Jeep Jamboree Returns On January 18
17 years of Jeep Action In The UAE
By Imthishan Giado
Hard as it may seem to believe, the UAE Edition Jeep Jamboree is now in its 17th year of sending a heady mix of experienced and wildly inexperienced offroaders into the Great Unknown for a day for fun, frolic, and inevitably, some digging. You know the score – turn up in a four wheel drive, get handed a map and try to find your way from the start line to the finish line, which as it turns out is also the buffet line.
Unlike rival events like the Gulf News Fun Drive or Nissan Xplore, Jeep Jamboree is – as the name implies – only open to owners of Jeep vehicles although they can be of any vintage. And actually that’s quite a broad selection of cars that are not all called Wrangler; cars like the luxury Grand Cherokee, Liberty and even the teeny Patriot will all get a chance to prove their mettle on the dunes.
The event is organised by Jeep dealer Trading Enterprises, which has been doing the Jamboree so long , in fact, that many of the areas of the route are now sedate residential neighbourhoods. Mohammad Iqbal, Operation Manager at TE has been working with the event since it first began all the way back in 1994.
“In its earlier years, the first Jeep Jamborees would certainly have been in areas of sand which are now occupied beyond recognition – Motor City, Bab Al Shams, Arabian Ranches and anything between them and Sheikh Zayed road would have been fair game as a start section,” he recalls.
As always, for safety reasons and to keep the event manageable, numbers are strictly limited, with places available for just 250 cars. To register for the event, get yourself and your Jeep your Jeep down to your nearest Trading Enterprises showroom where you can pay the entry fee of AED149 per participant. This year’s route will stretch out over 186km, starting from Al Badia Golf Club at Dubai Festival City and taking in every terrain imaginable from the rocks of Wadi Showka to the tricky dunes of Fossil Rock. We’re proud to say that we actually have a hand in the course – our very Fraser Martin is the man behind its devilish twists and turns and he’s promised us a real cracker for this latest edition.
But we won’t be sleeping in on the 18th. No way – we did it last year and it was an absolute blast, so you can be sure that we’ll be back and bleary-eyed early on a misty Friday to join in the fun! And the digging, probably.
