Sorry for the long post. A Liwa experience cannot be encapsulated in two sentences
Wow, Liwa! A dream come true. My first experience of a place I had heard so much about. Thank you marshals, crew, advanced and intermediate drivers for making this drive such a wonderful and safe experience. The dunes were the size of buildings and scaling down from them was fun and scary both at the same time.
I set out to Liwa after work on Thursday, picking up a buddy on the way. Upon reaching the first off-road exit point at night, I was fortunate to meet
@Petr who had also just arrived. After deflating, I just followed him blindly without a worry in the world. His off-road lights lit up the path for miles
. Soon we were at the campsite, again my first camping experience with Almost4x4.
When
@alshamsi_m said guys time to sleep, everyone dispersed far away and I was wondering what just happened. I camped relatively close to the campfire and realised why everyone dispersed to far off places. There was chatter around the fire until the wee hours of the morning
. I followed
@Phoenix advice and slept under the stars… wow, never seen so many stars before. Thanks
@Phoenix .
I was in the first convoy lead by
@Barish with second lead as
@Mahmoodyasin and
@Issa as sweep. We were honoured to have BOTH
@alshamsi_m and
@Rashidjass as floaters. I think I inaugurated the first convoy’s drive as the first vehicle to get stuck in soft sand shortly after we started the drive. This was the sand that
@alshamsi_m referred to as soft sand and you wont even know it. I was a bit afraid when
@alshamsi_m told me over the radio this will be a hard pull and I embraced myself for a jerk or something… but the Viking rope makes even the hardest of pulls so smooth. I think I got stuck because of a split second loss in concentration.
@Barish and
@alshamsi_m told us during the briefing that Liwa gives the mirage that the dune surface is flat and you’ll think you don’t need to accelerate. Wow they were so right and experiencing that first hand was spooky. On a few dunes, I had to turn down due to loss of momentum and not shifting down to first gear because it felt that that ground was flat. Wow.
On the first couple of steep descends,
@Barish told us on the radio there was a balcony so be careful. I had never heard the term balcony during a desert drive before. And then I saw it. Wow, such a good descriptive term and what enjoyment going down from a balcony. Only in Liwa!
Got to see the brilliant handiwork of
@rapailo and
@Christiaan fixing a leaking radiator hose after taking clips from Samer’s spare hose.
I think we drove way past the 120 km mark because I exhausted my full petrol tank as well as 2 x 20L jerry cans. I had to borrow a 10L jerry can from
@Barish, who reassured me “don’t worry we have lots more extra fuel if you need it”. That was truly reassuring. Thank you
@Barish.
At the end, it was an amazing experience, amazing drive and with amazing people. I would never do this drive with anyone else. Thank you everyone who participated in this drive. A truly memorable experience.
And yes, I finally saw the famed yellow truck.. yaaayyy.
@barish provided an incredible slead; so many chances to practice high descents, side slops, bowl rides and so much more 
to see that the drive had come to an end. 