Drones Over the Desert

Former Drone Video of the Week Winner and 2023 DVOY nominee oculusfilms brings us this magnificent drone video from the sand dunes of the vast Empty Quarter desert in Dubai, one of the kingdoms which makes up the United Arab Emirates.  Also known as the Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter covers roughly the southern one-third of the Arabian Peninsula, including much of the UAE and portions of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman.  With a land area of about 250k square mi. (around 650k square km), it's considered one of the world's largest continuous deserts.  

The massive desert that covers southern Mongolia can be seen in this exciting, 4K drone video by contributor BaBi. The Gobi Desert is bound by the Altai Mountains, the Mongolian steppes to the north, the Taklamakan Desert to the west, the Hexi Corridor and Tibetan Plateau to the southwest and North China Plain to the southeast. It has a rich history, being part of the Mongol Empire and the home of several important cities along the Silk Road. This video was a Drone Video of the Week nominee in May, 2019.

Check out this absolutely magnificent drone video of Chile's Atacama Desert, compliments of top AirVuz contributor and pilot nevinxavier.  The Atacama runs in a north-south direction for a length of about 1k km (around 600 mi.) along Chile's west coast, with small portions in Peru and Bolivia.  Covering an area of roughly 105k square km (a bit over 40k square mi.), it's considered part of the Andes system.  In terms of aridity and lack of temperature variation, it's considered the most "perfect" desert.  This was a DVOW Winner in June, 2020.

The west coast of the African nation Namibia is covered by the Namib Desert, which runs the length of the country's Atlantic coast. In this video, contributor and pilot Elevated Perspectives International gives us a bird's eye view of the mighty desert and includes footage of Sossusvlei, Cape Cross and Spitzkoppe.  The desert, which has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site, was the primary shooting location for the movie Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), the fourth installment of the series.

Contributor and drone pilot Etch created this marvelous bird's eye view of Siwa Oasis in Egypt's great Western Desert, a part of the great Sahara.  It's located just a few km/mi from the country's border with neighboring Libya to the west.  The desert here is considered the most remote part of Egypt, North Africa's largest country in terms of population.   The oasis was named for a famous oracle and was once known as Oasis of Amun Ra.  It's believed that the area was settled in the tenth millennium BC.  

Multiple Drone Video of the Week Winner oculusfilms brings us this fantastic drone video from the Thar Desert in Pakistan.  The desert covers a massive area of 77k square mi. (about 200k square km) in eastern Pakistan and western India.  The Pakistani portion of the desert lies in the provinces of Sindh and Punjab.  Much of the desert consists of sand dunes that continually shift, particularly during the monsoon season.   Annual rainfall in the desert ranges from 4-20 inches (about 100-500 mm).    

Top AirVuz contributor Ghadir Shaar, a Finalist for the Drone Video Awards for his video from the United Arab Emirates, created this DVOW winning piece from a different Middle Eastern country: Jordan. Created in collaboration with the Jordan Tourism Board, the video opens with footage from the other-worldly Wadi Rum Desert. Other highlights include the Citadel of Amman at the :47 mark, the shores of the Dead Sea (:55), the great Petra ruins complex in the Arabah Valley (1:30), the amphitheater ruins at Jerash (1:42), and more.  

While India is perhaps most closely associated with gigantic mountains and wide rivers, it's also home to one of the world's largest deserts.  The Thar Desert, sometimes known as the Great Indian Desert, covers 200k square km (just over 75k square mi.), most of which is in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan.  It's one of the world's top 20 deserts in area, and the most populated.  In this video, you'll get an aerial tour of this magnificent desert, compliements of contributor Miapvideos.

Created over a 10 month period, this short film by Ghadir Shaar is meant to show off the United Arab Emirates and all the country has to offer. See the UAE's sharp, rugged mountains and endless, sandy deserts, its sprawling city of Dubai with its world-renowned architecture (as well as the world's tallest skyscraper), camels, deserted towns, and stunning sunrises.  This video was AirVuz Drone Video of the Week, December Week 2 and is now a Drone Video Awards' Nature & Landscape nominee.

California's Kelso Dunes presents one of the most iconic desert scenes to be found in the USA.  It's part of the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles.  Covering 120 square km (around 45 square mi.), the dunes here rise to a height of up to 200 meters (about 650 ft.) above the desert floor.  Part of the Mojave National Preserve, you can check out the marvelous hills of sand from above in this fantastic drone video by top AirVuz content creator and pilot rememorales. This video was selected as a DVOW finalist in July 2020.

Contributor and pilot Naim sh brings us this amazing drone video of some spectacular rock formations in the Libyan desert.  The Acacus Mountains begin at Ghat in the country's southwestern corner (near the Algerian border) and extend northward, forming part of the Sahara Desert.  The rock formations you'll see in the video host some of the world's most well known pre-historic cave art.   With paintings that are as old as 14 millennia, the area has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

Contributor Tarik Kiko Mavic Pro used a DJI Mavic Pro drone to create this magnificent drone video from the Sahara Desert in Algeria.  Tassili n'Ajjer ("Plateau of the Rivers") is a national park in the southeastern part of this vast country in North Africa, not far from the border with Libya.  In addition to its spectacular natural scenery, the park is home to some well known pre-historic rock art, some of which is up to 12,000 years old.  The park has been designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Qasar Al Sahab is a five-star resort in the heart of the Middle Eastern desert.  It's in the United Arab Emirates, not far from the city of Dubai.  Top contributor Fabio Knoll created a stunning drone video of the recently built resort.  The property is situated at the edge of the Empty Quarter, which covers roughly the southern third of the Arabian Peninsula and is the largest uninterrupted area of desert in the entire world.  This area achieved a degree of fame by appearing as the planet Jakku in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Contributor and pilot Maurice Mbui is creating a series of drone videos showing off the great African nation of Kenya.  In this segment, he put together a stunning aerial tour of Marsabit County in the north central part of the country.  This is desert country (the Chalbi Desert) for the most part, punctuated with magnificent volcanoes and crater lakes.  The gigantic county covers over a territory of 65k square km (about 25k square miles) and is inhabited by fewer than 300,000 people as of 2018.  

New AirVuz contributor ART 4 FACT used a DJI Mavic Air to create this beautiful aerial video from the vastness of central Iran.  It was filmed in the area known as the Mesr Desert, which is located in the Isfahan Province in the north-central part of this giant Middle Eastern country.  This area is sparsely populated, to say the least - the surrounding (and gigantic) Khur and Biabanak County has only a few thousand families in residence.  It's believed to be the least-populous county in the country.  

Top contributor and drone pilot Chris Borg put together this amazing trip reel from the Middle Eastern country of Jordan.  Two of the main areas featured have become famous as filming locations.  The first is the Wadi Rum Desert, located in the southern part of the country, which was used for Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and later the 2015 edition of the Star Wars series.  The other is the ancient city of Petra, which has been featured in numerous movies, most famously Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).

Top first-person view (FPV) pilot and drone racer JohnnyFPV, who travels the world making FPV freestyle videos, created this magnificent video from Mada'in Saleh, an archaeological site in northwestern Saudi Arabia.  With full permission from the requisite authorities, he gives us a unique view of one of the most iconic desert landscapes from the vantage of a quad-mounted GoPro. This was the winning video in the 2nd Annual Drone Video Awards in the Cinematic FPV category and was FPV Video of the Year.

Death Valley is located in the Mojave desert of southeastern California.  It's a land of extremes - the lowest point in the USA, and home of some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded.  In the 1970's, the other-worldly look of the place caught the attention of a filmmaker named George Lucas.  The result was that Death Valley was used as a filming location for the first Star Wars movie, now called Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.  In this video, EUCORP gives us a bird's eye view of the famous valley.

Multiple Drone Video of the Week Winner Postandfly brings us this stunning drone video from the desert of northern Mexico.  The video was filmed near the town of Cuatro Ciénegas, which is located in the Chihuahuan Desert, roughly in the middle of the state of Coahuila.  The area is known for its wetlands, which you'll see throughout the video.  The Chihuahuan Desert covers much of the area along either side of the US/Mexican border.  The video was filmed with a DJI Mavic 3 Cine as well as a Avata first person view (FPV) drone.  

The desert areas of southern Israel are home to some of the world's most unusual rock formations.  One of these is the HaMakhtesh HaGadol ("Big Crater") in the Negev Desert, near the southern extent of the country.  It's actually not a volcanic crater but rather a makhtesh, a landform which is caused by unusual erosion patterns and which is almost unknown outside of southern Israel and the Sinai Peninsula.  In this video, Ori Feldman used a DJI Mavic Pro drone to create an epic aerial video of a hike on this amazing formation.

The continent-nation of Australia is covered in deserts; named ones cover almost 1.4 million square km (over 500k square mi.); taken together as a single desert it would be the fourth largest in the world and the second largest (after the Sahara) not counting the polar deserts.  Most of the country's desert areas are to be found in the state of Western Australia, South Australia, and the Northern Territories.  In this video by Falconskytech, you'll get a bird's eye view of a desert area in the Northern Territories.  

AirVuz contributor GBdrone returns after a three year hiatus from AirVuz to bring us this magnificent drone video from the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.  The desert covers about 260k square km (around 100k square mi.) in southern California, southwestern Arizona, and northern Mexico.  Unlike adjacent deserts such as the Mojave and Chihuahuan Deserts, the Sonoran features relatively warm winters and two seasons of rainfall.  It's home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, including 350 species of bird, 20 reptile species, and more.   

Contributor Hamed.razzaghi created this memorable drone video of a spot on Gran Canaria in Spain's Canary Islands. Maspaloma is a town on the southern coast of the island, which lies in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean archipelago.  It is surrounded by an arid area of other-worldly beauty.  Moviegoers may see some familiar territory here; the Maspaloma sand dunes were used to film the 2010 blockbuster action movie Clash of the Titans, which grossed nearly a half billion dollars at the box office.

Burning Man is an annual multiday concert and personal discovery event held in the desert of Nevada in the western United States.  The event began as a modest affair in the mid-1980's in San Francisco, switching to a desert location the next decade.  The modern era Burning Man see tens of thousands of attendees, many of whom camp in the desert during the run of the event.  Contributor and pilot Memmi used a DJI Inspire 2 drone to fly over the Burning Man grounds, treating us to this amazing aerial video.  

Explore Pakistan's Cholistan Desert by drone in this excellent aerial video by AirVuz contributor and pilot nayya2006.  The Cholistan Desert is located in the southern part of the province of Punjab.  The Cholistan forms part of the larger Thar Desert, which extends to the south into the province of Sindh as well as eastward into the Indian state of Rajasthan.  Until the First Millennium BC, the Cholistan was actually a fertile plain before changing river flows rendered it arid; it subsequently became an important caravan trade center.

For a first upload to AirVuz, new contributor MansourFpvDz brings us this excellent first person view (FPV) drone video from the Sahara Desert in Algeria.  The video was filmed in Brézina, which is located in the El Bayadh Province in the northwestern part of this giant North African country.   Located a relatively short distance from the border with Morocco to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the north, this marks the northern edge of the Sahara Desert, which covers all of the country but for a small coastal strip in the north.

Top contributor Bbloss put this video together from his trip to the North African country Tunisia.  No matter how many drone videos you've seen, you probably haven't seen many from a camel-borne pilot.  That's what you'll get here; most of the video was shot riding a (two hump) camel on the Mediterranean coastline, where the Sahara desert goes right up to the sea.  The video wraps up with a beautiful sunset shot of a hilltop town somewhere in the vast Sahara desert, which covers most of the country's land area.

Enjoy these stunning aerial views of southern Israel, compliments of former Drone Video of the Week Winner kostas Gur.  Filmed with a DJI Mini 3 Pro, the video was filmed over the Negev, Judea and Arabah Deserts, which cover much of the southern part of the country and are home to some of the country's most spectacular natural scenery.  At about the 1:25 mark, you'll see the cable car leading to the top of Masada, the tabletop mountain which was the scene of a famous seige during Roman times.  

Check out these marvelous aerial views of one of the world's largest deserts and some epic dune buggy action, compliments of former DVOW Finalist twentyonebyninefilms.  The video filmed was with a DJI Mavic 3 Cine (and supplemented with ground camera footage) over the Empty Quarter in Dubai, one of the emirates which make up the Persian Gulf nation of the United Arab Emirates.  The Empty Quarter (Rub' al Khali) is a vast desert which covers roughly the lower third of the Arabian Peninsula, an area roughly equal to the USA state of Texas.  

The Moreeb Dunes in the United Arab Emirates contain some of the highest sand dunes in the world.  The highest stands 300 meters (1k ft) above the desert floor, with a slope of nearly 50 degrees.  Contributor Paul Vlad used the dunes as backdrop for this stunning drone video, featuring aerial footage of a car driving through the endless desert as well as a model standing atop one of the dunes.  The Dunes are in a part of the Arabian Desert commonly known as the Empty Quarter, one of the world's largest contiguous desert areas.  

If you think Texas is flat, you'll definitely be surprised by this stunning drone video by AirVuz contributor and pilot Lostgirl Adventures.  The video was filmed over an area outside of Big Bend National Park in Brewster County, in the western part of the state.  Part of the Chihuahuan Desert (a vast arid area which includes portions of New Mexico, Arizona, and several Mexican states), the landscapes here bear much closer resemblance to those of southern Utah or Arizona than to the plains of East Texas or the Pandhandle.    

The Judean Desert runs parallel to the Dead Sea in the southeastern part of Israel, south of Jerusalem.  It is an area steeped in history, with tremendous historical importance to Judaism, Christianity, and (to a somewhat lesser extent) Islam.  In this video, contributor Rea Burla treats us to spectacular tour of this amazing desert, which includes bird's eye views of St. George’s Monastery in the Wadi Qelt valley, the tomb of Moses, the ancient fortress of Masada (a UNESCO World Heritage site), the Dead Sea, and more.

Check out this drone video from the forbidden-sounding (and -looking) Devil's Desert in Argentina, compliments of AirVuz contributor BlackSun.  The desert lies on the plateau known as the Puna de Atacama.  It's located in the northwestern province of Salta, not far from the Chilean border.  With altitudes of well over 10k ft. above sea level (around 3k m), its red-hued rocks give the place an almost Martian-looking feel.  This area is considered a southern extension of the Bolivian Antiplano, a vast plateau of the Andes Mountains region.