Anauroch

This once-verdant land is now a desert. Northernmost Anauroch is a cold land of frost-rimmed rock and the black glacier known as the High Ice. Farther south lies the waterless Plain of Standing Stones, where winds scour jagged rocks amid a sea of gravel. Anauroch's most southerly part is the Sword--a hot, sandy desert.

Encounters
Desert Monsters table in the DMG Appendix B for ideas