Rub Al Khali - The Empty Quarter by sandtasticdays

This is a very special place, a million miles away from the bustle of Abu Dhabi. When I first arrived in UAE I read an amazing book by Wilfred Thesiger about his track across the Empty Quarter and his relationship with the warring tribes. The Rub' al Khali (Arabic: الربع الخالي‎ ar-Rubʿ al-Ḫālī ,[note 1] "the empty quarter") or Empty Quarter is the largest sand desert in the world,[1] encompassing most of the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula. The desert covers some 650,000 square kilometres (250,000 sq mi) (the area between long. 44°30′ −56°30′E., and lat. 16°30′ −23°00′N) including parts of Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.[2] It is part of the larger Arabian Desert. Arabian Sands is a book by explorer and travel writer Wilfred Thesiger that was published in 1959. The book focuses on the author's travels across the Arabian Empty Quarter between 1945 and 1950, attempting to capture the lives of the Bedu People and other inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula.[1][2] It is considered a classic of the travel book genre.[3][4] The book largely reflects on the changes and large scale development that took place after the Second World War and the subsequent gradual erosion of traditional Bedouin ways of life that had previously existed unaltered for thousands of years via 500px http://ift.tt/1oxBlCz