Flow the Collection · 29 June 2026
You wouldn't expect it, this deep in the Overijssel landscape: a real desert. Yet here it lies, between Ommen and the hamlet of Junne — a plain of white drifting sand, fringed by dark pine forest and low juniper. The Sahara, they call it here, and the name is no exaggeration. But the finest story isn't in the sand itself. It lies on the hill beside it.
A desert half an hour's drive away
The Sahara near Ommen is a drifting-sand area of some twenty hectares, formed when centuries of grazing and felling stripped the ground bare and gave the wind free rein. What remains is an open sea of sand, with here and there a pool that mirrors the sky after rain and clumps of purple heather along the edges. Walk it early in the morning, when the sun is low and the sand still cool — and it truly feels as though you've briefly landed somewhere else. Staatsbosbeheer manages the area and deliberately keeps it open. Early in the day you often have the plain to yourself, with only the sound of the wind and a stray skylark above the sand.
How the sand stayed put
That the Sahara still exists is almost an accident. In the nineteenth century the sand drifted so fiercely that it threatened fields and roads. Around 1840 the Van Pallandt family, owners of the nearby Eerde estate, had pine forest planted to tame the drift. It worked — not quite completely. A core stayed open, and it is precisely that core we admire today: a desert preserved by accident. Look closely and you'll still see the neat rows of planting as a border around the wild heart.
The hill where the world waited for a teacher
At the foot of the sand rises the Besthmenerberg, with what many in Ommen consider the finest view in the region. A hundred years ago this hill was world news. Between 1924 and 1938 the Star Camps gathered here: thousands of people from every corner of the globe, in tents, waiting for the young Indian world teacher Krishnamurti. Philip baron van Pallandt had given him the Eerde estate; the castle became his home. In 1929 Krishnamurti spoke the words here that changed everything — 'truth is a pathless land' — and dissolved his own order. The tents disappeared. The sand remained.
How to walk it
From Ommen you're there in no time. The finest route leads through the drifting sand to the Junne estate, or in a loop across the Besthmenerberg — woodland, heath and that sweeping view as your reward. Wear sturdy shoes, because walking through loose sand is harder than it looks, and go early: the morning light across the dunes is worth the whole story.
Stay where the sand begins
Hotel Paping sits in the heart of Ommen, a stone's throw from the Vecht and the drifting sand. Come home after your walk and turn it into a whole weekend with the Pieterpad package — Ommen lies right on the route.
