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Share your story: How did you become an off-roader?


Gaurav

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I'm sure everyone will have different stories to share on how did they become an off-roader?

I'll start with mine.

I was happy being spoil with luxury sports car back in those days. One day my girl friend whose my wife now, got a free desert safari passes from her office and "forced" me to join. I was not at all interested based on my previous desert safari experience of being cramped with several strangers in one car and eating sand through out the trip. But she managed to convince me and during that trip she had an awesome time as she was sitting in front and kept of screaming on every dune and ridge.

This made me inspire to sell off my Lexus GS430 and buy the king of off-road (myth) - Toyota Land Cruiser.

She joined me for 3 drives and then she got bored thereafter, but I got the sand addiction for rest of my life.

Time to hear your original story now, whether you wanted a "freedom", "explore nature", "beat the traffic" or "impress your girl" ;-)

 

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Back in Belgium I’ve always been a bit of an outdoors person. Grew up in a small town so we only had few friends and spent days fixing our bikes and playing in the woods. I’ve always had this dream of exploring the wild but only after arriving in Saudi Arabia in 2012 and seeing the magnificent deserted areas I became more hungry to explore more and find unspoiled places, seeing farms and meeting locals, but my 4x2 FJ Cruiser forced me to stay on the hard farmer tracks. I’ve left Saudi and went back to Belgium for a while and was happy to be able to get a job in Dubai. I bought a 3 series beemer but after meeting few new friends in the community that went camping often, I realized the fun in Dubai only started off-road so tried to find a 4x4 commuter car which was big enough to take the kids to school but small enough to enjoy in the dunes. Fell in love with my little blue Pajero and found Carnity from searching info about my car and that’s how I ended up here. Wifey later sold our Beemer and bought a LWB Pajero as family / adventure car. And now both addicted off-roaders 🤣

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"Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further."

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Though I am still one of the most Newbies with only 1 and a half rides, I have realized this is what I have been looking for since 2010, when I was 24 and I was living in Chile as an exchange student. 
A group of crazy friends and I decide that it would be great to buy an old VW Kombi and fix it to fit 9 of us to hit the roads of South America from Chile down to Tierra del Fuego, and up again until Rio. The truth is we only made half of the way, and the van broke in the middle of the Argentinian Pampa, but the previous unbeaten paths were amazing.

So here I am, in Dubai with a small Pajero and my wife, who was one of those adventurous friends, joining (still not bored) to every weekend trip.

 

476C1F3B-80FB-4571-A514-091F04B69230.jpeg

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For me it all started 11 years back when after my fourth desert safari I saw a bunch of Jeep Wranglers and realized people have clubs and can venture out on their own. I had a Toyota Echo at the time and with a greed of saving around 45 minutes by doing a little desert stretch. I almost made it once, but with a stuck situation I decoded to read, some clubs at the time had awesome posts and was good for 6 months read. But just reading was not going to be sufficient, I needed some hands on experience. My wife had a Mitsubishi Outlander AWD, I had my first mountain drive in that and soon realized how important a proper offroad vehicle was.

At this point I sold my Toyota Echo and went for a Jeep Commander 5.7 Hemi. It was just to get some experience and save my 45 minutes on that Sharjah to Dubai stretch. With my holiday cancelled by my office and no family in the house, I used to do up to 4 desert drives a week for 4 weeks. By now unknowingly I had been addicted to offroading. Desert had become my best friend and with the measures put in place by Sharjah police my saving 45 minutes was short lived.

It's been since that I have not looked back and been around the desert. Honestly my love of the desert has survived, but not to push my boundaries to discover what I can or cannot do. My passion is to make more like minded friends on the way I can teach and learn from to have a safe passage through our beloved terrain.

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From childhood I have been more or less an indoor person. My first offroading experience was the GNFD 2012 in Liwa. It was a fantastic experience to see the vastness of the desert. After that I did the GNFD 2013 in Lisalli. It was a real struggle through some of the technical dunes and it turned me off from offroading.

Then in Jan 2017 I received a notification from Carnity about an Absolute Newbie drive in Maliha. I had a rough week at home and office, and just wanted to get away. That's when I met Gaurav and Rahim Bhai for the first time. That drive showed me how beautiful nature is, if we are willing to step out of our comfort zone.

The two of them not just became off-road friends but brothers for life. They were there for me when I had an incident on my second drive and ensured that I reached home safely. It's been 3 years and I have been out with the Carnity family every weekend. Drives for me these days are just to meet everyone, chat, have karak tea and ofcourse have Aloo Parathas

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I have always loved driving. It was the thing i most wanted to do from an early age, sitting behind my dad in the car pretending. I got my driving licence within 5 weeks of my 17th birthday (the age a licence was allowed in the UK) but had been driving for years before that. On motrobikes, or 'borrowing' my parents' cars when they left them at home. Perhaps I was the original inspiration for Ferris Bueller?

Take a look at my car history, you'll see that I have had a lot of vehicles, normally just one at a time but sometimes as many as 4. None of these was new, some were classics in the making, some I knew were already classics, but all of them had character. 

A day driving through the Negev desert with friends got me hooked on the possibilities of offroading. We spent a day in a few jeeps just crossing the empty desert. Nothing extreme, just a day of cruising through wadis and valleys and crossing otherwise unreachable places (if you were there with another sort of vehicle). 

It took me another few years until I was able to convert my wish into a vehicle. I had made sure my (then) wife had a wonderful car for our growing family, I had a TR6 that was my first passion and business was good.

One day I was invited to a corporate fun day which involved a number of 4x4 treats, including blind jeep driving. There was also a 4x4 course at the end the day.

That was the clincher and within a month I treated myself to a 2nd hand diesel SWB Nissan Patrol. It was officially a work car, so was kitted out with Leather seats and all mod cons.

My wife organized for me to go on a full day 4x4 driving course, which was brilliant and exciting and massive fun in SJ413s and Land Rovers and that was it. I was determined to get off road. 

I also joined the 4x4 club and as a result spent one day every weekend after that for around a year taking my car and some giggling girls strapped into their child seats through muddy tracks and water filled paths mud plugging - as it's called in the UK. 

My Patrol was cleaned meticulously after every trip. It was all part of the fun, seeing the mud drain away leaving my jeep clean on the street each week. 

Life has a strange way of teaching us lessons, because just as I bought my next 'toy' (my Yamaha GS1A motorcycle) I got offered a job in the Netherlands. The toys did not come with. From having pretty much my dream garage (the family car was a V6 Citroen XM with all the Bells and Whistles), all the cars were sold and I ended up living in the Netherlands with a Honda Motorbike and a Fiat Multipla (please, please stop laughing, it's a great car). 

Roll on 20 years, a divorce and two global financial meltdowns and a redundancy  later which drained the bank account, I end up in Dubai with my wonderful new wife. 

Off roading was high on my list of things that I wanted to do again in coming here. Problem was that this was new to my new wife. When we spoke about a car for her here in Dubai, she was talking about a small city runaround, maybe a nice sedan. 

We went to see quite a few cars, exotic or otherwise, but none of them fit the bill. Then one day, our TJ was advertised. With some trepidation I took my darling wife out and let her know on the way that our outing was to test drive a Jeep [that I have to admit, I had test driven a few days earlier to check it was everything promised].  

Within 10 minutes of sitting behind the wheel, she was hooked on the car. Next challenge was to identify an opportunity for off roading and after a bit of research it was clear that an organization called Carnity was offering the easiest way to try out desert driving. 

The rest, as they say is history. I knew I would love it, but was a little worried that my passion might not be shared. I should not have worried. Not only is this now my weekly fix to clear my head from the stresses of my working week, it's a shared hobby so there's never a question of having to choose between our being together and my hobby on my day off. Now the biggest challenge is getting behind the wheel as much as I want. A very small price to pay for having found my way back into my natural environment - high up, behind the wheel of a 4x4. 

See you soon in the sand. 

Edited by Wrangeld
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11 hours ago, Wrangeld said:

I have always loved driving. It was the thing i most wanted to do from an early age, sitting behind my dad in the car pretending. I got my driving licence within 5 weeks of my 17th birthday (the age a licence was allowed in the UK) but had been driving for years before that. On motrobikes, or 'borrowing' my parents' cars when they left them at home. Perhaps I was the original inspiration for Ferris Bueller?

Take a look at my car history, you'll see that I have had a lot of vehicles, normally just one at a time but sometimes as many as 4. None of these was new, some were classics in the making, some I knew were already classics, but all of them had character. 

A day driving through the Negev desert with friends got me hooked on the possibilities of offroading. We spent a day in a few jeeps just crossing the empty desert. Nothing extreme, just a day of cruising through wadis and valleys and crossing otherwise unreachable places (if you were there with another sort of vehicle). 

It took me another few years until I was able to convert my wish into a vehicle. I had made sure my (then) wife had a wonderful car for our growing family, I had a TR6 that was my first passion and business was good.

One day I was invited to a corporate fun day which involved a number of 4x4 treats, including blind jeep driving. There was also a 4x4 course at the end the day.

That was the clincher and within a month I treated myself to a 2nd hand diesel SWB Nissan Patrol. It was officially a work car, so was kitted out with Leather seats and all mod cons.

My wife organized for me to go on a full day 4x4 driving course, which was brilliant and exciting and massive fun in SJ413s and Land Rovers and that was it. I was determined to get off road. 

I also joined the 4x4 club and as a result spent one day every weekend after that for around a year taking my car and some giggling girls strapped into their child seats through muddy tracks and water filled paths mud plugging - as it's called in the UK. 

My Patrol was cleaned meticulously after every trip. It was all part of the fun, seeing the mud drain away leaving my jeep clean on the street each week. 

Life has a strange way of teaching us lessons, because just as I bought my next 'toy' (my Yamaha GS1A motorcycle) I got offered a job in the Netherlands. The toys did not come with. From having pretty much my dream garage (the family car was a V6 Citroen XM with all the Bells and Whistles), all the cars were sold and I ended up living in the Netherlands with a Honda Motorbike and a Fiat Multipla (please, please stop laughing, it's a great car). 

Roll on 20 years, a divorce and two global financial meltdowns and a redundancy  later which drained the bank account, I end up in Dubai with my wonderful new wife. 

Off roading was high on my list of things that I wanted to do again in coming here. Problem was that this was new to my new wife. When we spoke about a car for her here in Dubai, she was talking about a small city runaround, maybe a nice sedan. 

We went to see quite a few cars, exotic or otherwise, but none of them fit the bill. Then one day, our TJ was advertised. With some trepidation I took my darling wife out and let her know on the way that our outing was to test drive a Jeep [that I have to admit, I had test driven a few days earlier to check it was everything promised].  

Within 10 minutes of sitting behind the wheel, she was hooked on the car. Next challenge was to identify an opportunity for off roading and after a bit of research it was clear that an organization called Carnity was offering the easiest way to try out desert driving. 

The rest, as they say is history. I knew I would love it, but was a little worried that my passion might not be shared. I should not have worried. Not only is this now my weekly fix to clear my head from the stresses of my working week, it's a shared hobby so there's never a question of having to choose between our being together and my hobby on my day off. Now the biggest challenge is getting behind the wheel as much as I want. A very small price to pay for having found my way back into my natural environment - high up, behind the wheel of a 4x4. 

See you soon in the sand. 

I've heard same thing about the Multipla from other ex-owners. Ugly as a halfgrown bat, but very practical and comfortable.

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"Go as far as you can see; once you get there, you'll be able to see further."

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22 minutes ago, Frederic said:

I've heard same thing about the Multipla from other ex-owners. Ugly as a halfgrown bat, but very practical and comfortable.

Uglier than a half grown bat 😂 - and ours was flourescent green: so we NEVER lost it in the car park.

Funny moment in that car was being caught for speding on the way to Paris. Why funny - the Policeman told me I had been clocked at 174kph. I could not stop laughing because the car was supposed to max out at 170. I was going downhill so maybe ...

I appealed the decision based on the quoted speed of the specification on the car (and that they could not prove corect callibration of the gun that morning) and that they were only stopping Dutch registered cars. It only took a year and half, but the fine got reveresed, even though I had told them I was prepared to admit to speeding at 160!

Fiat multipla.jpg

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I grew up in shops among cars and engines being rebuilt, restored and repaired. My dad made off-road cars for the Baja 1000 and Baja 500 races and also modified Jeeps and other cars.

I have back home different cars and pickups so obviously I've always loved cars, I've been offroading all my life on sand, rocks and mud so when I arrived to the UAE I bought a jeep and joined carnity to learn how to do it in this terrain since deserts are way different back home. 

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