Liwa Desert

DesertsAl Dhafra, Abu Dhabi Emirate,UAE

A hundred-kilometre crescent of date oases on the rim of the Empty Quarter, where Abu Dhabi's ruling family farmed before moving to the coast.

September·Quiet month

Apr–Oct

The long heat: highs climb into the mid-30s by May and top 50°C midsummer, so the open dunes are safe only at dawn. Nothing shuts: road, oases and resorts stay open, but the heat keeps you off the sand. Mid-July brings the Liwa Date Festival.

Year-round Red dunes, a palm-oasis crescent and Moreeb Dune, now with a paved road to its foot, stand here all year; what changes is the heat — mild winters, midsummer days over 50°C.

The Liwa Desert is a crescent of date oases a hundred kilometres long on the rim of the Empty Quarter in the Al Dhafra region of Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, where the ruling family of the emirate farmed dates before it moved to the coast, and it is the gateway to the tallest dunes in the country, red ridges bashed by four-wheel drive, boarded down and camped between under a sky with no city glow. The oases were the home of the Bani Yas, who moved between the Liwa palm gardens and the pearl beds of the coast with the seasons, and the gardens are still there, water drawn from the aquifer keeping the ground green a few metres from an ocean of sand; beyond the last village the dunes rise to Moreeb, which the tourism authority puts at 300 metres and which is comfortably the tallest in the country, with a face pitched past fifty degrees that is raced up by trucks and motorbikes in a festival each winter and boarded down by anyone with wax and a board. The rust colour is not the sand itself but a coat of iron oxide on each grain. The dune bashing is the day: a driver crests a ridge, drops down its blind far side and climbs the next at an angle that feels wrong from the passenger seat, on the ridges below Moreeb where the sand is deepest. Camels move at the speed the Bani Yas crossed this desert for centuries, on rides along the ridgelines at dusk, and the camps are pitched in the hollows between the dunes, far from any light, where the night sky comes out in real depth and on still winter mornings the fog settles into the hollows and leaves only the red crests showing above it, burning off within an hour or two of sunrise. Liwa is where the palms meet the Empty Quarter, and the dunes beyond are the biggest in the Emirates.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Go between November and March — summer temperatures pass 45°C and the open dunes turn genuinely dangerous, which is why almost everything here, festival season included, happens in winter.
The hour after sunrise is the one to be out — low light rakes the ripples and the sand runs copper, and the dunes are still unmarked before the day's 4x4 tracks cut across them.
Never drive into the dunes alone — go in convoy, with low-range gearing and deflated tyres. The drop on the far side of a crest stays invisible until you are already on it.
Moreeb is loud in festival weeks — if you came for the silence, avoid the mid-December to early-January motorsport season, or simply drive out into the dunes beyond it.

Things to do

1
Bash the ridges below Moreeb
A driver crests a ridge, drops down its blind far side and climbs the next at an angle that feels wrong from the passenger seat. Liwa's dunes run far larger than the desert playgrounds nearer the cities, which is what makes the ride serious rather than a fairground turn.
2
Board down Moreeb's steep face
Wax a board, walk to the lip and drop into a slope pitched past 50 degrees, sand hissing under the base as speed builds. The ride lasts seconds; the climb back up through sand that gives way underfoot is the part nobody photographs. The same face is a startline each winter, when modified 4x4s and buggies charge straight up it, engines screaming, and most of them stall and slide back down.
3
Ride the ridgelines the Bani Yas crossed
A camel moves at the speed people crossed this desert for centuries, when the Bani Yas travelled between the Liwa oases and the coast. From the saddle the ridges pass slowly enough to watch the light shift from orange to violet along them.
4
Sleep in a hollow between the dunes
Pitch a camp down in the sand between two ridges, far from any city glow, and the night sky comes out in real depth. Wake early in winter and you may find the hollow filled with fog, the crests standing above it like islands.
5
Walk into Liwa's date gardens
Step off the sand into one of Liwa's palm gardens, where water drawn from the aquifer keeps the ground green a few metres from an ocean of dunes. In July the fronds hang heavy with rutab, the soft amber dates the oases are judged on.

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Nearby

179 km