Dubai: An Emirati man plans to walk across all seven emirates in just seven days to raise awareness of people with special needs – and bag a world record at the same time.
For Jalal Bin Thaneya, 30, the trip is one just one of several long treks he’s done in recent years. In 2013, he cycled across the six Gulf states.
He’s also walked 2,000 kilometres between Abu Dhabi and Makkah — amid several run-ins with Saudi policemen — and climbed the stairs of 100 Dubai skyscrapers. His new trip, planned for December 19, comes ten years after he first walked across all seven emirates. But he wasn’t attempting a world record back then.
Under the rules set by Guinness World Records, who will be monitoring his trip, Bin Thaneya can choose his own route through the seven emirates and move at his own pace. He will start at the Al Ghuwaifat border post, on Abu Dhabi emirate’s western fringe, and trek along desert and then mountain roads to end at Fujairah’s coastline.
Just the journey through Abu Dhabi will take him three days, according to his calculations.
If successful, Bin Thaneya will be officially awarded for completing the “fastest crossing of the United Arab Emirates on foot”.
The punishing trek will see him walk, jog and run 18 hours a day, “whatever I can do”, he said.
And with less than two months before he sets off, Bin Thaneya has a gruelling daily schedule.
Tough training
Six days a week, he wakes up at 5am for morning prayers. Then, after a light breakfast — a spoonful of honey and Weetabix with almond milk — he heads to Kite Beach in Dubai for a 5km run.
When he’s finished, he cleans up and drives to his job as a quality and strategy officer at ports operator DP World. After finishing at 3.30pm, he goes straight to a Jumeirah gym for a workout.
There, he does what he calls his “old school, very standard” bodybuilding-style workout: Squats, bench press, and bicep curls, three sets of eight or ten reps each.
After going home, washing up, prayers, dinner and rest, he goes for a hour-long walk at 8pm. Shortly after, it’s time for bed.
Even his sleeping schedule is not for the faint-hearted. Bin Thaneya practises biphasic sleep — where you sleep for four hours, wake up for one hour, and then go back to sleep.
Deep into the night, and in between two sleeps, loneliness sometimes sets in.
“Nobody else is awake, and you need to find something to do,” he says. But with a world record to beat, there is plenty of things to keep him busy. “Sometimes I wake up and read, I plan my route, I have to practise it.”
To Bin Thaneya, life itself is a practice — at least until December.
Judging by his previous trips, it seems likely that he’ll soon try for another world record.
And trying for a world record is not as easy as it would seem. For a start, they’re expensive.
Watch: Do we need back-to-school boot camps? Gulf News International Editor Alex Abraham discusses.
Record dreams
So far, he says, he’s paid Guinness World Records around Dh35,000 to act as referees and, if he’s successful, hand him the coveted blue record certificate. Then he’s got to think of his support team to drive alongside him in a car, and make sure he’s hydrated and fed.
“I could do this by myself, [with a] rucksack,” he says. But he reckons a backpacker-style journey across the would take him two weeks — similar to the 18 days it took a decade ago.
Originally, Thaneya planned to rent a motorhome, equipped with a shower, mini-kitchen, and comfortable bed.
But due to high costs (at least Dh3,500 per day) he’s had to make do with a Nissan Patrol, where he’ll sleep. Then there’s another issue — finding volunteers. He’s even willing to pay for support drives, although so far few people have shown interest.
“The incentive for the other people to get involved is low,” Bin Thaneya says. After all, they won’t be winning a world record. “These are the challenges I’m facing,” he adds in a resigned tone.
However, the picture is not all bleak. So far, two sponsors have shown interest, although he’s hoping for more.
His own company, DP World, has helped, as well as an Ajman-based company which has pledged around Dh30,000 for the car rental costs, rations, and running gear.
If Bin Thaneya scoops the world record, it would be “a feather in the cap for the UAE”, says Artisan Tents chief Ali Reza Falah, who was born in the UAE but has Iranian roots.
“We thought this would be a pretty good social responsibility action for our company,” he adds.
Life-long search
Bin Thaneya is also looking for a UAE-based charity for special needs people to raise awareness. “I’ve yet to actually pinpoint a certain centre,” he says. “But those interested can come forward.”
When you meet him, Bin Thaneya’s ambition and drive towards his goals are nothing short of impressive.
But even so, it’s hard to find out what makes him tick.
He doesn’t come from a sporting family. “They’re very supportive, but they’re not sportsmen or sportswomen,” he says — and he isn’t related or connected to anyone with special needs.
Even as a child, he was far from active. “I hated sports. I hated running, I hated interacting with people.”
Even Bin Thaneya seems unsure about what drives him. “I guess it’s just down to beliefs and values,” he says, as if thinking out loud. “There are many sportsmen and there are many people who go running, but [they have] no beliefs and values when they do things, if you know what I mean.”
At 20 years old, when he first walked around the UAE, he describes his feeling of “self-realisation… that I need to go on a journey, a quest”.
And it’s a journey he’s still on. “It’s come back to me. Something’s telling me you need to go again,” he adds.
His work to raise awareness for special needs is something he’s often questioned on.
“I don’t need to have special needs or have any relation to people with special needs to be in solidarity with them,” he says in response.
“That’s my motto, you have to do the right thing. If you see something that is missing in society, add to it.”
Bin Thaneya believes — or hopes — that his actions may have inspired others do the same, or at the very least become more interested in physical activity.
He notes that two large cycling events — the Dubai Tour and the Abu Dhabi Tour — started not long after his 2013 ride across the Gulf, and he hopes he played a part, however small, in their creation.
“When I started doing these things, nobody was going and volunteering with a high visibility jacket on the road,” he says.
“What keeps me going is that I know these small things contributed a little to ideas that turned into big things.”
