In addition to beautiful red sand dunes, there are really rough, completely bare, scary-looking mountains along the border with Oman and along the UAE coast near Fujairah. Those mountains also extend northeast to Muscat, Oman. I have never seen more desolate country, except in Nevada. Even in New Mexico the hills have some sort of vegetation on them, but here it looks like photos sent back from the Mars rover.

This picture was taken on Christmas Day (not a holiday here) just after some pretty substantial rains, hence the spot of greenery in the foreground. I’ve noticed some green fuzz along the roadside sand as well. I imagine that will turn into dust within a few weeks.

Speaking of dust, the sand here has the consistency of dust. It’s so old it has been ground fine. If they need sand for filtering, they have to import coarse sand. I talked to somebody who used to work at a water-treatment plant in Egypt, and he said they imported sand for that purpose from Muscatine, Iowa!