When Indian national Musthak Ali, his friends, and some family members drove into the desert region near Al Qudra on Friday (December 21) evening, their sole intention was to take a few Instagram- friendly pictures at sunset’ .
However,the Malappuram-native along with a group of nine friends and family, including three women and a one-and-a-half-year-old toddler, lost their way in the desert on Friday night. The group ended up spending an entire night in the desert without food and with a little water, where the temperature was nearing six degrees though they had carried some blanlets and tents with them.
Adding on to the series of unfortunate events, on Saturday morning, their group’s two 4×4 Pathfinders sunk into a dune and they had entirely run out of food and water. With no other way to get out of the conundrum they were in, the group rang the Dubai Police for help.Dubao police located them arially and send them immediately a rescue team with food and water.
Police had to use a helicopter to locate their location as GPS services would not work in the area. They later revealed to Musthak and his friends that they had driven 18kms into the desert and ended up closer to the Muraqab desert region.
How the incident unfolded
Recounting the series of events that led to this adventure, Mustak said he had driven in the the desert many times earlier. .This is the first time we got lost though we have a group of Pathfinder owners and we drive into the desert very often.
Shanavas Shamshudheen,the friend of Musthak was the second driver there who works as an engineer in a contracting company in Dubai. He said he was accompanied by his wife, baby son, parents’ in-law, and two other friends. His in-laws were visiting from India, and this incident scared them deeply.
The group left to the Al Qudra area on Friday at 5:00pm to catch the sunset.The mishap happened when they started returning from the site after taking pictures.Soon they realised that one of their car tyre got punctured.It took nearly an hour to fix the car.They started again around 8:00pm when there was no sunlight at all.They took a wrong turn and lost their way.From 8 pm to 1 am the next morning they kept driving around looking for a way out. But eventually they ended up reaching deeper into the desert.
“When we realised that we were lost in deep desert and no way out to exit,then we spent the whole night in the desert with a thought to find our way out of the desert next morning,” Musthak explained. The group slept in the cars and used blankets and tents to protect themselves from the bitter cold.
The next morning, they set out again only to have their cars sink into a dune. “That’s when things got bad. We’d run out food, and my in-laws are diabetic. We carried only one carton of water, and the people in our group began to panic. We called the police for help,” said Shanavas.
The Dubai Police team found it very tough to locate the group as they were stuck too deep into the desert in an area where GPS signals did not work. Musthak said, “Finally, a police helicopter flew in to spot their location, and the cop cars followed. They pulled our car out and gave us food and water.”
Dubai Police saved our lives.
The Police led the group out of the desert into the Muraqab desert region. “We have so much appreciation for Dubai Police rescue team. The way they found us and they gave us food, water, and drove us back to safety. Had it not been for them, we don’t know what we would’ve done,” added Shanavaz.
When they were asked whether they would discontinue desert driving in future, Musthak and Shanavas, “Not at all, desert driving is an incredible experience. If it was only us men, it would have been all right. But we had with us elderly people, women and children with us. We will never repeat this mistake nor would take the vehicles to that late into the night.”
