The sands of the Empty Quarter begin to curl around the road on the approach to Al Hashman, then very quickly coddle into small mounds and ergs (wind-blown dune) around the settlement. From here, a track leads north along a soft sand corridor with dunes rising dramatically either side and offering superb desert vistas from their summits. This is the fringe of the largest sea of sand in the world, and the landscape is exquisite in its silence and enormity.
There is very little rock or vegetation here, but an occasional white geode (cauliflower-shaped rock formation, sometimes harbouring crystals) breaks the uniformity of the sands.