10-Apr-2008 -- During our long weekend of 9 April 2008, we decided to visit a cluster of four unvisited confluences, 31N 42E, 30N 41E, 29N 41E, and 29N 42E, which are located in northern Saudi Arabia. The weather is still pleasant enough at this time of the year to venture out into the wild.

After successfully visiting the confluence point at 30N 41E, we continued south towards the Nafūd al-Kabīr (The Great Nafūd desert) where our next confluence point was located. The Great Nafūd desert is the "feeder" reservoir of sands for the Rub` al-Khāliy via the al-Dahnā'. As soon as we started approaching the sand dunes, we aired down the tyres to 20 psi, since the ground was much more firmer and the dunes had lots of bushes around, anchoring the sand. The great Nafūd sand dunes are oriented from west to east, and since we were heading south, that meant that we had to traverse over lots of dunes. This slowed us down considerably, but we never got bogged down either, because we tried to catch the "tail" of the dune to hop onto the next one. We saw a couple of falcons (Saqr) and a fox (too quick for us to capture them on photos!), however the iconic camels against the golden sands were seen now and then, and also a reminder of how cruel the environment can be to some. We also saw some of the Tarthūth flowers (known as the Desert Thumb) (Cynomorium coccineum), to which the Bedouins refer to as the "treasure box of medicine".

We eventually reached the confluence point, which was located on a small sand dune. The confluence was surrounded in all directions by other smaller sand dunes.

As we still had daylight left, we decided to turn east and head towards 29N 42E for as far as we could.