Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Ecosystems
Desert
The harsh lands of Arabia have for centuries attracted travellers from the Western world.
According to Richard Burton, they were curious to see 'a haggard land infested with wild
beasts, and wilder men…What could be more exciting? What more sublime?' Indeed, there
is such awe in the words 'Arabian desert', it has been described by so many famous writers
and travellers, and it is bound up so inseparably in Western fantasies of escape that it is
hard to begin a description of it. The very words 'Empty Quarter' (a sea of dunes that lies
at the heart of the Peninsula, straddling Saudi, Yemen, Oman and UAE) invite imaginative
speculation, exploration and discovery.
To this day, people come to the desert expecting 'sand, sand, sand, still sand, and only
sand and sand again'. The traveller who wrote those words (Alexander William Kinglake)
curiously had only passed through gravel plains at that point (in 1834), but so strong is the
connection between the words 'desert' and 'sand', he felt obliged to comment on what he
thought he should see rather than on what was there.
In fact, the sand dunes of the Empty Quarter, or Rub al-Khali as it is known locally, may
be the most famous geographical feature but they are not the only desert of interest. Much
of the Peninsula is made up of flat, gravel plains dotted with outcrops of weather-eroded
sandstone in the shape of pillars, mushrooms and ledges. Fine examples of these desert
forms can be seen in Saudi Arabia, near Al-Ula, Bir Zekreet in Qatar and Duqm and the
Huqf Escarpment in Oman.
There are many other kinds of desert too, including flat coastal plains and the infamous
volcanic black Harra of northern Arabia.
Nowadays, camels (few of which are wild) and feral donkeys dominate the landscape of
thorny acacia (low, funnel-shaped bushes) and life-supporting
ghaf
trees. Sheltering under
these trees, sustained by the dew from the leaflets in the morning, are gazelle, protected
colonies of oryx, and a host of smaller mammals - hares, foxes and hedgehogs - that
provide a food source for the land's many raptors. Easier to spot are lizards, snakes and in-
sects that provide the building blocks of the desert ecosystem.
DESERT YES - DESERTED NO
Visiting any wilderness area carries a responsibility and no more so than a desert, where the slightest interference
with the environment can wreak havoc with fragile ecosystems. The rocky plains of the interior may seem like an
