Badr Al-Shaibani is a life and thrill seeker.

I've been an adventurer for quite a long time. I did the Seven Summits. Did Everest, of course. I did the last degree in the South Pole, the North Pole. I went to the deepest caves in the world. I was looking at the map and I was like, “Why didn’t I do anything in Saudi, since I am Saudi?” Then, of course, the Empty Quarter came to my mind. For two years, I was planning how to do this adventure — walking 14 days, 600 kilometers, through the Empty Quarter.

It was really hard in the first two days. The dust was moving all around. You’d have to put on a mask. One of the biggest challenges in the Empty Quarter is the same scenery keeps repeating itself, so you think you’re lost. Sometimes, when you cross the dunes, you lose your sense of direction. So I had to check the GPS all the time. The first point was Umm Al-Hadi, the translation of which is “mother of iron,” because a meteor hit that area and created a big crater full of iron. There, the sand color is more white. When I went east, it changed. It started to become more golden. Then reddish. By the end of the trip, it was a brick color.

After a while, you start reading the sand. I remember talking with one of the Bedouin. He told me that sand is an open book; you just need to know how to read. The wind is always from south to north. They have a small plant that grows in the sand. The wind hits the plant and creates a shape of sand behind it, always from south to north. That was a nice way of seeing the direction. At the same time, you can read if the sand is solid or if your feet will go into it. I developed the skill of knowing where to put my feet and knowing how to walk.

I spent two or three days without seeing anyone. Whenever you go near the water source, you start seeing the camels and the people. But when you are far from the water source, it’s only you. Seeing the traces of animals on the sand, you can read their stories. You can see rabbit traces around the bush. Then you can see fox traces, standing, observing the rabbit. Then they’re running after each other. The people, you see from afar. Then, the guy spots you because you are on top of the dune. He comes with a car and asks, “Are you lost?”

Sometimes, I listened to podcasts in Arabic that talked about the people who used to live in the desert. Sometimes, I just quietly listened to the wind. If I got really bored, I started to listen to music. The best thing is, compared to mountaineering or even to walking on snow in the South Pole or the North Pole, the risk factor is really low. You don’t need to be alert all the time because if you fall, you fall in sand.

I was stopping at different wells. No one can believe it, but they have thermal waters in the middle of the desert. Aramco, the big Saudi company, does a lot of oil exploration in the Empty Quarter. They take care of those wells. They put a big tank and it fills with water. It’s like a jacuzzi. Of course, it’s full of minerals and smells weird, but after it cools, you can use it for showers, and camels can drink that water. A lot of Bedouin bring their camels in winter, so I met a lot of camel owners. And I met a lot of hunters, who come with their falcons and dogs to hunt rabbits and birds.

Every day, I saw shooting stars. Everyone was teaching me how to navigate through the stars. At night, there is nothing to do in the desert except look at the sky, so they know the stars very well. They know when the rain is coming, they know the change of the season, they know the directions, all from the stars.

In the last three days, the sun was really hot. I started having teary eyes. The sizes of the dunes started to increase. By the end of the trip, they had reached 400 meters. That was like climbing mountains. Going down was easy, but going up was a nightmare.

It ended at one of the miracles of the Empty Quarter, a big lake called Umm Al-Heesh. Heesh means palm trees that grow by themselves. Usually, with palm trees, someone has to plant the seed and take care of it, but that small lake and oasis always had palm trees around it. It was mesmerizing, finding that amazing place full of water in the middle of nowhere.

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Masthead

Editor-in-chief — Andrew Fedorov

Rails Editor — Connor McFarland

Altitude Editor — Matt Gu

Deputy Rails Editor — Connor Noble