Liwa Oasis

Where it sits. The Liwa Oasis is a crescent of villages and date gardens strung along roughly 100 kilometres at the northern edge of the Rub' al Khali, in the Al Dhafra region of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, about 150 kilometres southwest of Abu Dhabi city and close to the Saudi border. The crescent opens northward, and behind it the sand rises into the largest continuous sand sea on earth: dunes here run to 200 and 300 metres, in longitudinal chains and star forms, with a colour that shifts from pale gold in the north to a deep apricot-red as the iron-coated grains dominate further south. Mezairaa, Muzayri' and Hameem are the main settlements; between them, groundwater within reach of hand-dug wells sustains date plantations, which is the entire reason the oasis exists.

Why it matters to the country. Liwa is the ancestral home of the Bani Yas, the tribal confederation from which the Al Nahyan family — rulers of Abu Dhabi and the founding house of the United Arab Emirates — emerged before moving to the coast in the eighteenth century. That gives the place a weight in Emirati identity out of proportion to its population. Archaeology in the wider Al Dhafra area has recovered material going back millennia, and the restored mudbrick forts, including Dhafeer Fort at Mezairaa on its ridge above the plantations, mark the old caravan and raiding country. Date cultivation remains commercially real rather than ornamental: the annual Liwa Date Festival judges fruit by variety and weight, and the Al Dhafra Festival brings camel beauty competitions, saluki racing and falconry to a temporary town in the desert each winter.

On screen — Jakku and Arrakis. Liwa's screen credits belong to two of the largest science-fiction properties in the world, and it is worth separating them precisely.

• Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) shot the desert planet Jakku in the Rub' al Khali around Liwa, with a second unit working quietly in April 2014 and principal photography opening in Abu Dhabi on 16 May. It was the first Star Wars production to film in the Gulf. Large partial sets went up on the sand — spacecraft, towers and the Niima Outpost market, where a controlled explosion left a crater — and the material was cut together with stage work at Pinewood.
• Dune (2021) and Dune: Part Two (2024) both used the Liwa desert for Arrakis, alongside Wadi Rum in Jordan and stages in Budapest, with Denis Villeneuve's crews working in the cooler months. The high, clean-crested dunes and the absence of vegetation or infrastructure in frame are what productions come for.

Travellers should not expect markers or a set to visit. Nothing survives on the ground from either production, and the shooting areas are simply dunes on the edge of a very large desert; the honest way to see them is a dune drive from one of the Liwa hotels.

The Empty Quarter behind it. Liwa is the practical doorway to the Rub' al Khali, which covers roughly 650,000 square kilometres across Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen and the UAE and is the largest continuous body of sand on the planet, with rainfall under 35 millimetres a year and no permanent settlements in its interior. The British explorer Wilfred Thesiger came through Liwa in 1948, between his two crossings of the sand sea with Bedu companions, and his account of small walled gardens, wells and wealth measured in dates and camels is the last detailed picture of the oasis before oil revenue rebuilt it. The transition from tarmac to trackless sand still happens within a few hundred metres of the road.

Moreeb Dune. The best-known single feature is Tal Moreeb, a slip face roughly 300 metres high with a slope steep enough — around 50 degrees at the top — to have become a motorsport venue. The Liwa International Festival hill climb sends modified buggies, quad bikes and trucks straight up it, and even outside event weeks the flat gravel plain at its base is used by drivers testing runs. Standing at the bottom gives the clearest possible sense of scale in a landscape that otherwise offers nothing to measure against.

Getting there and timing. The drive from Abu Dhabi takes two to two and a half hours on good motorway to Mezairaa, then progressively smaller roads. Beyond the tarmac, soft sand requires a four-wheel drive with deflated tyres and someone who knows how to read a dune face; solo driving into the Rub' al Khali without recovery gear and a second vehicle is genuinely dangerous, and there is no mobile coverage across much of it. Accommodation is concentrated at Qasr Al Sarab, a resort built as a mud-coloured fort in the dunes about 20 kilometres off the road, with a smaller hotel at Mezairaa. Summer temperatures pass 48C and the season effectively shuts down between June and September. Winter mornings bring cold air and, occasionally, fog pooling between the dune chains at dawn — the single best photographic condition the oasis offers. Resort interiors are accessible; the dunes themselves are not.