They’d let some of the air out of the tires. We knew what that meant. We knew it meant they were getting the tires ready for the sand. We knew it meant we were about to go dune bashing.
What we didn’t know was how much fun this would be.
We were riding in these 4×4 SUVs, like five trucks in a caravan. When we took off, the ground felt bumpy. As we got further out, though, everything turned smooth.
On the flats, the driver would let the truck drift across the sand. It felt like something straight out of a Subaru commercial, only we were in Toyotas. On the dunes, we’d speed along the sides like racecars hugging the road, only we were tilted over much further than normal racecars.
At some places, we dove straight down the dunes, putting the trucks at angles I never that they could stand. At other places, we drove over watersheds, dramatically tipping the trucks from one side to the other.
The view the whole way looked incredible, just what you’d imagine of a desert paradise: the Gulf on the left, deep blue as can be even though the sky wasn’t even all that blue, and the sun setting on the right, setting over the miles and miles of sand dunes that stretched across the country.
I tried to take some photos. I even recorded some video. But none of it captured what it felt like to actually fly across the sand like that. Oh, and the guy was playing cool Arabian music too, just like my favorite moment in Egypt.
So yeah, we totally bashed up those dunes.
