Hello desert, so strange to meet you!

We live on a planet of such a rich variety of landscape, each unique, magical, breathtaking and must be met.

This is the second desert I have met since I was born, the first was the desert between Egypt and Nubia and now this one in the Emirates.

It is very eerie meeting the desert, an ocean of wide open space, hot, forbidding, barren, endless and simply magical.

My little 6-year-old just stood there in a state of total shock and amazement meeting the entity that the desert is for the very first time. She was compelled to stare frozen at the golden sand, flushed by the intense heat rising from the sand.

It is just incredible to be able to store the experience of being with the desert in our storage of life journeys. Once you meet the  desert is stays in your blood, in your mind, in your soul, and your spirit flares at the magnificence of our planet’s treasures.

And it is so gold, so still, forcing you to move ever so slowly. The heat makes you slow down and the dunes are forbidding and challenging to pass through.

It is not a place that invites a permanent home, and it never was. No water, no trees, no possibility of imposing our usual box structures that we live in inside our cities. The desert may let you pass but you are not welcome to stay.

The nomads move around their whole lives through the desert and navigate through it with no intention of settling anywhere.

The desert is a mystery. Where did all this sand come from? Why is it so compelling and yet so forbidding.

So grateful to have met you. Maybe we will meet again!