Ras Al Khaimah – The world’s largest [please insert here something in the United Arab Emirates]. It is no joke when they say that the country seeks to do everything in giant proportions. I’d already seen the world’s highest building and the world’s largest mall. But this time, seeing wasn’t enough. The present writer took a one-day tour in Ras Al Khaimah, one of the seven emirates of the UAE. There I experienced the sensation of going from zero to 150 kilometers per hour in the world’s longest zipline.
But before getting there, we need to slow down and go back to the beginning. Leaving 9 am from Dubai on a two-hour drive that started a zigzag heralding that we were getting to the mountain region of Ras Al Khaimah. By the way, I don’t recommend wildest eating extravagances the day before this trip. While the road runs through rocks for long minutes of curves and more curves, my tip is being free to stare out there. I couldn’t take my eyes from that landscape full of greys, blacks and browns.
Up there, at 1680 meters high, we arrived at the Jais Adventure Center. It’s from there that the adventures go visit the attractions. The adventurers and I, as for those who know me, I’ve lacked some courage for years. But I can fake it. Or not, since everyone around kept asking me if I was okay.
After telling me a little bit about the area and the Jais Flight zipline, the team took me to put on the equipment and receive the safety instructions. This includes a series of steps, from an explanatory video to people “dressing” us with helmets, backpacks and stuff. And of course, double checking every detail.
Even so, the center’s team is quick. Maybe I’m not the only one that could give up if everything wasn’t made so fast. Then we took a van to go to the zipline. There they were playing a song from Costa Rica, from where one of the instructors that gave me a warm welcome was. Indeed, people from many countries worked there. I talked with them while I was waiting to finally fly. A nice 2.83-km flight, by the way, that takes approximately three minutes.
Waiting in line, I made a friend from the United Kingdom who was also alone. Since there are two lines, we formed a duo to go together from one mountain side to the other. The instructor checked if we were ready to go. I said yes to them and to the British guy that was encouraging me to enjoy the ride. “See you later,” I said to my adventure partner. And he replied, excited, “See you on the other side!” Dramatic pause. “You mean the other side of the zipline, right?” the instructor said, amused. I laugh. Did I actually find it funny or wasn’t my brain processing anything anymore? Nobody knows.
The flight
All I know is that when my instructor asked one last time if I was ready, and I said yes, everything went vast. The emptiness below me. The blue all around. The surrounding mountains, and the floor… it was so far down. I could swear I went out screaming, like the tourists that went before me. But everything was so, so intense that I only managed to gape. Shellshocked with the world. Three minutes from 0 to 150 kilometers per hour, hanging. It was really like flying. Or the closest to that I had ever come to it.
We go the whole way lying face down with the arms behind our back. On the video that my helmet cam recorded — which is one of the options of the attraction package, it seems that I didn’t look down. But I swear I looked. You really want to close your eyes but it’s simply impossible. That view is too amazing and insane. Three minutes take forever, but it goes really fast. Do you notice how controversial it gets?
Upon arriving on the suspended platform close to mountains, I learn that Jais Flight has received 70,000 tourists since its opening in 2018, and I’m pretty sure some of them were Brazilian. How do I know that? Because the instructor there asked me how was the “flight.” And I was so ecstatic that I started speaking Portuguese, and he asked me where I was from. “Brazilian? So do you want to know the name of the person who welcomed you here? Azar!”, he said me, laughing [azar is also Portuguese for bad luck]. But I warned, “No bad luck here, sir, as I have yet to cross the last zipline.”
I said goodbye to the good-natured guy whose name would meant bad luck in Portuguese, and I went to the last part of the ride. In this stage, we are sitting, and it slides for just 1 meter long before getting to the mountain itself.
I could have taken some pictures in the beginning or on that platform that connects one zipline to the other. I admit that I couldn’t. I was so thrilled that I couldn’t think of taking out my phone that they let you put inside your backpack. But in full honesty? Nothing I could photograph would cover the vastness I experienced.
Quick Facts
https://visitrasalkhaimah.com/
*The journalist traveled at the invitation of the Ras Al Khaimah Tourism Development Authority
