Driving long distances is always a pain, especially when the landscape is bland and the road is straight. The head relaxes in the absence of stimuli and the trip becomes very tedious. The record for this nightmare is in Saudi Arabia, with a road lasting more than two hours without a single curve in the middle of the desert.
Saudi Arabia's Highway 10 that connects Ad Darb with the United Arab Emirates has a section between Haradh and Al Batha that holds the Guinness record for the longest straight road on the entire planet, with 240 kilometers without a single turn of the steering wheel. This becomes even worse, because it crosses the Rub' al Khali desert, the largest sand desert in the world, which, no matter how exotic it may seem to us, ends up becoming everything the same.
This road was, originally, a monumental private construction, designed so that King Fahd could travel. However, currently it is the main axis for transporting goods in the country, with a lot of truck traffic that makes the journey even more difficult, because although you can travel at 120 km/h, heavy vehicles have to do so at 80 km/h and if you get one in front of you it slows you down the entire way.
This road only overlooks an eternal sea of sand as far as the horizon can reach. There are no valleys, there are no mountains, there is nothing to avoid. Straight ahead without stopping, causing monotony that translates into visual and mental fatigue, making disconnection from behind the wheel a great possibility. Therefore, although it may seem like an easy road, it is not at all.
It is not the only impossible road on the planet. Before Highway 10 was crowned, Australia's Eyre Highway held the same record at 146 kilometers through the Nullarbor Desert. Two paths that can take forever to follow and that require having all our attention activated and at the bottom of the canyon, although the entire experience invites us to disconnect.
