Srikumar

Join us to explore Sweihan Desert in Abu Dhabi and learn the art of offroading in a versatile playground for your first off-road adventure. You will learn to self-drive your vehicle from experts having decades of off-roading experience in the UAE. This area offers a good mix of playable long set of dunes and broad ridges to test your off-road control. Drive is open for all 4x4/4WD/SUV/AWD vehicles having 8-10 inches of ground clearance and (MANDATORY) Front and rear tow hooks (MANDATORY) 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 - Make, Model, Year. Do you have any prior off-road experience? Confirm your vehicle has front and rear tow hooks / eyelets. Why should i join? We will teach you how to self-drive off-road safely and learn the best offroad driving and recovery techniques. 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. Can my vehicle do this ? This drive is open for all 4x4/4WD/SUV/AWD vehicle having 8-10 inches of ground clearance and front and rear tow hooks. If in doubt please first announce your questions on the drive thread so we can advise you further. Any stock 4x4/4WD are most welcome, you don't need any vehicle modifications. Can i bring passengers ? Yes of course, but if you are absolute new to offroading it is better to drive alone first to avoid any distractions. Learn More About: Carnity Off-road Club This drive is organized in full compliance with the COVID19 guidelines. We expect every member that joins this drive to go through below information and and strictly follow these guidelines in order not to jeopardize someone's health, and to ensure we can keep organizing these drives safely. MUST READ AND TOTALLY AGREE: COVID19 Precautions MUST READ AND TOTALLY AGREE: BAN POST Two Way Radio Guidelines Every Offroader brings his own radio, programmed to the frequencies described in below advice topic. We will not share spare radios or program your radio on the drive. If you need assistance in programming the radio, post a topic on the Carnity website with your questions and we will help you out. Make sure your radio is fully charged. It will be your only way of communication while driving. Before buying, please carefully read below advice so you are informed properly on which model / cost / shops... No radio = No drive. It is an essential tool and you should make sure you bring it on every drive and learn/practice how to use it. MUST WATCH: NEWBIE VIDEO BRIEFING Drive Details Level: Newbie and Above (All Levels) When: 06 Aug 2021, Friday. Meeting time: 6:30 AM (SHARP - Without any exceptions) Meeting Point: - https://maps.app.goo.gl/4gcSB3C9o4dnrtnTA 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 (for yourself), smiles, face mask, rubber gloves, enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Approximate finish time: 9:00 AM End Point: TBA LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE: Limited to 12 cars only. RSVP will close on Thursday - 9 AM. If the RSVP is full and you wish to join, please mention your name on the drive thread to add on the waiting list. Latecomers will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Members without RSVP will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Please withdraw your RSVP, if you aren't joining, so your spot can be taken by others. Repeated no-show members after RSVP will have their account suspended for a month. PLEASE RSVP ON THE BELOW CALENDAR EVENT

We all have difficult days, and IMHO you did pretty well. Yes, there were a couple of refusals and a popout, but unless you goto Area53 and have a double popout I wouldn't bother. P.S. The first time I went to Area 53, I had a double popout twice, and so did another member in our convoy 😄

Trip Report Everyone loves a challenge and this goes for trip leads as well. Area 53 is a challenging terrain for the best offroader and to take Fewbies there was a challenge I most definitely was looking forward the whole week. Everyone met on time, and as we are at the end of July the sun does rise closer to 5:40 AM. So after a little bit of waiting and briefing we headed out to explore Area 53. We entered through some of the smaller dunes to reach the base of the pyramids and everyone managed quite well. As we attempted the first staircase climb we did have a couple of refusals which was expected. A bit of rerouting and circling and the entire convoy started moving again. Being a Fewbie convoy, I tried going up to about 70% height on the pyramid dunes, as the higher you go, the exit at the top of the dunes can get even more challenging. Since we couldn't exit from the top of the pyramid dunes we had to descend and started going around it and had to go through some more closely spaced dunes. A popout and a couple of refusals, but nothing major and everyone managed to get through that area quite well. As it was getting warmer we decided to take a more flatter route towards Super Bowl and IFB. I would have loved for the Fewbie convoy to have a go at Super Bowl, but unfortunately there were a couple of other convoys in that area driving at high speeds and hence we decided to move towards Iftar Bowl. Once we reached IFB the climb was so enticing that no one could stop with a single one. Everyone made more than a couple of attempts and it was great to see everyone roar all the way to the top. Big congratulatation to the entire group of Fewbies @Zixuan Huang - Charlie @Aisha S @Anoop Nair @Sunil Mathew @Charbel @Abdul Rafay-S @Tareck @Rjducos @Adhir Saxena for being brave enough to drive through Area 53. That is seriously a big achievement. And as you grow in confidence and driving skills, you will learn to love this area even more. Finally a huge shot out to @Hisham Masaad@Nivin for watching over the entire convoy and continuously assisting shen needed. Your wonderful support permitted me to be a bit more adventurous at times and make the drive challenging for the entire convoy. See you all soon on the sand.

At every drive level, you would always have drive members with different experience. That's why we call it a team sport at Carnity. Plus everyone is a new IM at some stage 😉

Convoy Numbering 1. Srikumar - Cherokee XJ 2. Charlie - Pathfinder 3. Aisha S - Wrangler 4. Anoop Nair - Wrangler 5. Sunil - Wrangler 6. Charbel - Xterra 7. Nivin - Xterra 8. Abdul Rafay - Wrangler 9. Tareck - Patrol Y62 10. Adhir - Pajero SWB 11. Rjducos - Ford F150 12. Darren Thompson - Raptor 13. Hisham - FJC We will be using Carnity Channel 2 for the drive. See you tomorrow morning at 5 AM

I would leave them as memories 😜

@Sunil Mathew @darren thompson @Charbel @Hardik Mody @Tareck @Aisha S @Abdul Rafay-S @Adhir Saxena @Zixuan Huang - Charlie @Anoop Nair Thanks for signing up for the drive. As explained in the drive post, Area 53 can be the one of the most wonderful as well as most difficult areas for Fewbie level drives. This area has got it all - a whole lot of tall dunes, sharp drops, pyramids dunes, rolling dunes soft sand, etc. Our plan is to visit as much of the pyramid and rolling dunes that time would permit and try to reach Iftar bowl before it gets too hot. For those of you who are wondering why a sand dune bowl in the middle of the desert is given a strange name as Iftar Bowl; that is because in pre-COVID era (seems like ages ago) on the 3rd Friday of Ramadan month all the offroad clubs in UAE would gather at the base of Iftar Bowl in the evening and the fasting members would break their fast. It has been an offroading tradition for more than 15 - 20 years and it was always wonderful to see as many 200 - 300 cars at the same time. Hopefully we would have the opportunity to relive this tradition during the next Ramadan. In the meanwhile, we will make do with what we can and keep practice playing on these amazing rolling dunes. If any one feels that they have hardly used their shovels so far and that its getting rusted, Area 53 is the perfect place to put them to very good use. Me and @Hisham Masaad look forward to driving with you all this Friday, and hopefully we overcome the challenge of Area 53 as a team.

I will give it a try then

Congrats @Aisha S. Looks like you will be Christening your promotion at Area53. Now, that's going to be fun.

I started my off-road adventures with a couple of Gulf News Fun Drives, the first in 2013 at Liwa and the second in 2014 at Lisalli. While the first one was reasonably enjoyable as it was the first time we were in the sand, the second was a complete torture with the more compact dunes. A group of us got lost in the desert and when we tried to contact the gulf news coordinators we were told to call the cops to help find our way out of the desert. Fast forward to Jan 2017, and I was looking for an outlet away from my work related stress. I was a member of Carnity since 2012, but was never active and had probably logged in just a few times. There was a newsletter of an Absolute Newbie Drive at Fossil Rock on 27 Jan 2017. Later I got to know, that this was the first of a series of 3-5 experimental drives started by Gaurav and team to start the Carnity off-road club. From being an introvert who would not be much of a risk taker, I have personally come a long way over the past 4.5 years to becoming more adventurous and willing to push my boundaries of comfort. The journey from an Absolute Newbie in this community club to being a senior member has been truly a life changing experience. Offroading gets me away from all the worries of the city and let's me spend a good 4-5 hours every week enjoying the passion with fellow off-roaders. Along the way made some wonderful friends for life. The icing on the cake was when my son started joining my off-road escapades and who also has started enjoying the outdoors. I owe a lot to this Club. Cheers !!

@GauravSoni it's good that it was just the U joint. It's quite an inexpensive part and hope you have checked the others as well. One thing is strange though, that whenever a U joint is near failure there would be some small clacking noise. Did you have that? Or did it just suddenly break under the stress of self recovery.

Area 53 is one of the most intense areas for desert offroading with its high dunes, sharp drops and wonderful rolling dunes. The area demands utmost concentration, steering control and throttle. The area is also famous for super soft sand where recoveries adds to the challenge of the drive. This drive is organized in full compliance with the COVID19 guidelines. We expect every member that joins this drive to go through below information and and strictly follow these guidelines. MUST READ AND TOTALLY AGREE: COVID19 Precautions Ban from Carnity Off-road Club Two Way Radio Guidelines Drive Details Level: Fewbie and above When: 30 July 2021, Friday. Meeting time: 5:00 AM (SHARP - Without any exceptions). Meeting Point: https://goo.gl/maps/PSQcuUAUWg3Nv8TDA 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 (for yourself), smiles, face mask, rubber gloves, enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Approximate finish time: 9:00 AM P.S. Only join if you have a compressor to inflate your tires after the drive. LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE: Limited to 10 cars only. RSVP will close on Thursday - 3:00pm If the RSVP is full and you wish to join, please mention your name on the drive thread to add on the waiting list. Latecomers will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Members without RSVP will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Please withdraw your RSVP, if you aren't joining, so your spot can be taken by others. Repeated no-show members after RSVP will have their account suspended for a month. Please RSVP on below Calendar

Fredy needs only a puny 3.0 to go everywhere 😂

Wonderful drive @Vanessa8580. Thoroughly enjoyed all the challenges you threw on the convoy to make the drive very nice and interesting. Loved being in sweep and helping out with recoveries. Some nice ones done by @TT_Dubai. Well done to all the drive participants.

Trip Report Not the smoothest of IM drives, but it presented its own challenges which was thoroughly enjoyed and successfully overcomed by the entire team. We started off on time at the foothill of the massive Shuwaib dunes waiting for the break of dawn to start our engines. After the first successful climbs we started criss crossing, and thats where we faced our first challenge of the day. A double pop out (front and rear) for @Thomas Varghese, his first, but it was more to do with the approach angle he took to do the crisscross. Took us a bit of a while to fix the double popouts as the tyre was twisted awkwardly. Once fixed, we tried dodging our way through the technical dunes to reach the next big hill of Shuwaib where a nice pace was set but with some ocassional refusals. As we started playing in the big hills we met with our second challenge of the day, @Abu Muhammad's passenger started having motion sickness. Despite a few stops, unfortunately he was not feeling any better. As we had just completed an hour of driving and the exit was some distance away, so we took the difficult decision to leave Abu Mohammed at a particular spot and to return after an hour or so. That would give his passenger some time to rest and hopefully manage the rest of the drive. We then entered some really tricky technical dunes, where the remaining 3 drivers managed it quite well with hardly any refusals. But just as we were exiting that stretch, @GauravSoni was caught sideways on a small dune, but with his chassis buried in sand. The initial attempt of self recovery didn't help, so Thomas gave him a tug and he was recovered. It was then that we faced our third and most serious challenge of the day, Gaurav had lost power to his front wheel with a drive shaft noise coming from close to the front differential. Probably a damage caused during the self recovery, but now we were in some quite nasty technical dunes and a car that was only capable of driving in 2H. With some excellent team effort, we were able to tug Gaurav's car first onto a flat dune and then bring onto a flat sabkha. We then decided it's time and that we should go and bring Abu Mohammed from where we left him. We told Gaurav to wait at the sabkha while we went to get Abu Mohd. Once the entire convoy was back together we needed to find the flatest possible route to ensure Gaurav could easily exit out. With multiple stops and rechecking the track ahead we did manage to find that track. Kudos to Gaurav for managing to drive well in 2H for such a long stretch. From the noise it seemed it's just the U-joint of the drive shaft which must have broken. Hope it's an easy fix. You had a very good drive till your drive shaft issue at the end. @Thomas Varghese drove extremely well by choosing nice lines in the technical areas, but you need to practice more to keep up the pace in the open dunes and long hill climbs as well as choosing better angles to criss cross. Everything in the desert has to be smooth and if you start forcing your car you will face issues like the double popout of today. Abu Mohammed, hope your passenger was feeling better on the way home. You drove very well in the limited opportunity that you had but you didn't have much chance to push that beast. Maybe try doing IM drives alone in the future. @Mario Cornejo was an excellent second lead today who choose nice lines, and was always in my rear view mirror. Well done. Overcoming the challenges was the highlight of today:s drive and I hope to repeat this drive sometime in the near future with the same drive particpants.

See you tomorrow. Added you in the convoy list

Thanks to those who have signed up in one of my favorite areas for Intermediate Drives. To describe what to expect tomorrow in a single word is.... Fast pace. Ok, that's two words but you get the gist. So be fully focussed as there would not be much room for lapses in concentrations on this terrain. Convoy Numbering 1. SK - Cherokee XJ 2. Mario - Y61 SWB 3. Lakshmi Narasimhan - Pajero 3.8 LWB 4. Thomas Varghese - Xterra 5. Gaurav Soni - Pajero 6. Abu Muhammad - Sequndra 7. Nivin - Xterra We shall be using Carnity Channel 3 for tomorrow. See you at 5:00 AM.

@Lakshmi Narasimhan your second drive RSVP is confirmed. See you on Wednesday morning

That's fine.

@ASHFAQ HUSSAIN you will have to join a Newbie Level drive. We have 2 such drives this weekend.

Shuwaib offers some of the tallest set of dunes outside of Abu Dhabi. With its innumerous hills and bowls, its the perfect playground to push driver and car at the rev limit on a continuous basis. Expect a fast paced drive with long hill climbs, crisscrossing on top of the dunes and various bowls with ofcourse plenty of soft sand due to the summer heat. -------------------- This drive is organized in full compliance with the COVID19 guidelines. We expect every member that joins this drive to go through below information and strictly follow these guidelines in order not to jeopardize someone's health, and to ensure we can keep organizing these drives safely. MUST READ AND TOTALLY AGREE: COVID19 Precautions MUST READ AND TOTALLY AGREE: BAN POST Two Way Radio Guidelines Every Off-roader brings his own radio, programmed to the frequencies described in below advice topic. We will not share spare radios or program your radio on the drive. If you need assistance in programming the radio, post a topic on the Carnity website with your questions and we will help you out. Make sure your radio is fully charged. It will be your only way of communication while driving. Before buying, please carefully read below advice so you are informed properly on which model / cost / shops... No radio = No drive. It is an essential tool and you should make sure you bring it on every drive and learn/practice how to use it. Drive Details Level: Intermediate and above (All Level) Meeting time: 04:45 AM (SHARP - Without any exceptions). Meeting Point: https://goo.gl/maps/c1KfED2CXuabJppz6 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 (for yourself), smiles, face mask, rubber gloves, enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Approximate finish time: 08:30 AM THIS IS A COMPRESSOR ONLY DRIVE. PLEASE DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS DRIVE UNLESS YOU HAVE A COMPRESSOR. ANYONE ARRIVING AT THE DRIVE WITHOUT A COMPRESSOR, FLAG, PROPER SHOVEL AND DEFLATION KIT WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO JOIN THE DRIVE. ALL TOW POINTS WILL BE CHECKED BEFORE DEPARTURE. LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE: Limited to 10 cars only. RSVP will close on Thursday - 9 AM. 1 Lead + 10 Members. If the RSVP is full and you wish to join, please mention your name on the drive thread to add on the waiting list. Latecomers will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Members without RSVP will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Please withdraw your RSVP, if you aren't joining, so your spot can be taken by others. Repeated no-show members after RSVP will have their account suspended for a month. Please RSVP on below Calendar

I missed one point, did you burn the clutch while performing self recoveries. A burnt clutch could result in hard gear shifts.

If you have both the front and rear lockers, try them separately and let us know which one is more effective. Ofcourse it depends on the circumstances, but since the front wheel has steering input as well I have a hunch that the front locker would be more effective than a rear locker during self recovery. But I could be wrong.