Chill air at night did not take away from the enchantment of sleeping in the Rub Al Khali. The moon set probably at 2am and I woke, gazing up at a pitch-black sky with innumerable stars . The first time I had slept in a desert was in the Wahiba Sands during a summer – and I remember the whole sky throbbed in the heat. Now with the temperature around 10c the air was still and the stars vivid.

Before dawn, I managed to climb up one of the highest dunes and looked out over a landscape filled with orange as far as my eye could see.

Not far away a bubbling sound alterted me to the flight of hundreds of SandGrouse. The male of this species soaks its breast feathers in water and after a long flight still has enough to allow his chicks to drink.