The oil-rich Gulf is not the obvious place to find a thriving cultural and environmental heritage. The Range Rover SVAutobiography goes into the heart of Arabia to find those leading the preservation of this ancient land T H E WORDS NATHANIEL HANDY PHOTOGRAPHY ALEX HOWE W E A L T H O F T H E D E S E R T ARABIAN JOURNEY THIS IS A JOURNEY INTO A FUTURE ARABIA BEYOND THE CITY LIMITS “No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. By the time you read this, that number will probably He will carry, however faint, the imprint of the desert… be out of date. They are aiming for 100,000 by the for this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate time of the Dubai World Expo 2020. Over 14 million clime can match,” wrote Wilfred Thesiger in his visitors came through Dubai International Airport in seminal 1959 account, Arabian Sands. 2015 in search of the highest penthouses and the Standing amid the scrubland and cranes of biggest shopping malls. This town even has its own modern Dubai, it is clear that the spell in question festival of shopping. is now one of fantastically tall glass towers, near- So, surely we’re going to wander the shining impossible dreams of palm-shaped islands and the hotels and malls of Dubai? That’s what everyone biggest fish tank in the world. Still echoing with the else would do, but we are driving a long wheelbase strange magic of The Thousand and One Nights, Range Rover SVAutobiography – the most luxurious Dubai seems almost an emporium of make-believe. Land Rover ever. This car requires the less-beaten It is the jewel in the crown of the United Arab path, the unexpected delight of perspectives unseen Emirates – a state that’s a mere 45 years old. This from the city’s skyscrapers and visions that only the desert peninsula pointing north like an exclamatory luxury of time and wide open spaces can reveal. finger between the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean As we drive along the traffic-clogged Sheikh has seen unimaginable change in the past half century. Zayed Road, horns blaring, endless billboards Clockwise from top Its population has ballooned from that of a announcing the latest concept suburbs to be built left: leaving Dubai; moderately sized English market town (about 70,000) on the city’s edge, we are aware at every turn at reception, Banyan Tree Al Wadi – the to the equivalent of Greater London (around nine of a faint rippling on the hazy horizon, in between executive class rear million). Almost all those people have come from the gleaming skyscrapers. It is sand dunes. seating of the Range the Indian subcontinent, leaving local Arabs as a tiny It is the call of the desert. Rover SVAutobiography features powered minority of little more than 10%. deployable tables, bottle The magnet that draws them is black gold – the INTO THE SAND DUNES chiller compartment, oil wealth that pours day and night from beneath the This is a journey into another Arabia. But it isn’t individual massage seats with power recline of up sands of Arabia, driving an economic boom. Before a nostalgia trip into a past of desert warriors and to 17 degrees and calf its discovery, the nomadic Bedouin roamed the desert plucky British adventurers. It’s a journey into a future rests; a bedroom and and outsiders ignored it completely. Arabia. Beyond the city limits, a different vision of plunge pool in one of the Banyan Tree Al Wadi’s When this story was written, there were over this region’s future is being created. We head into tent-like villas 65,000 hotel rooms to choose from in Dubai alone. the brick-red dunes that run inland from the coast. 58 ARABIAN JOURNEY At first glance, the untrained eye could be forgiven for thinking that nothing lives in this dry, scorched THE BIG LIST land. Actually, it’s teeming with life. You know Dubai has the world’s “Desert foxes, indigenous cats, snakes, scorpions, tallest building and all the rest… gerbils,” says Ryan Ingram, a conservationist who is Here’s the big list you haven’t director of the first nature reserve in the Emirate of read about before Ras al Khaimah. He is listing just some of the local inhabitants of the five square kilometre reserve he THE COMEBACK ANTELOPE has developed over the past decade. The Arabian oryx was listed “We started out with only one square kilometre as extinct in the wild in the and 16 animals. We now have a herd of 53, including early 1970s. Its reintroduction the Arabian oryx (maha), the sand gazelle (rheem) and in protected areas of the UAE the Arabian gazelle (domani),” he says of the desert and Oman has led to it being habitat, which is also home to the Banyan Tree Al Wadi reclassified from endangered to resort. It lies in the rolling desert dunes of the western vulnerable, the first animal ever coastal strip of the Musandam to make that positive move. Peninsula and is a place where There are now over 1,000 discerning visitors can gain individuals in the wild. a glimpse of real desert. Its individual tented villas, each WORLD-FIRST with their own plunge pool, HERITAGE PROJECT blend into the nature reserve The city of Sharjah is pursuing in which the resort sits. the largest heritage project in the region – Heart of Sharjah – with NATIONAL PARKS the goal of restoring historic The land for the resort and neighbourhoods. It’s the world’s reserve was granted by the first development of its kind on Sheikh of Ras al Khaimah, this scale, is a candidate for THE UNTRAINED eager to promote sustainability UNESCO World Heritage status EYE COULD BE and the environment. “We and is slated for final completion have now presented him with in 2025. FORGIVEN FOR a proposal for an expansion 2 to a 1,700km national park,” LARGEST BOTANIC THINKING THAT says Ingram. “His response GARDEN IN ARABIA NOTHING LIVES was, ‘give me a business plan With only 120mm of rainfall per to cover the 13 million dirham year, Oman might not seem like IN THIS DRY, fence and we’ll talk about it’.” ideal gardening territory, but that A national park might SCORCHED LAND hasn’t stopped the development sound ambitious, but Ingram of the region’s largest Botanic believes there is the demand Garden to showcase the unique for it. Not only are the species flora, landscapes and cultural they have reintroduced growing in number annually, traditions of Oman. the hotels of Ras al Khaimah are also full of visitors who want to get out and do something. By offering FIRST NATIONAL PARK nature safaris, visitors would have a chance to connect When the Emirate of Fujairah with the local environment and culture. designated the wetland site What’s more, the notion of a national park is of Wadi Wurayah as a 129km2 not unprecedented. In the Emirate of Fujairah on protected area in 2009, it became the east coast, Wadi Wurayah – one of the region’s the first national park in the UAE. finest natural sites – has been turned into the UAE’s first national park and designated as a Wetland of UNIQUE DRAGONFLY Clockwise from top International Importance by the Ramsar Convention. left: the reception of Thought to have become extinct the Banyan Tree Al This unique freshwater site in a desert country in 1957, the urothemis thomasi Wadi is built in the supports close to 100 endemic species, covering dragonfly had a range that only mudbrick style of Ras al 129km2 with a further 92km2 buffer zone. Khaimah with traditional covered Oman. In June 2013, it latticework and lighting; The wadi is currently closed to the public while the was spotted in the UAE’s Wadi Ryan Ingram, director of municipality – in conjunction with Emirates Wildlife Wurayah by a research manager the Banyan Tree Al Wadi Society and WWF – work to restore a habitat that was Nature Reserve; bird with the Emirates Wildlife Society. handler, Khan, with a severely degraded by careless overuse and littering. desert eagle owl They have conducted extensive animal research, 61 ARABIAN JOURNEY Left: entering the 36km canyon of Wadi Khab al Shamsi in Oman’s Musandam Peninsula – the track narrows to just five metres wide with sheer 2,000-metre cliffs on either side. Right: in the Al Lisaili desert near Dubai aided by the latest drone technology. A group of “We breed two owl species: the barn owl and the students from the New York University Abu Dhabi desert eagle owl. They are indigenous species and has developed the Wadi Drone – a 2.2kg drone with the majority of them, about 70%, we train to hunt and a range of up to 40km that rangers use to roam the then release back into the wild.” park’s remote corners in high summer, collecting data on animal movements. INTO THE MOUNTAINS The use of modern technology to aid the Taking the road east from the Banyan Tree Al Wadi, preservation of local heritage is something that feels the dunes give way to open, table-flat gravel plains very appropriate in the UAE, and it’s happening at the from which, with great drama, the Hajjar mountain falconry on the Banyan Tree Al Wadi reserve, too. “The range rises. This jagged spine runs from the Strait of Bedouin traditionally used falcons Hormuz way down to the fishing port of Sur at the as part of their survival,” explains eastern tip of Oman.