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@Ale VallecchiThank you for a great drive, it was certainly eventful, but that's what makes our hobby all the more enjoyable. Apologies to the team that i could not assist with digging and my shoulder made it more demanding for me to self recover, so appreciated the teams patience. @Vaibhav agree with your comment, no matter how much experience you have the sand is a very humbling medium that's for sure. @Zixuan Huang - Charlie @Zed @Thomas Varghese @Gaurav Soni @Chinthaka Ruwanand @Gok Krish great to see old friends and meet some new ones, really enjoyed the drive and hope to see you all again in the sand soon @Thomas Varghese great picture, that just about sums it up, no words need :):):)

@Thomas Varghese @Ale Vallecchi@Gertjan @Prakash Anoop@Imran Kashif@Haitham Khattabplus others in the convoy Apparently the area we ventured into at the beginning of the drive was super soft, technical and it required some tight and sharp maneuvering, the hiccups started almost immediately after we left the harder track between the pylons to the soft part. The weather in recent weeks has be very windy and dumped a lot of sand over this patch of desert and the car simply sinks in sand. The past two consecutive week the terrains has been near the same, soft and we have seen on an average many more recoveries than the norms. Despite the briefing at the start of every drive by our expert leads and Marshall it seems that the basics tend to get soon forgotten e.g. distance between cars, sticking to the track, not fighting gravity and never stepping out without the radio etc etc, one must adhere to such advice for own sake and for others as a lot of time is squandered in recovering cars. I am particularly concerned when some fewbie, fewbie plus and even intermediate drivers who dont carry the basic recovery tools. I admit that some of these drivers have dual use cars like using the same car for work/ off road and dont get the time to load stuff prior to the drive. Judging by my own experience they will have much greater confidence if they come equipped with their own recovery stuff and by which, they can lend support to their fellow drivers. Overall the drive turned out to be quite fascinating yet I missed my usual sighting of wildlife which I find abundant on our dear Ale drives. We did have one driver in the convoy who was the shutterbug ( very unusual of Thomas not doing the same), I request him to please load a few fotos here. A big thank you to Thomas for always stepping up and carrying out the recoveries , same to dear Ale for your kind guidance and support on near every drive that I have been with you and I am sure other feel the same. I may a missed out few names but wish to continue thanking everyone who chipped in when needed, please do check that you have your recovery tools... before going off-road.

Thanks all for a great drive. I did have a chance to snap a few pictures at the back. The golden hour helped a lot to capture the magic of the desert. @Ale Vallecchi Great route and lecture, I enjoyed both very much, @Thomas Varghese, @Ashok chaturvedi thanks for all the support! See you soon on another dune!

Congrats @Waqas Parvez well done !!! U r on shoveling duty next time I see you on the drive!!!!!

many congrats brother. im sure you'l do great in this role as well.

what a great news 🤩 Very well deserved @Waqas Parvez 👏👏

Mine is a dual use car. I carry all the basic tools required for offroading 24/7 in my car not because I am going to hit the sands in just mentioning a drive. All tools are properly secured in the boot tightly and I don't have to worry about them flying around or rattling. I carry them because you never know when you need a jack or a rope or a compressor even on road also. Plus I can always assist anyone who has a flat tire or a dead car.

Well done @Waqas Parvez. Thoroughly deserved.

Scorch Trials Part 1 - Drive Report "By perseverance the snail reached the ark" - C. Haddon Spurgeon While the drive was planned to have heat as its protagonist, it was actually the quality of the sand, due to the dump weather of the past days, that became the main "villain" of the day. In fact, it was only after my third stuck in a matter of 1 hour that I was made to realize that it was the treacherous conditions of the sand that would rule the day, and that we definitely would have to plan for, and overcome it, if we were to have a smoother drive. From the beginning of our itinerary I had noticed the, by now, typical tall "step" on the hard-face of the dunes, which forms when the wind blows counter to its prevailing direction, pushing soft sand from the slip-face on top of the ridge and onto the harder side. Nonetheless, even when I found a proper place to cross onto the other side, I ended up getting stuck on the ridge, no matter how much I pushed. And even with A-Trac, and a car weighting heavily on the side of gravity, I still couldn't get off the ridges. The reason brought to my attention by some members who had helped shoveling and eventually tugged me out, was that just under the initial powdery layer of freshly blown sand, there was a caked and hardened layer, produced by the recent rains, which slowed the car down, produced the stuck, and prevented it from being able to get free of it. The only other critical situation worth noticing was when 4 other cars ended up in trouble, induced by my own third stuck, with 2 more cars stuck on my same crest, another with a temporary electrical problem immobilized on the other side of the dune, after crossing it, and the car trying to tug me off the crest also stuck on soft sand, with the rope fully stretched. In the confusion that arose, one of the cars stuck on the crest was almost tugged from both sides, as two drivers, one on each side of the dune, had attached their ropes to both front and back tow-points, and almost played tug-of-war with the unfortunate and bewildered crested driver. The takeaways from this situations were: 1) always bring the radio with you once out of the car, as lack of communication was the reason for the tug-of-war; 2) do not always cut the slack completely on the rope, but use it to give more power to the tug, when the stuck is deep. Having said this, once understood the unusual and unfriendly nature of the sand, and having taken the necessary counter-measures (finding a less sharp and tall step to approach the criss-crossing, and actually preferring crossing from the slip-face (sufficiently sturdy) to the hard-face (excessively powdery), then the drive progressed, with perseverance, to its planned end at Faqa. Indeed, we were able to enjoy the cool weather, and the beautiful "virgin" status of the sand, smoothed out by the recent winds, completing a the rest of the drive with speed and no further situations. As promised, we did cross the Middle Earth (that land between Solar Park and Little Sweihan, we did laps along Little Sweihan's triangle of tall dunes and deep bowls, we reached the Faqa Plateau, and we traversed it diagonally, almost to its E44's boundary, before exiting in Faqa's northern sabkha. The drive covered 81 Km, in 2:33 of driving (3:36 total), at 32 Km/h moving average speed (22 Km/h total). My thanks go to @Zixuan Huang - Charlie and @Davie Chase, who alternated in Second Lead, adapting patiently to my search for the proper lines, to @Thomas Varghese, @Vaibhav and @Zed, who alternated at Center Forward, and to @Gaurav Soni, @Chinthaka Ruwan and @Gok Krish, who took turns at Sweep. I hope that all had the opportunity to get comfortable with their respective positions. See you all soon out there, and have a nice, "cool" Sunday.

Congratulations @Waqas Parvez, after driving with you this morning, it’s very obvious why you’ve been promoted. Well done 👍

Congratulations @Waqas Parvez Very well deserved 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻🎊🎊🎊