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Trip report. I loved to read and live the experience through the eyes of the many who were in attendance. Not too much to add from my side but here is what I can share from my point of view. Waking up on working days can be a real drag for me, but my wife is puzzled as to how I wake up before the alarm even goes off on a Friday morning. The truth is the excitement to meet up with the many friends and make some new ones on the way. After having been through most of what UAE has to offer in terms of off-road adventures over the past decade, it's the people which gets me excited. It was a pleasure to see so many smiles as I arrived, all itching to taste the sands, some for the first time while others who want more. So without delay we headed out to the grounds where we could have our brief, deflate and final preparation before heading out to the wilderness. After the brief we deflated and in my excitement I forgot to fix my flag. It didn't take me long to realize though and we were off. @Rizwanm2 sorry you had to leave, hope your wife is feeling better now. Since @Rizwanm2 had to leave my second lead was now @Febin Frederic who did very well on the 2 occasions I found myself in trouble to lead the convoy through a safe route. Following him was our return champion @Jamy B. who has just found her ride in the form of an Xterra. I could see her not getting carried away and applying everything from the brief during the drive. She was more keen into learning her way with her new ride which is a brilliant thing to do. @Kalahari was next and with his Prado looked to me like a Silver Surfer just gliding through the sands. I'm very impressed with the way you handle your ride, doesn't seem like your first or second time out. Following him was @Najeeb Mohammed who drove his FJ, couldn't really see much of you deriving, however was impressed with the fact that you made it to the Pink Rocks without switching off traction control. Hope you found it easier with the traction control off. @Emmanuel was my centre forward to help out the convoy and keep the convoy in motion. Next came @Nizam Mohammed with his white FJ. Hope you have your tire sorted out after your encounter with The Rock. No I don't meant Dwayne Johnson, it one the one which met his tire on the way up to Pink Rocks. @Chaitanya D was next and managed well with his tank he calls the Nissan Patrol Y62. @Jorge Stepniak Felippe was to follow, sorry if we got the pronunciation of your name incorrect, we will definitely try our best to get it right the next time. @Jihad Hachem was more than sporting, sorry for being tough, but have seen so much over the years that safety is paramount. Glad you understand. In the sweep duties was @Mahmoud Hamzawy with his son. While he was keeping the convoy safe and moving with regular updates, his son was keeping us entertained. As is my habit for Newbie drives, I start with easy tracks for all to get used to their vehicles over some small dunes and work up the difficulty level for all to enjoy and learn from their experience. Climbing the Pink Rocks and descending from the other side is the toughest part on the menu, but almost everyone did it without any issues. As we rectified the issue of a burst tire by replacing it, we descended the Pink Rocks to head to the cafeteria nearby. Here we inflated and had the shade in which we could sit, relax, share some snacks and discuss our days activities. Fortunately we were first to the finishing line soon joined by the convoys of @Srikumar and @Frederic. With the Friday prayers time we parted our ways, but still with a promise to meet again as we continue to learn and support each other. See you all soon.

@Rahimdad Thank you for amazing drive, very friendly and amuse.. my son fall in love with the dunes and the group, already he made some friends around our drive, that's a family which we really love to part of and enjoy new dunes and pink rocks, looking forward for the next adventure

@Wrangeld wow. What a write up. Truly Liwa is an experience. Being level headed and calm at all times with full concentration is a must. But the intermediate level is something you and @Jeepie have earned. Now you will be the mentors the newbies and Fewbies will be following toattain the level to experience the grandeur of Liwa.

I wish I started driving with you when you first saved me from my stuck @Gaurav 😀 I feel upset for the time I lost since then. @Srikumar, @Rahimdad and @Frederic thank you for all the drives that you led so far. I learned a lot from you. Looking forward to learn more and exciting things on this level. Special thanks to @sertac as well. He is a great friend and helps a lot. Furthermore I have to admit that I use his expenses on the car to justify mines when my wife asks 😋😀 He is a sort of partner in crime. Thank you @Michael sammy, @Chirag S., @Emmanuel and @Wrangeld! See you guys in new challanges.

Congratulations @Denizzalbayrak ! Very well done !

Congratulations!!!

Just to let you know in case anybody else needed them, it’s available in Yokohama’s main dealership in dubai Yokohama Tiers ATS g015 price is 1820.75 for the 4 of them as you pay 606 per one and forth is free so it’s ~ 455 each

Tebrikler @Denizzalbayrak

Tires have manufacturing in 4 digit format like: 3516. Where 35 is 35th week of 2016 means Aug 2016. From last two members (@Wrangeld and @Xaf) who wanted to buy Yokohama Geolander commented that they aren't available at the moment in market. So check your size and its availability from more than one shop. Gulf coast, Ardh al emarat, Formula tires are all good competitive places to buy, next to each other. Online shops will have 10-20% more margin than these Shj boyz. https://goo.gl/maps/CsGj6rdJmB3AjYiA6

OK, I think I understood your concern, here is my opinion based on my own experience. Michellin Latitude / Primacy (HT tread, not cross terrain): If you like to use your Prado for highway and sand without much of mountains. Advantages: Super Quiet on highway Very long usable life (kms) Light weight, ideal for fuel mileage and tall hill climb Disadvantage: Soft for rocks on wadi's and mountains Not great for self recovery in sticky offroad situations Expensive (800-900 / tire) Yokohama Geolander ATS Advantages: Great for offroad - grip, self recovery and climb Great for wadi, mountain and sand Long usable life Reasonable (450-500 / tire) Disadvantage: Little noisy on highway Little heavy to sip tiny bit extra fuel For highway terrain Michelin's are FAR BETTER than Dunlop Grandtrek, Bridgestone Dueler, Kumho and Cooper. For offroad terrain Yokohama geolander ATS are FAR BETTER than Cooper ATR, STT, BF Goodrich, Michelin Cross terrain and Nitto's. P.S. I have used all the above mentioned brands.

Congrats ex-Koleos man !

Sweihan offers amazing broad and tall dunes in Abu Dhabi offering perfect learning opportunity for absolute newbies for their first time desert driving thrilling experience. If you have already driven in sand before then you can learn more from experts having decades of offroading experience in the UAE. This area offers a good mix of playable long set of dunes and broad ridge to test your off-road control. Drive is open for all 4x4/4WD/SUV/AWD vehicle having 8-10 inches of ground clearance and front and rear tow hooks. You can bring your family, friends and kids, but if you are absolute new to sand offroading it is better to drive alone first to learn offroading without any distractions. Drive will start with detail briefing, followed by 2-3 hours of driving in sand dunes and then followed by a break for refreshments over a feedback and assessment session for each offroader. What you'll learn: Introduction to off-roading Desert driving basics and etiquette Desert driving tips, techniques, myth and best practices Off-road and safety gear familiarization and recovery procedures Vehicle orientation, risk analysis, deflation and outdoor safety advice First time with Carnity Off-road Club: Please share your vehicle details below Prior off-road experience (Yes/No) Confirm front and rear tow hooks Level: Absolute Newbie, Newbies and above (All level) When: 6 Mar 2020 Meeting time: 6:45 AM (SHARP - Without any exceptions) Meeting Point: Al Rashedi Restaurant https://maps.app.goo.gl/yhhVzrCRhXv1mJNRA Type of Car: Any proper 4x4 with front and back tow hooks and 8-10 inches of ground clearance. What to bring along: Loads of water, snacks, smiles, stories, enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Approximate finish time: 12:00 PM - (much before Friday prayer) Friday Prayer Mosque: Muammar Mosque https://goo.gl/maps/tRVc4DYzSuCcW6WU7 MUST READ: First off-road drive checklist Off Road Driving - Roles & Responsibilities Off road Driving Etiquette's Off-road Convoy Rules Off roading - Everything you need to know Please RSVP on the below calendar:

Well done @Szymon Stankiewicz ! Welcome to fewbie level.

Congratulations!!

@Gaurav They were terrible haha but luckily I changed recently to the Cooper AT3's which are amazing in my opinion. As my the offroad bug has bitten both myself and my wife we will be using both cars. @Rahimdad Thanks for the advice I will definitely take it out on a few drives first. one more qeustion is there anyvother place that can fabricate front tow hooks other than Titan performance?

Congratulations @Denizzalbayrak well done

@Denizzalbayrak congratulations. Now you're spoilt for choice.

hmmm.. i missed my weekly dose of sand therapy 😭.. thank @Rahimdad. wife feel better now. cant wait to get back to sands, see you all soon.

Hi @Nayan Shenai both are very good radios but the Kenwood will be more difficult to program from what i have seen and read. The Baofeng UV-9R will probably be easier to program as Baofeng has lots of enthusiast users with Youtube tutorials. Also batteries and accesories are easier to find for Baofeng radios.

Congrats @balaji0007 !

Liwa: A new level of Crazy Nothing can prepare you for your first time in Liwa. No amount of You-Tube videos, tales from friends or indeed, pre drive briefings prepares you brings the immensity of this challenge. But let’s start at the beginning. To our surprise and delight, @Jeepie and myself were elevated to Intermediate level recently. I say recently! In truth, 4 days before the Liwa drive. Having hear so much about Liwa, the moment the drive was posted we signed up. The rest of the week was spent in preparation. Did we have all the right equipment? Kinetic Rope & shackles, tool kit, extra fuel tank, jack etc., making sure that the car was filled up with all the right fluids and that nothing was loose and sorting out camping gear. A Liwa drive is not the sort of place you just turn up and ‘wing it’, hoping someone else will sort you out with a compressor, or shovel or water. It’s the sort of place that takes planning, investment both financially and in time and in sorting out your vehicle (so that when you are in Liwa your belongings stay safely stowed (and cannot fly all over the place) – more on that later. It’s also a 3 hour drive from Dubai. Having managed to extricate myself from work more or less on time we left for Liwa. Almost 3 hours later and 10 minutes from the meeting point, contrary to our expectation we would find ourselves in the middle of a wilderness we were driving through the streets of Zayed City. Not quite the desolation of Liwa we imagined. Deeply attractive option though it was, sleeping in the car in the car park of the Adnoc station was not our idea of camping so we went in search of a suitable spot to pitch our tent – a little disappointed that our vision of camping under the stars out in the middle of the wilderness had become more a case of can we find a relatively quiet spot to spend the night that’s not in the middle of a major highway. This was probably the last moment of disappointment we had. Especially as having found an acceptable site we were joined later by @Gaurav and @Brette where @Gauravregaled us with tales of Liwa’s past. We woke to the sound of Camels being loaded unhappily into a truck and began preparations. Filling stomachs, water bottles and gasoline tanks, tying everything down securely in the car and then once @Javier Marrived and checking the cars again deflating and paying particular attention to @Gaurav’s briefing, we were off. Nothing can prepare you for your first time in Liwa. Despite the time and energy preparing, the research, the hard work in getting everything needed (thanks again @Jeepie) once you start to see the immensity of the place, it’s simply mind-blowing. It took us at least 30 minutes of hard driving along one of the internal dirt tracks before we even went truly off-road, and once we did, another 30 before we passed the last of the camel farms inside the desert and made our way into Little Liwa. And once we did … the beauty, the colors, the contours and simple immensity of the place were stunning to the eye. It probably would have been enough to just have the privilege of seeing these views without going further, just to drive and explore the incredible beauty of the landscape without massively challenging our cars or abilities would have been enough. But further we did … and the reward? 24 hours on and I still cannot believe where our cars took us (and we took them). In our briefing, @Gaurav had warned us about the humungous dunes. Until you see them towering above or look at the vertiginous drop on the other side, it’s simply impossible to imagine and fathom. Terrifying, exhilarating, incredible. I guess I should admit something here. I entered Liwa pathologically afraid of falling from heights. That’s quite different from being afraid of heights – I am ok being as high as you want (Burj Kahlifa viewing floors, bring it on), but if there’s a chance of falling, I literally cannot look over the edge ... That particular fear has been overcome as a result of continuously driving the car over the edge of precipitous dunes to crawl down the slip face as we moved on to another dune formation. Liwa is renowned for its soft sand. It looks hard, stable and compacted, until you drive onto it and find that it’s silky, like gossamer under your wheels which desperately trying to gain some semblance of grip as you struggle up inclines that look benign and inviting. And then there’s the bowls. As brand new intermediate rankers, driving Liwa was challenge enough without trying too many heroics slide slipping across the massive dunes. The terrain, keeping up with the convoy, learning to be much more responsible ourselves for the navigation of the dunes ahead was more than sufficient with which to cope throughout the day. 4x4 fanatics will, play. And play we all did. In some cases, impressively so. We paid our respects to the Yellow Truck, and gave increasing respect to the scenery and landscape around us. We found a lovely calm bowl in which to lunch and moved on. The dunes are unrelenting on car and driver (and passenger, from time to time). And endless. Standing atop a dune 300 meters above the scenery as far as the eye could see it was dunes. It is in my mind’s eye and will remain there for a long time. It was not until yesterday that I truly appreciated what a desert meant. And this is small Liwa. It blows my mind to think that there as literally hundreds more kilometers of this landscape in the UAE and thousands in KSA. With one notable exception (@Jeepie it seems did refuse and needed help, but did not get stuck at all), we all had our ‘moments of learning’ and were kind enough to offer our co-travellers the opportunity to practice recovery techniques. In a long day of driving these moments were not that frequent and quickly managed. We will leave it what goes on in Liwa, stays in Liwa. With the light fading, we rushed (!) back aiming to hit an internal track to find our way out of the desert. There, we filled our gasping tanks with the reserve fuel we had brought with and drove quite slowly and relaxed along a dirt track to the main road and out of Liwa. Five, happy any tired drivers, four incredible vehicles, three who had never experienced Liwa before, two who had guided us through safely and carefully with one aim: Enjoy Liwa to the full and get out safely. My reflections, for what they are worth sit on one side on the incredible beauty of the scenery we were privileged to see and play in. This is savage country, where, were it not for the careful organization and well maintained vehicles we would hardly last a day. It’s truly stunning on a level that even though I have been to a few deserts in my time, nothing compares to this. The three hour journey home was a challenge. After the wonders of the dunes, the designers of UEA's road, who must have been sitting with ruler in hand as they created the road network do not make for an interesting drive home in the dark after such an eventful day. As a learning experience this was simply invaluable. There is a massive leap from Fewbie to Intermediate. Anyone chomping at the bit to get that promotion, be careful what you ask (aim) for. The expectations on you as a driver are completely different as an intermediate. From self-navigating (there’s nowhere near as much look out for this, watch that etc., - you just need to keep your eye on the sand and do your best to follow), the speed of the drive to the equipment you must have to name but a few the expectations of the other drivers over your communications – the list goes on. Next time, at least I will know what to expect from Liwa, and perhaps what it expects from me – because you can be sure: there will be a next time. The addiction just gets deeper and stronger, and Liwa is a fix, not a cure. See you soon in the sand.

Congratulations @balaji0007 for reaching the fewbie level with Carnity Offroad club. Based on your regular newbie drives you have demonstrated skills required deserving this new offroad rank. Looking forward to seeing you growing further and helping others to learn the art of offroading in a safe environment. Fewbie: Number of drives 10 (16 Newbie + Fewbie drives) Level of drives Willingness to learn + Enthusiasm + Basic dune reading Off-road gear Flag, deflator, tire gauge, shovel, fire extinguisher, medical kit, radio, compressor. Drive teamwork Observe recovery from a safe distance and offer help when needed Drive posting/joining Join newbie and fewbie level of drives only Forum participation Active participation on forum. Share drive experience + feedback on forum and pictures in gallery Social media sharing & inviting friends & family to join offroad club is recommended for faster upgrades at all levels.

Congratulations @balaji0007

@balaji0007 Congrats classmate!

Congratulations @Szymon Stankiewicz for reaching the fewbie level with Carnity Offroad club. Based on your regular newbie drives you have demonstrated skills required deserving this new offroad rank. Looking forward to seeing you growing further and helping others to learn the art of offroading in a safe environment. Fewbie: Number of drives 10 (16 Newbie + Fewbie drives) Level of drives Willingness to learn + Enthusiasm + Basic dune reading Off-road gear Flag, deflator, tire gauge, shovel, fire extinguisher, medical kit, radio, compressor. Drive teamwork Observe recovery from a safe distance and offer help when needed Drive posting/joining Join newbie and fewbie level of drives only Forum participation Active participation on forum. Share drive experience + feedback on forum and pictures in gallery Social media sharing & inviting friends & family to join offroad club is recommended for faster upgrades at all levels.

Congratulations!!

Congratulations @balaji0007 See you soon in the sand

Gratulacje @Szymon Stankiewicz

There are plenty of places in Al quoz: Robbies Motorsport, Icon Autos, offroad zone, AAA,

@Colin Jordan the Ram is my all time favourite truck. I always recommend you take out your ride and do the modifications which you require rather than taking some educated guesses from a few. Having a lift kit is better than a levelling kit as the levelling kit is a bunch of coil spring spacers which makes your ride more uncomfortable and bouncy with a risk of spoiling the drive line. I can see that there is a plastic part which forms the lower lip of the bumper, removing that will give you a couple of extra inches of clearance. A proper 2 inch or 2.5 inch lift kit will do a much better job, but than again you will need to offset the tires by an inch to get the center of gravity right and bigger tires to support the lift kit. I will not recommend steel bumpers as it increases the weight of the vehicle, but a proper steel bumper with some rubber up front will not effect the passing of the car, steel bumper on its own will mean RTA will end up failing the car. I would still request you to take it out for a couple of newbie drives with the plastic at the bottom of the bumper removed and try it out before you come to a conclusion.

Congratulations @Szymon Stankiewicz well done

I just ordered online the basic off road equipment and radios...but I am not sure if I will be getting them by Friday. Can I still join if you allow, hopefully by the third time I should have them. Thanks in advance

Congrats @Szymon Stankiewicz !

Preferably round and black.

Once again you took me there, and I’m so glad you made it all back safe and sound and with unforgettable memories !