Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Desert Driving - Top Gear special

I love my cars. When we moved to Muscat, one of the biggest decisions I faced (aside from the trivial ones, where to live, how to get a job etc) was what car to get. With petrol only costing the equivalent of 20p a litre it seemed inconceivable to get anything other than a 5.7l V8 monster truck. However, Jenny’s mind doesn’t seem to work the same way as mine and after a number of “discussions”, we compromised on a Ford Explorer.

Now, with some of our friends having a "proper" off-road vehicle, such as the Jeep Wrangler, I’ve had a lot of stick about my car having a “sand button”. The only logical thing therefore was to take the cars off road and into the desert to see what they could do.

Gil had been on a trip to the desert with some visiting friends and had met with an Omani tour guide called Tariq. He offered to take us into the desert and show us how it’s done.





After a stop for lunch in one of Oman's oldest villages, we headed down to Wahiba Sands, stopping  briefly on the edge of the desert to let the tyres down.


We practised tackling some smaller dunes whilst looking for a suitable campsite.  We set up at the top off a large dune overlooking one of the many official campsites in the area and enjoyed a barbecue and a couple of drinks under the stars.






The next day was time to put the cars to the test. The weekend we went was the Wahiba Challenge, where jeeps race from one side of the desert to the other. This, together with the fact that Wahiba seems to be a very popular place, there was a lot of cars to watch and learn from.

Who can say whether it was the magical sand button or whether it was the skill of the driver, but the Explorer made it to the top of every hill we tried – which I can’t say for all the other cars.




However, the lack of ground clearance compared to the others meant that although we got up, we needed a little push to help us get down!






Sunday, April 27, 2014

Keith & Carrie - Wahiba Sands

With things having been so mental recently, we are slightly behind on our posts. This is from a few months ago but that doesn't take away from how much fun we had and what a pleasure it was to have our besties Keith and Carrie in town to visit!

There are a lot of things that Keith got up to whilst he was visiting that we won't be putting on the blog, but one of the many fun activities with them was a trip to Wahiba Sands. 

Wahiba is one of the deserts in Oman, approximately a 2 hour drive from Muscat. There are a number of small camp sites in Wahiba, but we decided to stay at the Desert Nights Camp as we'd heard that it was the best one around. 

The campsite is made up of over 20 private bedouin style tents (although as you'll see from the pictures it's very hard to believe that you're actually staying in a tent!) and a small hotel with restaurant.

On the evening we arrived, we took a car up to one of the dunes to get a better view of the campsite and watch the sun go down. The next morning, we were up early for a short ride on a camel, followed by poor attempts at sand boarding and rounded off with a couple of hours exploring the dunes properly on the quad bikes. Amazing fun; reminded me so much of my younger days!!

Check out the pics and videos below!

Desert Nights Camp



















Sandboarding






Quadbiking