Desert rebirth
The day before heading out into the desert beyond Dubai, I take the ear-popping elevator to the outdoor observation deck of the Burj Khalifa. This is the 828-metre tower that opened last year, making the emirate the record-holder for the world’s tallest building. I’m so high up that I feel as if I’m on the wing of an aeroplane.
Beneath me lies an expanding skyscraper city in miniature. Dubai’s growth, particularly over the past decade, has been exponential. This year, its population reached 1.8 million (a ten-fold rise since 1975) and urbanisation has spread along its entire coastline and now blankets much of its inland territory. Here on the tower, even 160 floors up, my 360° view is blurred by the smog and dust that hangs permanently over Dubai.
In its latest report, WWF attributed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ‘the world’s highest per capita environmental footprint’. It isn’t difficult to see why. Thickets of high-rise towers stretch away, separated by multi-lane motorways on which fuel-guzzling four-wheel-drives sit bumper to bumper.
So it comes as something of a surprise to discover, 65 kilometres outside the city, the silence and tranquillity of the Al Maha Desert Resort and Spa. To reach it, I drive east, the urban sprawl giving way to what it all came from – the open desert. Out here, there’s little else but sand, but nonetheless, it’s impossible to escape humanity’s impact. There are camel farms and enormous electricity pylons, and the dunes are criss-crossed by the tracks of joyriding 4x4s.
Al Maha, located within a 27-square-kilometre fenced reserve, is Dubai’s first eco-hotel. It’s modelled on a Bedouin encampment, albeit one where every five-star suite – a sumptuously furnished tent-like chalet – has its own plunge pool. The view from mine, which overlooks golden desert dotted with date palms and ghaf trees, appears almost biblical. There’s no sound apart from the wind across my tent awning and the whirring of the wings of grey francolins. In the distance lie the Hajar Mountains, which form Oman’s backbone – hunks of ophiolite that rose from the seabed millions of years ago.
It’s little wonder that many of Al Maha’s clients are UAE residents who are only too happy to pay big bucks (it costs from about US$1,000 a night to stay here) to experience the natural world – it’s a resource in short supply within the city.
Deluxe model
Nowhere flaunts capitalism like Dubai, but at Al Maha, if money talks, it’s talking sense. The proceeds from this venture are helping to fund the largest national park in the Middle East, the 225-square-kilometre Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve (DDCR).
Al Maha opened in 1999. It’s a slightly unusual conservation and business model because in this case, the resort came first, the park that surrounds it second. The man behind it is South African Tony Williams, the vice president of the Emirates airline and an ecologist with game lodge experience. He developed Al Maha using the model of deluxe South African safari lodges, where high rates support conservation work. The site he chose offered a range of habitats, including rolling dunes and flat gravel, as well as an underground water source, and he began with a large-scale reseeding programme for indigenous desert flora.
From the start, the project had the support of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed, who was keen to continue the conservation work his late father, Sheikh Rashid, had begun with the Arabian oryx. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the UAE between the 1940s and ’60s, the oryx has been saved here thanks to the efforts of the elderly sheikh, who ensured that the last remaining individuals were captured and bred under secure conditions in Arizona.
Sheikh Mohammed oversaw their reintroduction, along with Arabian and sand gazelles, to Al Maha’s embryonic conservation area, and today, the original 70 oryx have multiplied into 450, and the gazelles are also flourishing.
In fact, the oryx are so at home that they wander freely around the resort. Guests are occasionally surprised by these unicorn-like mammals appearing from behind bushes. ‘They are so tame that one took a bath in one of the plunge pools the other day,’ says general manager Arne Silva. ‘It took four of us to get him out.’
Sand life
In 2000, researchers began a major audit of Al Maha, identifying the main threats to the surrounding habitat. Their conclusions prompted an ambitious proposal to extend the site to create the DDCR – the UAE’s first national park. Its establishment required a revision of the emirate’s constitution, and it opened in 2003. Today, it accounts for nearly five per cent of Dubai’s total land area.
‘We are increasingly aware of the urgent need to take good care of our priceless natural heritage, all the more so as Dubai is expanding so rapidly,’ says Sheikh Ahmed bin Saaed Al-Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of the Emirates airline and group, which has heavily funded the DDCR in partnership with the government.
The reserve is divided into four zones: one can only be visited on foot by researchers; another is for habitat programmes; a third is for hotel guests; and the last is a high-impact area
where a small number of tour operators conduct safaris. ‘We’re very careful with vehicular access,’ explains DDCR conservation officer Stephen Bell. ‘Many desert plants have long, delicate surface roots.’
The reserve is now the most actively researched and managed conservation area in the region. More significantly, the habitat within the DDCR has greatly improved from eight years ago. Quite apart from the wildlife that has been reintroduced, many species are returning of their own accord, among them the Ethiopian hedgehog and Arabian hare.
One animal that isn’t to be found roaming within Al Maha’s fenced reserve is the one that we most associate with the desert: the camel. ‘They are extremely destructive,’ says Bell. ‘They eat everything they find. They are devastating for the desert ecology.’
Camel use here dates back to 2,500 BC and the establishment of the oasis-based lifestyle. ‘Camels are still farmed for their status value, and originally, most of Al Maha’s land was under camel farms,’ Silva tells me. ‘Sheikh Mohammed intervened to request the Bedouin farmers to relocate.’
Camels represent one of the biggest threats to the UAE desert environment. According to botanist David Gallacher of the UAE’s Zayed University, herd numbers have grown from 39,500 in 1976 to 250,000 today. ‘Every camel in the UAE is owned by somebody. Most are allowed to graze the desert on an open-access basis,’ he says. The problem, beyond the simple growth in numbers, is that camels are extremely destructive grazers, especially in comparison to the more selective grazing of oryx or gazelles.
The removal of the camels has been transformational – at Al Maha, plant cover has increased by almost two thirds. Gallacher hopes that in future, camel numbers in the DDCR can be reduced by allocation of rangelands and an overall reduction of the national herd.
Back to the dunes
While Al Maha’s touristic appeal may be based on luxury, it’s also reawakening among its guests an awareness of the fragility and raw beauty of the desert.
At dawn, I take a nature walk with one of the field guides, Hilary, who shows me that while the desert may look stark and unforgiving, it actually teems with life. In just a few minutes, she identifies the tracks of dung beetles, snakes, gerbils, oryx, gazelles and more. ‘Because of the heat, a lot of desert action happens overnight,’ she explains.
Hilary picks a leaf of an indigenous Sodom’s apple plant and shows me the sunlight-reflecting white hairs that help it to withstand the harsh desert conditions. ‘In dried, powdered form, the leaves were used as a painkiller by the Bedouin,’ she tells me.
This kind of fact, she adds, particularly fascinates UAE nationals who visit. ‘We’ve had some Gulf Arab visitors here who live such urban lives that they’ve never before had the chance to walk in the dunes,’ she says. ‘It’s so weird, given that less than a century ago, their ancestors’ lives would have been inseparable from their desert environment.’
As I gaze out at a herd of oryx on a sand dune, I reflect on the fact that it isn’t just wildlife that is being preserved at this desert sanctuary, but a connection to the past.
Dubai co-ordinates
When to go
The best time to visit is outside the summer season (June to September), although the desert location means that temperatures at Al Maha are cooler and less humid year-round than in Dubai itself.
Getting there
Fly to Dubai International Airport. The 65-kilometre drive to Al Maha Desert Resort and Spa takes about 45 minutes by car.
Further information
A night in a Bedouin suite costs from between US$880 and US$1,750, depending on season, and is inclusive of transfers, meals and two on-site activities from a choice of guided desert safari, nature walk, archery, falconry, or camel or horse trek. Children under 12 aren’t permitted. To book, call +971 4 832 9900, email almaha@emirates.com or visit www.al-maha.com.
August 2011
Beneath me lies an expanding skyscraper city in miniature. Dubai’s growth, particularly over the past decade, has been exponential. This year, its population reached 1.8 million (a ten-fold rise since 1975) and urbanisation has spread along its entire coastline and now blankets much of its inland territory. Here on the tower, even 160 floors up, my 360° view is blurred by the smog and dust that hangs permanently over Dubai.
In its latest report, WWF attributed to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ‘the world’s highest per capita environmental footprint’. It isn’t difficult to see why. Thickets of high-rise towers stretch away, separated by multi-lane motorways on which fuel-guzzling four-wheel-drives sit bumper to bumper.
So it comes as something of a surprise to discover, 65 kilometres outside the city, the silence and tranquillity of the Al Maha Desert Resort and Spa. To reach it, I drive east, the urban sprawl giving way to what it all came from – the open desert. Out here, there’s little else but sand, but nonetheless, it’s impossible to escape humanity’s impact. There are camel farms and enormous electricity pylons, and the dunes are criss-crossed by the tracks of joyriding 4x4s.
Al Maha, located within a 27-square-kilometre fenced reserve, is Dubai’s first eco-hotel. It’s modelled on a Bedouin encampment, albeit one where every five-star suite – a sumptuously furnished tent-like chalet – has its own plunge pool. The view from mine, which overlooks golden desert dotted with date palms and ghaf trees, appears almost biblical. There’s no sound apart from the wind across my tent awning and the whirring of the wings of grey francolins. In the distance lie the Hajar Mountains, which form Oman’s backbone – hunks of ophiolite that rose from the seabed millions of years ago.
It’s little wonder that many of Al Maha’s clients are UAE residents who are only too happy to pay big bucks (it costs from about US$1,000 a night to stay here) to experience the natural world – it’s a resource in short supply within the city.
Deluxe model
Nowhere flaunts capitalism like Dubai, but at Al Maha, if money talks, it’s talking sense. The proceeds from this venture are helping to fund the largest national park in the Middle East, the 225-square-kilometre Dubai Desert Conservation Reserve (DDCR).
Al Maha opened in 1999. It’s a slightly unusual conservation and business model because in this case, the resort came first, the park that surrounds it second. The man behind it is South African Tony Williams, the vice president of the Emirates airline and an ecologist with game lodge experience. He developed Al Maha using the model of deluxe South African safari lodges, where high rates support conservation work. The site he chose offered a range of habitats, including rolling dunes and flat gravel, as well as an underground water source, and he began with a large-scale reseeding programme for indigenous desert flora.
From the start, the project had the support of Dubai’s ruler, Sheikh Mohammed, who was keen to continue the conservation work his late father, Sheikh Rashid, had begun with the Arabian oryx. Hunted to the brink of extinction in the UAE between the 1940s and ’60s, the oryx has been saved here thanks to the efforts of the elderly sheikh, who ensured that the last remaining individuals were captured and bred under secure conditions in Arizona.
Sheikh Mohammed oversaw their reintroduction, along with Arabian and sand gazelles, to Al Maha’s embryonic conservation area, and today, the original 70 oryx have multiplied into 450, and the gazelles are also flourishing.
In fact, the oryx are so at home that they wander freely around the resort. Guests are occasionally surprised by these unicorn-like mammals appearing from behind bushes. ‘They are so tame that one took a bath in one of the plunge pools the other day,’ says general manager Arne Silva. ‘It took four of us to get him out.’
Sand life
In 2000, researchers began a major audit of Al Maha, identifying the main threats to the surrounding habitat. Their conclusions prompted an ambitious proposal to extend the site to create the DDCR – the UAE’s first national park. Its establishment required a revision of the emirate’s constitution, and it opened in 2003. Today, it accounts for nearly five per cent of Dubai’s total land area.
‘We are increasingly aware of the urgent need to take good care of our priceless natural heritage, all the more so as Dubai is expanding so rapidly,’ says Sheikh Ahmed bin Saaed Al-Maktoum, chairman and chief executive of the Emirates airline and group, which has heavily funded the DDCR in partnership with the government.
The reserve is divided into four zones: one can only be visited on foot by researchers; another is for habitat programmes; a third is for hotel guests; and the last is a high-impact area
where a small number of tour operators conduct safaris. ‘We’re very careful with vehicular access,’ explains DDCR conservation officer Stephen Bell. ‘Many desert plants have long, delicate surface roots.’
The reserve is now the most actively researched and managed conservation area in the region. More significantly, the habitat within the DDCR has greatly improved from eight years ago. Quite apart from the wildlife that has been reintroduced, many species are returning of their own accord, among them the Ethiopian hedgehog and Arabian hare.
One animal that isn’t to be found roaming within Al Maha’s fenced reserve is the one that we most associate with the desert: the camel. ‘They are extremely destructive,’ says Bell. ‘They eat everything they find. They are devastating for the desert ecology.’
Camel use here dates back to 2,500 BC and the establishment of the oasis-based lifestyle. ‘Camels are still farmed for their status value, and originally, most of Al Maha’s land was under camel farms,’ Silva tells me. ‘Sheikh Mohammed intervened to request the Bedouin farmers to relocate.’
Camels represent one of the biggest threats to the UAE desert environment. According to botanist David Gallacher of the UAE’s Zayed University, herd numbers have grown from 39,500 in 1976 to 250,000 today. ‘Every camel in the UAE is owned by somebody. Most are allowed to graze the desert on an open-access basis,’ he says. The problem, beyond the simple growth in numbers, is that camels are extremely destructive grazers, especially in comparison to the more selective grazing of oryx or gazelles.
The removal of the camels has been transformational – at Al Maha, plant cover has increased by almost two thirds. Gallacher hopes that in future, camel numbers in the DDCR can be reduced by allocation of rangelands and an overall reduction of the national herd.
Back to the dunes
While Al Maha’s touristic appeal may be based on luxury, it’s also reawakening among its guests an awareness of the fragility and raw beauty of the desert.
At dawn, I take a nature walk with one of the field guides, Hilary, who shows me that while the desert may look stark and unforgiving, it actually teems with life. In just a few minutes, she identifies the tracks of dung beetles, snakes, gerbils, oryx, gazelles and more. ‘Because of the heat, a lot of desert action happens overnight,’ she explains.
Hilary picks a leaf of an indigenous Sodom’s apple plant and shows me the sunlight-reflecting white hairs that help it to withstand the harsh desert conditions. ‘In dried, powdered form, the leaves were used as a painkiller by the Bedouin,’ she tells me.
This kind of fact, she adds, particularly fascinates UAE nationals who visit. ‘We’ve had some Gulf Arab visitors here who live such urban lives that they’ve never before had the chance to walk in the dunes,’ she says. ‘It’s so weird, given that less than a century ago, their ancestors’ lives would have been inseparable from their desert environment.’
As I gaze out at a herd of oryx on a sand dune, I reflect on the fact that it isn’t just wildlife that is being preserved at this desert sanctuary, but a connection to the past.
Dubai co-ordinates
When to go
The best time to visit is outside the summer season (June to September), although the desert location means that temperatures at Al Maha are cooler and less humid year-round than in Dubai itself.
Getting there
Fly to Dubai International Airport. The 65-kilometre drive to Al Maha Desert Resort and Spa takes about 45 minutes by car.
Further information
A night in a Bedouin suite costs from between US$880 and US$1,750, depending on season, and is inclusive of transfers, meals and two on-site activities from a choice of guided desert safari, nature walk, archery, falconry, or camel or horse trek. Children under 12 aren’t permitted. To book, call +971 4 832 9900, email almaha@emirates.com or visit www.al-maha.com.
August 2011
|
FIND OUT WHAT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT ON TWITTER:
| |
 |
