Awesome Desert

In the 1930s, the Nairn Transport Company created a unique mode of transportation for crossing the Syrian Desert. The enormous 80-foot tractor-trailer buses carried 40 passengers at a time from Damascus to Baghdad and offered comforts like a kitchenette, beds, and air conditioning. Calum Raasay has the full story of this fascinating ride.

The King of the Hammers is perhaps the most balls-out off-road event on the planet. Each year, drivers and spectators gather in the California desert for two weeks of high-horsepower, dirt-throwing, rock-climbing action. Monster Energy put together this fun 5-minute reel to look at what you can expect if you’ve never attended.

Ahead of the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix, Oracle Red Bull Racing drivers Max Verstappen and Checo Perez challenged Scuderia Alpha Tauri teammates Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo to some desert racing in hovercrafts. While their fan-powered vehicles only make 26.5 horsepower, they look like the most fun you can have under 30 mph.

More than 70,000 bohemians, hippies, punks, and outsiders descended on Nevada’s Black Rock Desert for Burning Man 2022. Filmmaker Jesse Chandler forgot he had applied for a permit to fly a drone at the festival, but we’re glad he got a reminder, or we wouldn’t get to enjoy his amazing aerial time-lapse footage.

Beatboxer Tom Thum takes us on an exotic trip to a Middle Eastern desert oasis with this transportive 1-minute performance. We’re also thinking it would be a great tune for a snake charmer. Tom said he was having trouble making his whistle sound, but he still impressed the hell out of us.

Not long ago, Bob “Rocketman” Maddox fired up his Beast Jet Kart – but he only pushed its accelerator pedal down about halfway. This time, he went full throttle, driving the obnoxiously loud go-kart through the desert at about 60 mph. We’re impressed he didn’t drop his selfie stick.

What do you do when you need to transport a school bus across a dry lake bed? You tow it with a bigger bus, naturally. That’s what the guys from DieselSellerz did with their red-white-and-blue “Freedom Bus” which dwarfed the little yellow school bus bringing up the rear.

This fantastic-looking set of keycaps is inspired by the warm colors of desert landscapes. WIANXP makes the keys with durable and saturated PBT dye sublimation in shades of orange, brown, yellow, and tan. Available in 108-key and 130-key sets, and compatible with Cherry MX switches and their clones.

Aiming for an April 2021 opening, Bubble Hotels will offer guests unspoiled views of the California desert. Rooms will have a private sleep unit, a deck, hot tub, lounge area, and a bathroom with an outdoor shower. The bubble-shaped bedroom has heat and AC and a Queen-sized bed. Just 15 min. from Joshua Tree National Park.

Got half a mil burning a hole in your pocket? You could be the new owner of this California desert home by architect Fritz Haeg. This 1 br 1 ba home features a unique blend of natural materials and modernist style, and sits on 45 acres. Contact agent Paul Karr for more info.

Red Bull showcases Team Peugeot’s 2018 Dakar Rally vehicle. The Peugeot 3008 DKR Maxi is nearly 8″ wider than its predecessor for an even more stable ride. Watch it slide, slice and soar through sand and gravel in this sweet slow-motion video.

When we’ve driven through the desert, we’ve had the occasional tumbleweed cross our path. We’ve never seen anything like this though, as seemingly millions of the pesky balls of plant matter took over a stretch of highway like a scene out of a Hitchcock movie.

We’ve already seen skiing on sand dunes, so why shouldn’t sand snowboarding be a thing. Snowboarder Wojtek “Gniazdo” Pawlusiak took to the desert to shred some slopes with a little help from rally driver Kuba Przygoński and his Dakar-outfitted MINI. Photos by Marcin Kin.

Pennzoil continues its series of awesome videos for gearheads, this time leaving the pavement behind and ripping up sand and crawling over rocks in extreme heat with a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. Bonus 360º video here.

We return once again to Moab, Utah, but instead of using R/C planes, Devin Graham captured flying humans, strapped to a huge rock formation and using it as a pivot point (Thanks, Everyone!)