The wild motor festival that transforms the desert into something ‘like Mad Max’

The Empty Quarter, Abu Dhabi —

You hear it before you see it. Hundreds of all-terrain vehicles tearing across the desert, the roar of their engines echoing over the sand dunes. The noise goes all night long, making it impossible to grab any shuteye.

Not that anyone does.

“There is no sleep in Liwa,” says Ginger Krook, a 23-year-old motorsport enthusiast from the Netherlands. “It’s crazy.”

Each year, the Liwa International Festival draws crowds of car fanatics deep into the Empty Quarter, the vast desert stretching from the United Arab Emirates into Saudi Arabia.

Three hours’ drive from Abu Dhabi, the landscape is almost empty for most of the year, save for a new ribbon of blacktop and towering dunes.

In December, it becomes a dreamscape for motorheads.

“They come together and they