Welcome to the adventure hub of the United Arab Emirates, where mountains, sea and desert collide

“You froze time!” Fadi Hachicho is talking to a Harris’s hawk, but the bird has its head in the clouds. Caught in an updraft, it’s hovering on the wind high above us, still in the air, the sun playing on its russet feathers. When it flies on, it’s only to luxuriate in the thermals some more, circling in large, languid rings, flapping its wings only occasionally. Which makes it all the more surprising when it suddenly pivots, head to the scree below, and spirals twice before diving in one clean swoop. Fadi bursts into a laugh, high-pitched and unrestrained. “Now you’re just showing off.”

Native to Mexico, Harris’s hawks are not the raptors you’d expect to see hunting in Ras Al Khaimah, the northernmost of the United Arab Emirates’ seven territories. Falcons are more commonly associated with the wider region; Bedouin trained these birds to source food as a means of survival in the Arabian desert, a millennia-old practice that, in its original form, has been inscribed by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage. “I used to falcon before adopting Logan,” says Hussain Darwish of the bird that’s following our group of three on the high and lonely path, hop-flying from bush to boulder. He’s from Oman, one of the countries where traditional falconry originated. “But falcons will hunt and either return to camp or wait with the prey. Logan is trained to hike with me — with us.

I’m spending three days exploring the adventurous side of this little-known emirate, and I’ve started on a high: guide Fadi and his friend Hussain are taking me on an hour-long trek up Jebel Jais, the highest point in the UAE at 6,345ft (1,934m). It’s part of the Hajar Mountains, a rocky, barren range more often associated with neighbouring Oman. It spills into the emirates at its western end, creating opportunities for multi-stop ziplining, hike-and-fly paragliding and summit-bagging — the list goes on. “No other place in the country has all this in one spot,” says Fadi.

Originally from Beirut, he moved from Dubai to Ras Al Khaimah to take advantage of its larger-than-life nature. We started our walk from Camp 1770, which he now runs as part of his tour company, Adventurati Outdoor. Set at 5,807ft in the Jebel Jais mountains, it’s the highest campsite in the UAE, and on the trail leading out from it, views of the Hajars unfurl in every direction. They first formed 70 million years ago when tectonic plates collided, thrusting the seabed up in rippling crests reminiscent of crashing waves. “Hajar means ‘rock’,” says Fadi. “These are our Rocky Mountains, our Grand Canyon.”

For all its potential, Ras Al Khaimah is new to the adventure scene. Five years ago, there were fewer than 10 miles of official hiking trails in the Jebel Jais area. When Highlander — a series of long-distance trekking events that’s been held in over 20 countries since 2017 — first took place here three years ago, the network had to be especially extended for the race to even be feasible. “People came expecting porters,” says Fadi, who also manages Highlander events in the region, with an amused smile. But the emirate was quick to catch up on lost time. Today, there are 58 miles of paths soon to be mapped and signposted — and the number’s increasing.

In the same few years, the whole of Jebel Jais has been developed into something of an adventure playground, much of it living up to the superlatives the UAE prides itself on; this is, after all, the country with the world’s highest buildings, its deepest swimming pool. In Jebel Jais, there’s the world’s longest zip-line and the country’s highest restaurant, which serves international dishes and plays western pop. Revving up its single mountain road — 20 miles of perfect tarmac and wide hairpin bends — are low-lying yellow sportscars and oversized purple SUVs. Glamping and luxury lodges are in the works, set to cater to what the emirate hopes will be an influx of thrill-seeking visitors.

But elsewhere, the vision is more subdued. On the drive up to Camp 1770, Fadi stopped at roadside viewpoints to show me distant farms in the folds of the Hajars, the ancient homes of the emirate’s age-old mountain tribes. They’re simple settlements, where houses are built with stacked-up stones and buckwheat is grown on terraces the way it’s been done here for thousands of years. Most remain only accessible via walking trails. “We’re fixing some of them up to welcome hikers for local snacks and beverages,” explained Fadi. “These tribespeople — the way they talk, their handshake, their facial expressions — it’s all harsh like these mountains, but they’re generous and welcoming.”

Harsh is a good adjective to describe this environment, I muse as I walk on along the trail of scattered stones, hugging myself in my jacket and massaging down the goosebumps. It’s early spring, the afternoon edging towards sundown, and the temperature has fallen below 5C this high up in the mountains — a dry chill that reaches the bones. But as we hit the end of our uphill trek, a stone slab marking the border with the Omani exclave of Musandam, I realise why Fadi chose to head out so late in the day.

I turn to face the path we’ve taken to get up here. The sky’s still blue, but the haze has turned the sea greige, so that the reflection of the low sun is already a smudged orange; it’s a scene out of time. This, Fadi tells me, is the only place in the country where you can see the sun rise above the Indian Ocean and set in the Persian Gulf. “Even today, there are people who’ve been in the UAE 20 years and don’t know this exists,” he says. “But we have what makes us unique. And the beauty about these mountains is that they’re a blank page. We’re writing history.”

The desert

The question of writing — or in this case, rewriting — history comes up again the next day, on a desert drive through Al Wadi Nature Reserve, 1,200 acres of protected dunes in Ras Al Khaimah’s Wadi Khadeja. “That one was born yesterday,” whispers ranger-ambassador Sisira Ranjan Panda from behind the wheel of our open-sided vehicle. Near the path of old tyre treads is an Arabian oryx calf, curled up tight with its head on its slight hind legs. Sleeping under a rimth, the local name for an almost-leafless shrub, it’s the image of proverbial innocence. “We’ve had 17 births so far this year. It’s a great number for us.”

We’ve just left the Adventure Centre of the Ritz-Carlton Al Wadi, a 40-minute drive south west of Jebel Jais and inside the gated reserve, and already we’re face-to-muzzle with these Middle Eastern icons — the national animal of the UAE, Jordan, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar. They have ringed horns as high as they are tall, and white, almost luminous coats to reflect the sun’s harsh rays, part of what’s made them so well-adapted to life in these scorched lands. “But it makes it hard to hide,” adds Sisira. “That’s one reason why they almost disappeared.”

The Arabian oryx historically ranged throughout the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. Bedouin hunted it for its meat and hide, but the popularisation of motorised vehicles and automatic weapons in the region, coupled with the rise of trophy hunting, exacerbated threats to its survival. By 1972, it was declared extinct in the wild, persisting only in zoos and private parks. A rewilding process started a decade later, making this the world’s first species to be successfully reintroduced into its natural habitat.

Still, protected reserves remain most visitors’ best bet of spotting one — or dozens. Al Wadi welcomed nine oryxes in 2011; today, there are 113 and counting. We’re here during mating season, which runs roughly from October to May, and families are out in their herds. We spot a pair of month-old siblings scampering behind their parents and a female heavy with the weight of her taut abdomen. “It’ll give birth in less than two days — ah,” Sisira halts mid-sentence, spine tensed, eyes shooting up. “Do you hear that?”

The call of the Indian roller is a robotic chack, and when the small bird flies out from the shrub where it has been resting, I wonder if it is in fact a hologram. From its brown body, it lifts open oversized wings with a plumage so vibrant it looks out of place: bands of bright turquoise and electric blue, with shafts of indigo and grey-green tinges on the tips. “It’s one of the most colourful birds in this desert,” says Sisira.

The entire desert is more colourful than I expected. The dunes, damp from the day’s intermittent showers, are an earthy terracotta, covered in grass that has sprouted in what’s been an unusually wet winter. It’s the result of cloud seeding, locals have told me — the process of releasing chemicals or, as is the case locally, salt particles into the air to conjure rainfall. Countries from the UAE to the US use it to combat water scarcity and other issues, but the jury’s still out on what its long-term effects might be on the environment.

When I ask Sisira what he thinks of the green dunes, he shrugs in a soft manner that’s hard to decipher. What’s clear is his love of the reserve, which he picks apart on the rest of our safari with forensic knowledge. He points out burrows, homes to pharaoh eagle-owls and Arabian red foxes, and tracks Arabian darkling beetles and desert running ants from pinprick prints in the sand. We listen to the warble of the great grey shrike, then purse our lips to emulate the flat hoo-hoo-ing of the Eurasian hoopoe.

We stop in a grove of ghaf, the UAE’s national tree, known as ‘camel umbrellas’ for the shade they provide. As if to demonstrate, sand gazelles — the reserve’s other resident antelope — are walking under the canopy, finding respite from the sun that appears in and out of the cloud cover. “They run, but not for long,” says Sisira. “What they can do is sprint.” Right on cue, they all tense, reacting to a noise, danger or instinct imperceptible to my human senses, before darting away and up a mound, joining some oryxes.

On the drive back, Sisira tells me the Arabic word for oryxes is al maha, meaning ‘beautiful eyes’ — large and black, emphasised by a slit of darker fur that seems to cut through them to the jaws. When I close mine, the image of the herd on the crest of the dune, silhouetted against the glare of the grey sky, replays long after we’ve left.

The coast

Ras Al Khaimah means ‘head of the tent’, a name that, depending on your lore of choice, evokes its position at the northern end of the country or the tale of a sheikh who kept a lantern on his tent as a lighthouse for seafarers. Before oil took over in the 1950s, pearl-trading was big business along the emirate’s 40 miles of coastline. Divers would head out to sea on sailboats for months at a time, living in crews of 30 or more to scour the seafloor for oysters. The advent of cheap and convenient cultured pearls in the early 1900s brought an end to this industry, but its heritage is kept alive by Suwaidi Pearl Farm, the first and only one in the Gulf. Set up in 2004 offshore from the village of Al Rams by the grandson of a local pearl-diver, it offers tours guiding visitors through the history of pearling in the region.

Part of this history is Al Jazeera Al Hamra, the only pearling village in the Gulf to have survived the rush for urbanisation in the 20th century. It was home to the Za’ab coastal tribe, who lived here for some 400 years until the changing economy pushed them to seek new fortunes in Abu Dhabi in the late 1960s. Abandoned for over four decades, the village is now kept as an open-air museum.

“You sit here and you feel… you feel…” Mohammed Tarbosh trails off as he pounds on his heart, his eyes searching the ancient courtyard as if he’s going to find the words on its walls of sunbaked coral. Born and raised in Ras Al Khaimah, he works for the Al Qasimi Foundation, which supports the emirate’s social and cultural development, and he’s here in traditional kandura robe and ghutrah headdress to show me around. We walk up a watchtower and inside a mosque, past dusty souk grounds and under the windcatcher towers of family homes, some left in ruins, some rebuilt to their original flat-topped, sand-coloured look.

At the moment, it’s all a backdrop to Ras Al Khaimah Art, a yearly festival that repopulates the ghost village with contemporary installations. There are suspended wire sculptures twirling inside an empty house and Daliesque paintings hung on the exposed bricks of crumbling walls. “Nowadays, visitors to the UAE want to have a cultural journey, too, not just visit malls and tall buildings,” says Muhammed. “Eventually, the glamour will become an everyday thing. This is the story of our fathers, our grandfathers. It’s important we know it.”

That’s not to say the emirate is immune to the blue-sky thinking of Dubai or Abu Dhabi. A 10-minute drive south west, Al Hamra Village is home to top-end hotels and a marina lined with yachts and speedboats. Continue and you’ll reach Jazirah Aviation Club, which offers sightseeing flights on Barbie-pink two-seaters, and man-made Al Marjan Island, still under development but set to welcome a 1,000ft-high resort with 1,500 rooms, 24 restaurants and entertainment options ranging from an on-site theatre to the UAE’s first casino.

Between old and new is Ras Al Khaimah city, the emirate’s main hub, a sparse collection of mid-rise, mid-century buildings to the north east of Al Jazeera Al Hamra. Its seafront splits into an inner-city creek home to the emirate’s biggest concentration of mangroves, which are present throughout the country, in total covering 60sq miles of Emirati coast. The national government is investing in their conservation — as carbon stores, coastal defences, natural sanctuaries and sources of income. At a time when mangrove forests around the world are being lost to human activity and climate change, in the UAE they’re growing.

I explore the local thicket that evening, paddling by the water-level canopy with a kayak rented from a roadside stall, Al Ras Kayak. Flying fish leap in front of my bow and I follow them inside a channel. I glide slowly, careful not to disturb the wildlife I can’t see but whose song has engulfed me entirely. It’s a soundscape I can’t untangle: there’s chirping, a shrill whistle, a croaking like the plucking of an out-of-tune guitar — the chorus of the mangroves’ birds, including cormorants, western reef herons and greater spotted eagles, which share these waters with turtles, rays and reef sharks. I’m so engrossed, I don’t notice the path narrowing until the mangroves’ breathing roots scratch the side of my kayak. I take a last, lucky glance inside the foliage, spotting an Arabian collared kingfisher.

But it’s when I come out of the waterway that I find what I’ve come looking for: a flamboyance of flamingos walking in the shallows, flicking their hooked beaks this way and that. The setting sun has warmed the sky and flushed their feathers a deep peach. I stop at a distance, bobbing in the calm water and taking in the scene. Then, a bird at one end of the procession spreads its wings. It keeps them splayed, neck straight, legs poised, holding the pose like it’s holding a breath — a prelude, I soon realise, to the show that’s about to play out.

When it takes off, the act is so deliberate it seems like a performance. One after the other, the flamingos follow suit in a chain reaction of fluttering and flapping. And, caught in their excitement, I join the flock — them flying high above, me paddling swiftly below. I heave my kayak with full force, following the straight arrow of their flight, stabbing the water to their regimented wingbeats until I’m right under the leader. When I look up, it looks like it’s hovering. For the few heartbeats I manage to keep up, time once again seems to come to a standstill.