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@Azeem M @Rob Soughton @Mikhail Lukichev@Omar ElGamal@Muhammad Qasim @Markus B @Joseph Raju@Stav@Tom V@Quresh Motiwala@Senthil Kumar@Tareq Al Turq @varunmehndiratta Waitlisted Attendees Pierre de Maigret @Pierre de Maigret KKIRAN @KKIRAN Thanks for signing up and waitlisting for this drive. I wanted to clarify a little bit more about the drive coming Friday and give you some extra hints and tips. * We will be starting off with gentle sand driving, so as you arrive you can deflate to 14-15psi as you would usually do. * We will be going on-road as well to cross some small villages. You can keep the same tyre pressure for that. * A big part will be on dirt tracks and farm roads, and smaller parts in the dunes as well. This allows us to cover this much distance without too much struggle. * The last part will be a rocky but easy mountain trail. We will inflate to 20PSI for All Terrain tyres, and 25PSI for Highway tyres for that. We will be exiting a few kilometers north of Masafi, in a little town called Asimah. This town has a cactus farm and also a Flower Farm which i heard is worth-wile seeing. It is only 300m away from our exit point. I am not sure about opening hours, so i leave it entirely up to yourselves to go and check it out if you are interested. UAE Flower Farm: How 30,000 blooms grew in Fujairah's Wadi Asimah (thenationalnews.com) Cactus Farm: https://goo.gl/maps/W8J3JDMEjnNB48yv6 Flower Farm: https://goo.gl/maps/d7zCoFz1mtjhGqhS7 Masafi town: Masafi town itself is also worth exploring, as it has nice restaurants, and the Masafi Friday Market is worth exploring as well. You will pass it by on your way back to Dubai or Sharjah: https://goo.gl/maps/RNbcJwRhZ6L3hk7T9 So i hope to see you all on Friday !

No need for extra fuel. Yes indeed the first part is desert driving, and the last part is a gentle mountain trail.

Aisha S @Aisha S topgear @topgear Zeeshan Patel @Zeeshan Patel khurram.k @khurram.k Looper @Looper ahmed salama @ahmed salama You guys are complete troopers. Thanks for signing up for probably one of the most important drives of the year. Where Carnity members look at the disgusting state of the desert we drive in and do something about it. I truly hope there will be more like minded souls that understand that the timing was designed to allow for Xmas morning excitement (late start) and allow the day to not be totally taken up by this activity (out by 11am) but if not, we will clean up as much as we can and know that we earned our Xmas lunch. I promise that there will be some desert driving, it cannot all be work and no play - but the hope is we can clean at least a small part of the disgusting detritus left by the people coming to the desert. Your manage team @Ale Vallecchi, @Alex Raptor and @Dodi Syahdar will also be trying our best to create some festive cheer for everyone on the drive.

Hello @Brette and everyone. I have 2020 Suzuki Jimny without any modification related to performance. I just installed a roof rack and on-board air compressor. And my car has front/rear hooks and enough clearance. I don’t have driving experiance in the desert. Thank you.

Hi all! I drive a 2016 3.5L LWB Pajero with a couple of mods (2in lift kit, front and rear skid plates, ABS/Traction control kill switch). Have driven on a few dunes but no major off-road experience. And yes, my car has got enough ground clearance and has front and rear tow hooks/eyelets. Looking forward to the drive!

They will just scan you, no need PCR test. Till today as I just crossed the border from Dubai to abudabhi

Hi do you need a negative PCR as this is in Abu Dhabi?

Hi Frederic, I have added my name yesterday on the waiting list. Let me know if there is any cancellation. Best, Pierre

Thats the plan during winter months as the weather is pleasant throughout the day and we can get the family to join us,

Extremely deserved @Russ. It's good to see you grow so much, so quickly.

Superb! Well done mate! @Russ

Well deserved @Russ

Second drive with Carnity which started off with some anxiety but with both@Chaitanya D and @Russ just changed the experience into awesomeness. Amazing guidance and patience. Big thank you to rest of the group, very friendly! Thanks once again

Congrats @Tom B

Congratulations @Tom B

Hi fredric, I have added name in waiting list. If this confirms i will remove my other rsvp. Pl treat this as first drive in that case please.

Hi @Azeem M. Sure you can bring you family along. Around noon time we will be quite deep within the desert in RAK. So there will be a suitable lunch break but chances are very low that we will be nearby a mosque.

As I spend more time in my Y61 SS LWB, a few things are beginning to ramp up on the modification list. My intention is to leave most elements as stock as I don't believe I'm nearly good enough yet to be exploiting the full range of this car's capabilities. So far, I've only added a front skid plate and recovery points. Furthermore, I am building my car up to be an overlander - part of the reason why I bought a LWB. With that in mind, I'm not touching suspension or tires at this time. These will definitely come when my wadi crawling become more continuous. My current two areas for upgrades are the Lighting and Head Unit + Sound System. LIGHTING For the Lighting, after listening to a a roof-mounted light bar on the highway (pretty much every road in Dubai), I'm steering towards putting in to two (2) x Spotlights on the front bumper. Ideally, 7inch maximum as I find the 9inch units to be too big for the front fascia. On the A-pillar, I'm looking to mount one spot+flood combo light each. So here comes the first question - would you folks recommend going for Amber lights in both or White lights with Amber covers? I see the value of Ambers for dusty driving but so far in my night drives, I've only seen very dusty conditions when covering flat patches. Otherwise, the sand seems to settle very quickly after being flung about by the cars in front. The last area that I'm struggling to pin down is if I want rocker switches or an sPOD. The shops tell me that I can program multiple levels of the lights across low beam, high beam + strobe (for that trance party I will be hosting in Liwa). But wanted to get a view on what the consensus is around running On/Off switches vs a programmable pod? HEAD UNIT + SOUND The current Clarion Head Unit in the Patrol comes out of Malaysia but no matter how hard I look, I can't find firmware updates for it. The system settings say that its BT version is 0.9 which is quite literally Gen 1 and head units today are pushing BT 5.0. This head unit has a notorious skipping problem with BT where I feel like a wannabe DJ... Has anybody here done upgrades on their head units? Do you have recommendations? I would like to install a double DIN unit and not bigger than 7 inches so it's not floating out of the space. Furthermore, with the semiconductor chip shortages, finding Pioneer head units in the market has been extremely challenging. I've found similar units in the US. Are these universal and can I just have it shipped over and install it here? The second reason I would like to use an upgraded head unit is to use CarPlay and run Gaia on the larger screen than my mounted phone. Here, I'm also planning to add a Garmin GLO or a Dual XGPS160 to augment the GPS/GLONASS signals coming in. Is this overkill, or have your phones + offline maps been reliable enough? For the sound system, there are quite a few upgrades available in the market across the spectrum with Kenwoods & Alpines at the lower end to Hertz & Focal at the higher end. The latter also require increased dampening, and an additional amplifier. I have sourced an internal A-pillar with a tweeter cutout so building a component here is ideally the way forward for me.

@Mehmet Volga and @imranaasghar81 They just bring their mobile camera while us sitting in our car, it may take literally 2 seconds. That mobile they holding is the scanner. If they find anything on that scanner they will ask us to do a test. EDE scanning is done on all malls in abu dabhi. They do not check even alhosn.

Thanks for all your support and advice so far @Brette

Congrats @Rob Soughton well done.

Any one else coming with family?

Hi @Chaitanya D, it's my first night drive. Any additional light requirements for the car? Is the camping recommended for kids / family as well or not?

Skid plate , bumper cut , and a flag mount! Should be enough even for higher levels. @Rob Soughton you did well in Liwa which is a challenge with a stock car , and hence you know it now that it is the skills than the mods which matter. you can add as the ones you have wear out - AT tires, suspension , etc. word of caution here as some garages may push you to do these mods - but make a informed decision. Once you have mastered your skills with a stock car, it becomes way easier with these add ons - the most important notably are the skid plates and the all terrain tires. Lift or suspension will be an advantage especially for ridge rides and criss crosses , but even with stock you should not have much issues .

Consider yourself lucky @Rob Soughtonwith owning one of the few 4x4 cars that are comfortable on road, yet very capable offroad as well, and with a Toyota badge the reliability and resale value are your extra gold coins. I agree with was has been said earlier, the skid plate is a good add-on, and perhaps later you can choose between trimming the bumper a bit or going for a 2" lift kit. Once the HT tyres are on their way out, you will definitely find improvement with AT tyres that will allow you to deflate further down and improve flotation.

You have done the skid plate. This is all you need for fewbie. Later you might consider bumper cut and thats all you dont need anything else.

Thank you top gear Thank you very much Thank you very much

It was a pleasure to drive with you all @Osama M. See you soon

Hi @Frederic, any possibility of crossing any mosque\fuel station as its Friday thinking of jumma prayer? shall I take my family for this drive? Thanks, Azeem

@Simon Dawood congratulations well done

congratulations @Muhammad Qasim, well done

Congrats @Rob Soughton, well done . You were impressive in Liwa

Congratulations @Rob Soughton

Awesome news! Well done Rob!

Well done and congratulations @Rob Soughton

Congratulations Rob, well done!

Well done @Russ look forward to joining one of your drives soon! Congratulations

Congratulations @Russ , well done buddy

Congrats @Russ

Well done @Russ - that's great to see! Congrats 👍

Just to give you an update and to thank you one more time. I finally bought a 2017 FJ Cruiser, stock, and I changed the tires immediately because they were worn out. I got the Yoko Geolandar AT

Hi I personally chosen the option of bumper LED bar and side shooters mixed white spot and amber at the periphery ( see my profile pict 😄) also like that 👇 ( pict curtesy @Anish S ) so far I am so happy with it on night drives and no sounds on high ways both I purchased it via Amazon

Thank you! I'm definitely going to get an additional amp because my speakers aren't even doing my lo-fi Apache Indian any justice right now 😛 I was totally unaware of the IP67 ratings for the seals on the units. I will definitely look into that. This weekend, I put the windows down and there was sand everywhere... so getting it into buttons and jamming them is definitely something I need to watch out for. I've pulled some quotes from three different shops - two in Al Quoz, and one in Sharjah (Kenwood). The Head Unit really pumps up the prices so am trying to maximize as much return as I can get from the unit in the car. For the lightbar vs spotlights, I'm a little torn because I don't like the lightbar aesthetic but I completely see your point, and having seen yours and @Rizwanm2 in action, I am sold on the output & versatility.

A few weeks ago while getting a skid plate installed, I finally saw my Y61 being reversed. And that's when I saw that the right-hand side reverse light was out. I've never checked the reverse light of my cars unless someone has pointed them out (now a note to myself for the future). My car is only a few months old and so this felt like an issue that needed to be fixed. Fast forward to this morning, where the guys at Arabian Automobiles told me that this is how its meant to be. The sales rep at the Deira branch told me that it's got something to do with the fact that it's common in "France" which I thought was very strange and weird. Why would the French with all of their infinite design wisdom make only one light (on the left-hand-side) work. When I said to him that Nissan is Japanese, he said it's Renault Nissan. Because I don't really have any facts on this, I left. All of this sounds quite strange. I've found some forums in Australia that call out this single light but wanted to see if this is common here in the UAE too. Is this a real Y61 Nissan Patrol quirk or do I have a faulty reverse light?