Nothing prepares for the silence. Not the kind of silence that means no noise — the kind that means no reference point. No walls, no ceiling, no echo. Just sand and sky and the line where they meet.

The colour changes every hour. Pink at dawn, white at noon, gold in the afternoon, red at sunset. The sand itself is finer than flour.

At night the stars are so dense they look fake. The Milky Way is a thick stripe across the sky, not a faint suggestion of one. No light pollution for hundreds of kilometres.

The wind shapes the dunes overnight. What was there yesterday is different today.