 kph per hour as if we are in a Dakar Rally, it was insane and my blood was pumping to an extreme point, it feels like you are floating on clouds when you are going over the soft sand. Then there was the amazing white and black camels all around, so many different kinds in all the dunes area, these camels didn’t care about us what so ever. These are some majestic dunes, they are at least 7 to 10 stories tall with dune up dune, with deep basin’s inside of them, even with pictures they don’t do reality justice, and the sand is so clean and orange, its amazing. There was even some dunes at about 20 stories high but I would have probably flipped the car backwards trying to climb it.

We had a three part day, morning for breakfast then we had out, then we find another location for afternoon break, then we head out in search for another location to find the best sleeping place. There was one point where we picked a location which was slightly slanted, and in the morning I woke up with one guy’s knee in my back and the other guy’s foot in my chest, luckily everyone was in a sleeping back. The most amazing thing was seeing the clear sky it was beautiful, you can see all the stars, you can see clearly until the horizon, it was a sight to wake up to in the morning as well. We got some rain the first night, it was a continuous light drizzle but the fire lit up and we slept perfectly fine, a little water didn’t hurt. The best part of the afternoon and evening stops was playing Risk, we played strategically making our alliances, and playing unexpectedly, I was more a Kamikaze during that game then trying to win, my goals were offense oriented, I tried killing off certain people with nothing else in mind. People were shouting, treaties were made, and troops were decimated, it was fantastic and the best time to play that board game.

The best part about it is how hungry we got, or pretty much how hungry I got and at night I would devour the food. Some of us would pass out right after, and I woke up few times at night, and I would feel some ice on top of my sleeping back but my morning it would all be gone. Some nights it got really cold but overall the weather was fantastic and I loved every moment. This was probably one of the funnest trips I had in a long time, I want to do it again, and I have a few ideas in mind for the next trip.