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On 2017-5-16 at 1:45 PM, Gaurav said:

I guess 2 Kg should be enough, if people increase will see how we can pitch in together.

I am confirming that i'll be staying for BBQ now. 

😢 Me going to miss that Yummy BBQ Man. I so wish I could Join in. Really 

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Be a man @DiamondDallas join us. You have a unique manual ralliart Pajero with an engine built by the best engine builder in Dubai. Not everyone can say they have a 3.7 Pajero! King of the desert trophy is yours for the taking. 

😜

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I sure love to Join in later maybe can't promise anything send me your location and I will try. @Barry I know my engine was build by best engine builder in the world but my monster has other parts to be fixed. Shock absorber and steering oil leak. That best mechanic is on Vacation. So when he's I need to do some other stuff to the car too. Remember "CAR DOES NOT DRIVE ON ENGINE ALONE". Diamond 3:16

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What started as a desert driving training, ended up with offering enough training opportunity to even most experienced folks in the group. Something new I have learned after very long time. Thanks to local boys to show something brilliant that I and Rahim bhai got really impressed with. And many thanks to Basil for creating such an opportunity window for everyone to learn something new and unique.

We started the drive on time and initiated with 2 theory lessons at deflation point on Engine overheating and Wild life. After an hour of driving, we went to practice the art of side sloping on long dunes range. Many perfected their skills and other learned that art for first time with Rahim bhai supervision. After few attempts by everyone, we head to more cleaner area for doing the recovery training with safety. Got one of the car stuck purposely to explain the safety items and techniques involved with doing the tow rope recovery. Explained the reasoning and best practices involved for safer tow rope recovery.

As the sun started to set, we head out for the lesson of self recovery and explain the key things involved to rescue yourself in almost 80-90% of stuck by simple self recovery techniques. Unfortunately that stuck was in deep soft sand and at a very bad angle, so we got to tow the car in the end. Then we head out for the unplanned tire pop-out repair that added the actual practical in the training session. By this time, it was pitch dark just below the fossil rock so we started with night drive theory and explanation for breaking the night drive fear and myths. After 10-15 minutes everyone was ready to shoot up the fossil rock area in the night. 

As we reached up, none of them realize the height until they stepped out of the car and walk across the ridge. Then the challenge was to face the steep decent with rock and sand in pitch dark. With an excellent guidance from Rahim bhai, everyone reached down safely in no time. Now we head to the bbq spot on right side, just behind the Faya area and kept on looking for a cleaner place without any bushes but failed. Then we thought of heading to Camel rock area and setting up the bbq session there. While on the way to Camel rock, we encountered couple of steep dunes with soft sand and realize to back out to simpler route but it was bit late as few cars were stuck here and there. All were recovered with ease except one, which was stuck in dune pocket filled with soft sand from back side and hitting front to the dune, nose fully dug inside the dune.

We wasted about two hours recovering from the front and broke two tow ropes in attempt with 3 different cars and two different angles. By now we realized that front recovery isn't possible as moving the tip of dune isn't practical and we need to change our strategy. We thought of going down the pocket and realized it is too soft sand to tow out the stuck vehicle from back and we might risk two vehicles stuck next to each other in soft sand pocket. I and Rahim bhai went down one by one and realize that it isn't very practical to have so much long run in uphill in soft sand. As we lost all our hopes and running out of idea, we came across three local boys in Suzuki samurai who offered to help us with their brilliant and genius idea. They went down in the soft sand pocket with one of our car and created a short path by flattening the sand by 5-10 attempts, once short path of 10-20 meters was created, they used the short tow rope and gave gentle tugs to the stuck vehicle from back and moved the car out from sticky spot. 

After seeing this idea of using short (1/4) tow rope that can be immensely useful in such tight spot, we all learned something very new and impressive. Total respect to such great thinking and careful execution and precise coordination.

By now we were about 5-6 hours delayed for our bbq session, and still everyone was very excited to start the bbq night and we laid out the spread in nice and open area filled with cool breeze in the middle of May. Many thanks to Saleem and his friends for bringing heaps of bbq ready meat and chicken and continuously cooking for whole night. And Asif bhai homemade cake made the yummiest dessert in the desert. The bbq session that supposed to be for couple of hours lasted for 6-7 hours and we all kept talking and sharing stories until morning 5:00 AM (I think).

Overall it was very nice training and challenging day out to demonstrate that moment we sign up for desert drive anything can happen and we all need to keep ourselves calm and composed to face the reality. It was brilliant teamwork effort demonstrated by everyone and very patiently handled situation. All in all it was great training and learning for everyone.

Here are the pictures from my camera, looking forward to see others click

https://carnity.com/gallery/category/19-desert-driving-training-ii-19-may-2017/

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Let's root for each other & watch each other grow.

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Must have been an awesome lesson on recovery from such a position. Does anyone have a photo or video of the recovery? Feel bad that I missed this moment. But it goes to show that the locals are in a different league when it comes to desert driving. It's like a survival instinct comes in very naturally for them. I have seen the Bedouins of Kuwait drive in the desert near the Kuwait / Iraq border. It's a sight to watch the ease with which the traverse through the desert. 

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OMG!!! If I thought my day was going to be a long one with my indoor cricket tournament which started at 7 am on Friday and finished in time for me to join this training session. Boy, I was wrong. This was a day planned by a higher source to never end.

What started of as a desert training trip ended up being train the trainer module 403.

@Gaurav bhai, your patience really has no bounds and your cool exterior as a group leader makes you the most amazing leader. You are the Ice man. @Basil you rock the show being in second lead and trying to take the initiative to help someone. @shadow79 you just bring such a brilliant flavor to the drive, thanks for not letting me down and handling the radio very well to communicate important information as this is the correct use of the radio, the meat and chicken selection was amazing as were your friends and I am so happy I could meet them and they not only share the food but the spirit too. They were an awesome addition to our Carnity family. @Asif Hussain, you truly are catching up and I love to see your learning curve and how well you have performed, plus your little beast on the side slopes almost flattened them and took us to the other side. It touched the top of the dune. Plus it carried all the parts of the Rav4 which it kept shedding from time to time.

At the start @Shadow79 crested and commented that only 2 people get remembered, the first stuck and the last stuck.He was absolutely spot on. His was the first and @Basel was the last. All Basel wanted to do was help @Shadow79 to recover from a pocket, fortunately @Shadow79 he pushed his Rav4 to a point where it just climbed out of the pocket without any trouble. Unfortunately for @Basel he got himself into the pocket which some what reminded me of my situation last year in Ramadan when I missed my Suhoor and had to fast without it. In my situation also it was the local boys who self recovered me, and this time it was no different. @Gaurav bhai and me got together on several occasions to discuss how to handle the situation, we were learning from the different steps we took towards the recovery. We had started with 2 ropes as the area was soft and incline everywhere, and the Patrol was quietly sitting out watching us try. The 2 rope trick failed as the momentum was not building and was not having any effect on the Patrol. Soon we shifted to the single rope, but than trying to climb upwards in a soft patch of sand was also not enough to get our beast out of the natures pocket. But we were getting close to the remedy as @Gaurav bhai wisely suggested to try and recover it from the back. Hesitantly I tried to make my way down as the Patrol like a magnet tried sucking my Pathy towards it, and with the soft patch I just tried getting myself out. Eventually @Gaurav bhai also tried to use everything in his Pajero and had to get out of there to avoid having 2 cars too close to each other. As we had broken 3 ropes already we were planning to head towards Faya with the hope that we would find someone with a winch, but than the 3 most amazing people appeared and as Gaurav Bhai stopped them asking if they had a winch. They did not have the winch, what they did have was the same idea as Gaurav Bhai but with something a little more specific in mind. As one guy shortened a broken rope 4 folds to make it short and strong, the other took Gaurav bhai trusted Pajero and with very steady pace started making a track on the soft incline patch. Watching them at work was like watching a piece of art being created in front of your eyes. Soon the 2 were connected and short but slightly powerful tugs got the beast out of the situation it had been suffering for the past couple of hours or more. There was cheer from all around and a smile appeared on Basel's face which lit up the dark desert. After the beast was out it suffered from a pop-out which had to be taken care of before it could be driven out of the pocket. As Gaurav Bhai said only respect from all of us to the true dwellers of the sands and their instinct, knowledge and experience. So as I always say, I have been out there for more that 10 years, but I am still learning, and lesson learned for me from this trip, always rely on the tolls you have rather than wish for something you don't have. So rather than sitting there wishing I had a winch, I should have thought about how to manage with what we had. If this was not tiring enough Saleem and gang bought out the grills, meat and chicken which was nicely marinated, shaken, stirred and ready to be digested by us. What a brilliant spread and we had plenty left as we were all filled to the brim. All in all an adventure not to forget, not because of the situation that we were in, but the team spirit which was so evident, Basel was not supposed to join us for the BBQ but he did, Gaurav Bhai and Asif Bhai had their families with Asif Bhai coming all the way from Abu Dhabi, and they could have left and nobody would have minded, but they stayed on. All of us stayed on and made it a wonderful memory, which we can relate to our grand children some day.

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