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Two palm trees stand on a sandy beach in front of calm blue water and distant brown mountains.

United Arab Emirates

2016 · United Arab Emirates

CountriesUnited Arab Emirates
Stages4

Route

Photographs (130)

A cozy hotel room featuring two twin beds with striped runners and patterned gold curtains.A white mosque with a dome and minaret stands behind a fence with national flags.A large UAE Commemoration Day billboard showing three soldiers silhouetted beside the national flag stands by a road.A hazy desert plain stretches to the horizon with utility poles and a bare unfinished concrete building on the right.Hazy layered ridges of a mountain range rise behind rocky scree dotted with green shrubs and small trees.UAE flags fly along the median of a curving highway that heads into a rocky mountain gorge.A large portrait billboard of an Arab man in traditional dress stands beside a road with palms and signs.A wide paved boulevard with ornate lamp posts, UAE flags and palm trees stretches toward a emblem roundabout.A large cream mosque with twin tall minarets and a big central dome stands beside a wide road.Tall date palms line the promenade beside a coastal road, with a sandy beach and blue sea beyond.A white high-rise tower rises behind a colorful amusement park with a Ferris wheel and palm-lined median.A beige mosque with twin minarets stands beside a roundabout featuring a large brass coffee-pot monument.A blue snack kiosk and a pickup truck sit on a sandy beach among colorful umbrellas near the sea.A meal of curries and round flatbreads laid out in plastic containers and foil on a gravelly surface.Two palm trees stand on a sandy beach in front of calm blue water and distant brown mountains.A palm tree and a bright spring rider stand on a sandy beach facing a container port across the water.A wide curved beach with tyre tracks meets clear blue-green water, a hill and radio mast rising far off.A gravel beach and turquoise sea run beside a road along a rocky cliff, with a conical islet offshore.A road crosses a gravel plain in front of a huge bare rocky mountain range, with a green tree and warning signs.Two arched tunnel portals bore into a massive grey-brown mountain beside a highway with warning signs.A large white building complex rises behind a construction site with orange machinery, dirt mounds and palm trees.A white domed mosque stands beside beige stone fort buildings at the base of a rugged mountain, with green lawns.A teal ornamental monument stands in a roundabout with UAE flags, green lawns and mountains all around.A flatbed truck passes the clay jar roundabout on Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Road beneath clear skies.

Journal Notes (4)
Day 1 - Arrival

General The journey began with a flight into the United Arab Emirates and a first night in a hotel on the Gulf coast. Little of the day was spent out of doors, and the one picture kept from it shows nothing more than the room itself, two beds with striped runners and heavy curtai …

Day 2 - Through The Al Hajar Mountains

General The second day of the journey left the Gulf coast early and drove east into the mountains, and it ended on the other side of them, on the shore of the Gulf of Oman at Fujairah. The road does not climb gently. It leaves the low plain at speed, runs along the median of a di …

Day 3 - Dubai Gold Market

General The third day of the journey stayed in the city and went to the gold market. The Dubai Gold Souk stands in Deira, on the northern side of the creek, in the quarter called Al Ras, and it is not a single building but a street and a network of covered lanes in which more tha …

Day 4 - Rub' al Khali - The Empty Quarter

General The last day of the journey was the long one. It began in the city, with the skyline in the mirror and the Burj Khalifa standing over it, and it ended a hundred and fifty kilometres south west of Abu Dhabi, on the northern edge of the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter, in …