Dubai: Almost a century ago, legendary female explorer Rosita Forbes contemplated on crossing one of the world's largest sand desert — the Empty Quarter or the Rub Al Khali.
Some 80 years later, what Forbes only dreamed of will hopefully be realised by a female explorer from Singapore, Hajar Ali.
And if successful, she will be the first female to ever make a true crossing of the Empty Quarter.
"I'd always been in love with travelling to remote destinations and the Empty Quarter is one of the most remote and extreme destinations in the world," the 32-year-old Ali told Gulf News. The expedition will begin today.
Home to some of the world's largest compound dunes, the Empty Quarter spans 650,000 square kilometres and runs across four Arab countries — the UAE, Oman, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. It is also considered as one of the world's driest, hottest, and most unyielding environments as explorer Donovan Webster would put it.
Upon arriving in the UAE, Ali and her team will head straight to the desert for the 12-day expedition.
"This will be a vehicle crossing and we will be going through the Abu Dhabi and Omani end of the Empty Quarter. This will be a north-south crossing going through the eastern lobe," said Ali, founder of Urbane Nomads, a travel company specialising in luxury travel to remote places.
First expedition
"This will be my first expedition, but I'd travelled to remote, off-the-beaten trek places—from the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan immediately in the wake of Osama [Bin Laden] operation, to remote far western Mongolia for a visit of the famed Kazakh eagle hunters to remote northern Kenya," she added.
Ali will be going with a support team so that they could provide assistance should her vehicle get stuck in sand.
The whole team will be camping in the Empty Quarter all throughout the trip. But it is not only the Empty Quarter that they plan to cross. The team will also be going to the Iraqi Marshlands.
"The Empty Quarter and the Iraqi Marshlands had been chosen as these were the settings of legendary explorer and travel writer Wilfred Thesiger's books The Arabian Sands and The Marsh Arabs, Ali said.
