Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

We started the day with some beachcombing. Sarah likes to collect rocks and shells whenever she visits a beach.

I spotted a couple of rather large-rumped fish, swimming about in the shallows of the retreating tide. I wish I could have got a closer look at them, but I was lucky even to spot them in the first place.

We then drove into Sur for a look around.

First of all, we passed down the very attractive corniche, then on to the jetty to see the dhows left high and dry on the mudbanks, the village of Ayajh behind them on the other side of the water.

An old man was willing to take us out in his small boat for a couple of rials, so we went with him and viewed the bay from the water. Ayajh's three watchtowers and lighthouse are very impressive and were doubtless invaluable back in their day.

After some lunch at the oddly and unappealingly named Turkish Sheep Restaurant (which isn't Turkish and serves no mutton; in fact, it has no menu, but they'll prepare decent Indian food for you), we had to speed out of town towards Al Qabil, which was where we were due to be picked up for our Desert Discovery trip.

Once there, we were met by a thickly-accented South African chap, who led the way in his car towards Wahiba Sands. We turned right into the desert, at which point he bolted away from us over the sand, setting a pace I couldn't hope to match with my lack of sand-driving skills.

We soon reached the site of the camp, but first a steep dune had to be negotiated before we would be at the tents. My first attempt failed and we had to roll back down the dune, back to a good distance from which to retry the approach. On my second attempt, we charged with much greater speed and power and this time managed to reach the top.

We signed in at the main tent and were assigned a chalet: a king-size bed and a flushing toilet, here in the middle of the desert! We're impressed.

At 16:30, we went out for some dune driving. I didn't want the hassle of letting a load of air out of our tyres (necessary to avoid getting stuck in the fine sand) or putting our hire car at risk (I'm pretty sure we're not insured for dune-bashing), so we tagged along with the Desert Discovery lead vehicle rather than take our own. The driver, Abdullah, is a true Bedouin and knows the terrain here like the back of his hand.

At first, I regretted my decision not to personally drive, as careering over the dunes was obviously a lot of fun, but after a few frankly astounding manoeuvres on the part of our driver, Abdullah, I realised that we were getting the most spectacular ride of anyone in the group.

We hammered up and down dunes, sideways across them, down into ditches and up again to the crests of these golden, sandy waves.

Many times, I thought there was nowhere left for us to go, the only path in front of us a suicidally steep descent or an impossibly uneven patch of ground. In all such cases, Abdullah revved up the car and blasted us up or over whichever obstacle happened to be in our way. Several times I thought we might tip over, but we never did. What a driver!

Even if I had been driving and had managed to mimick Abdullah's every move, Sarah would have been terrified. As it was, she implicitly trusted this perfect stranger, as he had grown up amongst these dunes.

The modern Bedouin may still trade camels, but he drives a 4x4 to get from A to B. None of their cars are insured, either, as the only time they are taken onto a public road is when their owners sneak into town to fill them up with petrol.

We stopped several times during the dune drive, the final time to watch the sun set over the mountains. As soon as the sun was gone, a dust storm kicked up, triggered by the change in the temperature of the air.

The sand in the desert is amazing. It's so fine that it's almost like liquid, as fine as dust, and nothing like the sand you find on even the most finely grained beach. In fact, the grains are so miniscule that each footstep leaves behind a perfect print, from which even the text of the logo from the sole of the shoe can be read. Yes, you can actually tell which make of shoe people are wearing from the footprints made in these sands.

We headed back to camp and chatted to a few of our fellow visitors. Most of them were either expats or the visiting friends or family of expats. It seems to be a very popular place for such foreign workers to bring visiting family. Most people we talked to had been here multiple times before. In fact, we didn't meet a single non-resident tourist here.

Dinner was served at 19:00 and was delicious. Afterwards, a live band of Bedu musicians regaled us with their highly percussive music. Eloïse danced along to the music and enjoyed herself immensely.

The atmosphere was wonderful. Everyone was having a great time and the mood was electric. Many different nationalities and cultures were represented here, from Swedish to Omani, New Zealander to Indian.

All too soon, however, the party was over and we were all back in our chalets and tents, waiting for the generator to be switched off for the night.

As we undressed Eloïse , we noticed that her nappy was full of sand. Ouch! She'd been playing happily in the stuff, but we hadn't realised that the sand might find its way that far inside. Fortunately, she hadn't been rubbed raw by it.

We awoke at 07:20 after a glorious night's sleep in the completely silent and starlit desert. As we emerged from the chalet, we found beetle tracks and some larger prints that we were later assured by the camp manager were those of a mouse, cat or fox.

Breakfast consisted of baked beans and boiled eggs today. Eloïse tucked into the beans with gusto.

After breakfast, we staggered down the dune on which the camp is situated to a sheltered area, where Bedu women had assembled with their assorted handwoven goods. I purchased two wristbands for a couple of rials each.

We then walked over to where some Bedu boys had trussed a herd (is it a herd?) of camels. For a couple of rials each (and just one for Eloïse ), we went camel riding.

Mounting a camel is easy, because it's sitting on the ground when you do so. You just clamber onto his back. When he gets to his feet, however, he does so by getting to his hind legs first, which has the effect of creating a disturbingly steep slope between his back and his neck, down which you believe you are inadvertently going to slide at high speed.

Thankfully, however, the camel then quickly gets to his front legs, too, so that the feeling of imminently arse-skiing at lightning speed off the head-end of this living, makeshift ski slope gives way to a sense of relief that, for now, one has made it into the riding position.

And then off he walks, led by his Bedu master. A strap at either side of the saddle provides something to hold onto, although I couldn't help but feel that my long torso made for a less than optimal centre of gravity. The feeling that I might inadvertently shift too much of my weight to either side and make an ungraceful and impromptu dismount at any moment scarcely left me during the entire ride, which was, at least, mercifully short.

The only thing trickier than mounting the camel is dismounting. Well, getting off it is actually almost too easy, because if you're not careful, you're going to end up with your face in the sand.

As the camel starts to kneel on his front legs, you have to lean backwards as far as possible, so that you are virtually horizontal along his back. This, I did, but it still wasn't enough to prepare myself for the moment when the camel goes into a full front kneel, at which point I was catapulted forward with considerable force. My Bedu helper put a hand up to my chest to stop my tense and inexpert pose from allowing me to be launched like a human projectile from my desert steed.

Eloïse had not been happy when first placed on top of Sarah's camel, but now started to complain bitterly as she was taken off. She wanted to get right back on. You have to admire the spirit of the girl, as she's up for almost anything.

After the camel ride, we walked back past the Bedu ladies, who were now busy weaving and braiding, using their toes to hold one end of the wool in place. We bought a camel hair keyring for our back door keys and then went on our way.

It's amazing to come into contact in this way with real Bedu, dressed in their traditional clothing, replete with striking angled face mask. What an opportunity and what a contrast with our daily lives back home.

We clambered back up the dune, paid our bill and thanked the camp staff for such a wonderful experience. What a terrific place the desert can be; I can't recommend Desert Discovery highly enough for setting up this camp and helping the local Bedu benefit from their activities, here in Wahiba Sands.

We headed off in the car, making our way back over the sand towards the main road, where we turned left and began the long drive to Nizwa, some 220 km away (yes, not actually a very long way, but on straight roads with no cruise control and a chiming nanny built into the car when you edge over 120 kmh, it does feel long).

There wasn't much to see along the way, just the now familar sights of dozens of roaming goats, a few feral donkeys and the occasional grazing camel.

Eloïse soon dozed off after departure and didn't wake up again until we reached our hotel a couple of hours later. Her timing couldn't have been better.

It's Friday, which is weekend here, so most things are closed. In any case, many things shut down between 13:00 and 16:00, and only slowly come back to life thereafter, so we first had a buffet lunch at the hotel and then went back to our room to make some calls in an effort to firm up our itinerary for the next few days.

At 16:00, we drove into the centre of Nizwa, parked the car and began ambling around the souq. There were some nice woven goods, pottery, the omnipresent khanjars, lots of fruit and veg, fish and even a separate souq just for trading dates. The dates available here are supposedly excellent, so we bought a big box for just one rial. The value for money just can't be beaten.

Unfortunately, the souq's goat market operates only on Thursday mornings, so we weren't able to view that particular spectacle. Instead, we left and walked further into town, where Nizwa proved to be a bustling town with an appealing character all its own.

Nizwa is a quite a long way inland and this gives it a totally different flavour from the coastal towns. The population is 70% Omani, or so I'm told, which is a vastly higher percentage than in, say, Muscat, where most of the residents are immigrants.

The mosque here is beautiful (it graces the cover of the 2006 Bradt guidebook to Oman), but non-Muslims are not allowed inside, so we settled for admiring the building from the outside.

Of course, there are plenty of immigrants here, too -- mostly Indians, as elsewhere in Oman -- and so it was that we managed to find a travel agent who was open on Friday. We took advantage of the moment to purchase a trio of return plane tickets to Salalah for this coming Sunday.

With that taken care of, we walked back through the town, now bustling more than ever, as the sun had set and the evening prayer had just finished. People were spilling into the street from the mosque and the weekend atmosphere was vibrant.

We headed back to the car and had dinner at a local restaurant. The entire meal, which consisted of two main meals, salads, hummus, two large glasses of fruit juice, a Pepsi Light (or Diet Pepsi, as it's known here) and a 1.5 l bottle of water came to just four rials, or €8. What incredible value. The soft drink was complimentary; no reason; they just do things like that here.

As always, the staff were friendly and the other diners gestured to Eloïse , encouraging her to play with their children.

In the course of any given day, Eloïse gets picked up and manhandled by at least half a dozen strangers. She doesn't particularly care for the tactile approach, but the practice is so common that we encourage her to be friendly, placid and take it in her stride. Sometimes she'll say "Hi" and then "Bye", but those are reserved for the fortunate few.

We're in Nizwa tonight and tomorrow.

We made an early start today, having an early breakfast and getting on the road by about 09:30. We had a lot to pack in and only one more day in the area.

We drove about 50 km to the village of Al Hamra, which features two and three storey mud-brick houses in the Yemeni style. This old village had real character and conveyed a sense of life from a bygone era. We saw women doing their washing in the falaj at the side of the road.

From Al Hamra, we returned to the main road and began our ascent of Jebel Shams, the highest mountain in Oman.

The Lonely Planet guide warned of "vertiginous views over the edge [of the road] a little too close to the hubcaps for comfort", a phrase that had made me nervous about making the ascent with our precious cargo on board. Happily, however, there was no real danger and the ascent was an easy one, although a 4x4 vehicle was definitely necessary on the steep, unsurfaced road.

At the top, it was a relatively cool and refreshingly pleasant 21°C. Peering over the rim of what is known locally as the Grand Canyon of Arabia revealed the depth of what was, indeed, a gigantic chasm, with Wadi Ghul down below. It's about a 1.5 km vertical drop down to the wadi: you definitely wouldn't want to fall off this precipice.

Further along the canyon rim, we came across a small village, situated right at the canyon's edge. Quite why this remote site was chosen for a village is a mystery to me, but there it was, complete with shacks, washing lines, goats, dogs, children and elders.

A woman tried very persistently to sell us some woven goods, but we were equally persistent in our refusal. She eventually disappeared, only to be replaced by an old man, who was eager for us to take his photo, as long as we crossed his palm with a rial in return. His face was contoured and weathered in a way that made him appear like he had stepped out of an item on the evening news, or perhaps out of the pages of an issue of National Geographic. We declined his offer and he, too, eventually disappeared.

Soon afterwards, as we were gazing out into the canyon, another man joined us, shook our hand and offered us coffee. It's very rude to refuse such an invitation in the Gulf states, so we accepted and walked with him to his home in the tiny village.

His domicile was a one-room brick affair, with mats laid out across the floor. We doffed our shoes and entered, sitting against the far wall. He followed us inside and opened a big tub of dates, pulled out a handful and offered them to us. We gratefully accepted his offer and found the dates to be delicious.

He then poured coffee for us, but it was unlike any coffee (or other drink, for that matter) that I have tasted before. I have no idea what it was made from, but it was dark in appearance. He poured it into small, handleless cups and handed them to us. Sarah and I both partook.

The women of the family soon joined us, complete with small baby, and we began to exchange small talk, such as the age of our respective babies, where we were from, etc.

I looked about the room. In spite of the lack of furniture and the obvious simplicity of the structure, the home was relatively well-equipped. An electricity meter graced one wall, whilst a small television set sat perched in one corner of the room. Under it, a satellite tuner box blinked the wrong time.

I glanced over to the door, half ajar and brightly lit by the midday sunlight. A sticker on the outside read 'Do you Yahoo?' It seemed as if matter from a separate universe had somehow slipped through into this one.

On the wall behind us, a photo of the photogenic old man shared space with a rifle and a khanjar.

Before long, and rather expectedly, the woven goods were produced by the women and laid in front of us for our inspection. Having been taken into this man's home, drunk his brew and eaten his dates, we could now hardly refuse to purchase something, but the trade was more than worth it.

We purchased a couple of goat-hair keyrings and I paid the old man that rial for his photo. I also took a photo of the man who had invited us in, but we weren't allowed to photograph the women of the house (one of whom had already whipped out a boob in front of us to feed the baby -- I hadn't expected a Muslim woman to do that in front of strangers).

I'm sure we weren't the first and won't be the last tourists to be invited into his home, and that he was probably more motivated by salesmanship than friendship, but the experience was no less real for that small detail. It reminded me of our contact with the Thai hill tribes back in 2002 and reinforced my belief that there is nothing in this world that can compare with travel and the contact it brings with people from other cultures.

After our encounter, we slowly headed back down Jebel Shams and had lunch at a small camp site/café on the mountain.

Once we had made it back down to ground level, we drove through the wadi to the base of the desserted village of Ghul. We clambered up the rocks to the village and nosed around in the ruins of the old mud-brick homes, long since abandoned to the elements.

This left just enough time to point the car back in the direction of Nizwa and make for the Al Hoota caves, a recently opened cave system that boasts one of the largest caverns anywhere in the world. A small train carries you from the reception area to the cave entrance: very slick.

The caves themselves were fun, but not as awe-inspiring as those we visited last year in Slovakia and Hungary. Our guide didn't speak much English, either, but the visit was still fun.

A simple dinner of shwarma and hummus back in Nizwa rounded off the day.

We awoke to find our hotel without electricity. No matter; we didn't need it.

After breakfast, we had just a short time to visit the Nizwa Fort, depositing our postcards in a postbox on the way.

The fort was quite good (I don't always appreciate historical military sites), with authentically furnished rooms, complete with carpets, cushions and pottery. Its ramparts made for good views of the city, but it was difficult to get a good angle on the mosque for a photograph.

It was 11:30 by now and we had to be on our way, so we returned to the car, tanked up with petrol (cheaper per litre than water, as ever) and sped off in the direction of Muscat, some 180 km removed.

Some time after 13:00, we arrived at Seeb International Airport, where I dropped the girls and our bags before parking the car and meeting them inside the terminal. There, we checked in for our 15:00 flight to Salalah.

The airport has this fantastic shrink-wrapping machine, which is manned by someone who actually knows what he's doing. You give him your fragile item, in our case Eloïse 's car seat and he professionally shrink-wraps it for you, ready for your flight. Sarah was particularly impressed at the effeciveness of this gadget. The service isn't free, but it's very useful and a bargain at the price, which was 700 baizas in our case.

On the other side of the security screening, there was a pretty good duty-free area, sporting the usual booze, fags, perfume, electronics, CDs (including Arabic music, of course), DVDs, etc. Costa Coffee was also here, along with a Turtles bookshop.

There was just enough time for some food before we had to head to our gate to board our Oman Air flight. A shuttle bus ferried us the 100 m or so across the tarmac to the waiting plane. Why we couldn't have walked such a small distance is beyond me.

The flight with Oman Air was a professional one, I must say. Even though it was only an 80 minute flight, it included a full meal, and a good one at that. If we'd known about that, we wouldn't have eaten at the airport.

I'd like to say the terrain we flew over from Muscat to Salalah was interesting, but it was a 1000 km expanse of nothingness. That's one of the main reasons why we decided not to tackle the trip by road; that and the time it would take us to do so.

The south of the country is radically different to northern Oman. That was evident even from the moment we disembarked, when we were hit by the humidity of the air. It's tropical here and feels much like Hawaii.

The similarity to Hawaii doesn't end with the humidity, either. Once we'd picked up a new hire car, this time a Toyota Landcruiser 4x4, we drove towards our hotel past juice and coconut stands, lush gardens and palm tree-lined avenues.

Once we'd checked in, we had a brief walk along the beach as the sun set. Large breakers were crashing along the shore and the red flags were out to signal dangerous swimming conditions.

Sarah wanted to get the lay of the land so that we could plan how much time we'd need in town tomorrow, so we piled back into the car and drove into town for a look around. There wasn't time to get out and explore, so we just drove around and got a feel for the place.

On the way back, we stopped at a coconut stand and ordered a nut. The man behind the counter whacked off the top of a coconut, stuck a straw inside, and handed us the nut to drink from. He then welcomed us to Salalah and informed us that there was no charge for the coconut. That's what I mean about people being friendly in this country.

Another example: During the flight, I had chatted with the man next to me. Whilst waiting for our luggage to appear on the conveyor belt inside the terminal, the same man gave me his name and telephone number and told me to call him if we needed any assistance with anything during our stay in Salalah. That kind of offer would get you a bemused, suspicious look in the West, but here it's just another indication of the incredible warmth with which the Omanis receive visitors to their country.

There's a very pleasant buzz to this town, as there was in Nizwa. Together, they are definitely my two favourite Omani towns so far.

We had dinner at the hotel, down by the beach. The sound of invisible waves breaking in the darkness is always a great aural background for dining.

Tomorrow, we'll be up bright and early to explore the souqs of Salalah and the surrounding countryside.

After breakfast, we drove into Salalah to check out the Frankincense Souq. Some of the stalls and shops weren't open yet, but there's a lot of duplication in the products offered, so we were still able to browse properly and sample many types of incense.

I noticed that the souq was mainly run by women here. In other cities, it's been the men that ran the show. It's important to note, however, that those souqs were primarily run by Indians, whereas the Frankincense Souq in Salalah seems to be mostly run by Omanis; and many of those Omani women are Dhofaris, i.e. from the region of Dhofar, of which Salalah is the capital.

Many of the people look quite different here, more African than Arabian. Given the geographical positioning, that's not surprising.

Getting pictures of people in Oman can be quite tricky. One must always ask before taking a snap and the answer is frequently a firm 'no', especially in the case of women.

For that reason, I've yet to capture the image of a Dhofari woman, with characteristic nose-ring. One woman allowed me to photograph her henna-tattooed hand today, but that's about as far as I've got.

Speaking of souqs, one of Eloïse 's latest words is, in fact, souq. It took her papa several decades to chance upon that word, but it's already made it into her vocabulary and she's not even two yet. What a learner!

Leaving the Frankincense Souq behind us, we headed west along the motorway in the direction of Mughsail. As we reached the far end of the beach there, a lush oasis between the road and the sea came into view and we witnessed the glorious sight of tens of camels drinking and bathing in the water.

Further up, we stopped to enjoy a blowhole, which was noisily spouting water into the air to our amusement and that of some tour bus passengers who had joined us.

From there, we continued along the road, which now zig-zagged its way up the cliff, down into a wadi full of frankincense trees, and onwards, getting ever close to the border with Yemen. The views back towards Mughsail as we climbed the limestone cliff were excellent.

About 100 km from the Yemeni border, we had to cross a military checkpoint. The soldier wanted to see our passports, but we had left them at the hotel, not expecting to need them as we weren't planning on crossing any national boundaries.

In the end, my driving licence and a photocopy of the car registration paperwork were enough to placate him and he let us pass, warning us not to go down certain side roads further along, as these would also have military checkpoints and we would have to explain how we had managed to get so far without passports.

We drove for about another forty or fifty kilometres, during much of which the scenery was beautiful. Innumerable camels dotted the landscape. We've seen more camels today than in the rest of our lives put together.

Eventually, though, the road turned away from the coast and became less appealing. We, ourselves, became less certain that we were actually on the stretch of road that we should be and neither of us wanted to deal with irritated soldiers demanding paperwork we didn't have, in the event we were inadvertently heading towards one of the other checkpoints we had been warned about.

We therefore turned around and headed back to Salalah, as we still wanted to visit the tomb of the biblical figure of Job this afternoon.

On the way back, I spotted what looked like a giant turtle in the distance on the beach. We stopped the car and I slid down the rock embankment to the beach below, before walking towards the turtle. As I feared, he or she was dead, but I couldn't tell what had caused the death. It was very sad to see such a magnificent animal in this state.

Back in Salalah, we headed out of town again to the north and eventually arrived at our destination after approximately 30 km.

The grounds of Job's Tomb are quite lovely, with lots of pretty flowers, a mosque, and the building of the tomb itself.

The tomb's guardian beckoned to us as we approached on the path, and we followed him to the entrance to the tomb, where we removed our shoes. Sarah additionally had to put on a green headscarf before entering.

Inside the tomb, the casket (or whatever it is) is shrouded in colourful sheets. At the far end of the mound, large amounts of frankincense are smoldering in an incense burner. The scent is strong and quite lovely.

A small tray next to the incense burner contains banknotes that some people have seen fit to leave behind. You can tell that Americans have been here, as no other country's people travel to the other side of the world and still try to pay and tip in their own currency.

After visiting the tomb, we drove back to Salalah and tried to find something to eat near the Frankincense Souq. There were only a couple of shops selling juice, however.

We saw a person we purchased some perfumes from this morning and asked his advice. He called someone on his mobile phone and then handed the phone to me. The voice at the other end gave me directions to his restaurant, which we then drove to.

The restaurant in question was the Taj Al Arab, which was just a few streets away in the direction of our hotel. The food turned out to be good, but better yet, the fruit smoothies they make are incredible; and for just 600 baizas for their largest, fruitiest drinks.

The Taj Al Arab isn't mentioned in either of our guidebooks, but it's an absolute must if you come to Salalah. You have been told.

It was now just before sunset, so we headed back to the hotel, got changed and took Eloïse to the children's paddling pool. As always, she had a great time in the water, climbing out of the pool and jumping back in, with Papa's arms waiting to catch her, of course.

Today, we explored the surroundings west (and for Job's Tomb, north) of Salalah. Tomorrow, it's the turn of the east.

After breakfast, we filled up with petrol and headed east out of Salalah, through the town of Taqa, past Wadi Dirbat and towards the village of Tawai Attair, just outside of which there's a gigantic sinkhole.

By the time we arrived, Eloïse had gone to sleep, some two hours earlier than she normally does. All of the exercise and adventure must be taking it out of her.

The sinkhole turned out to be down a steep and rocky climb. Because Eloïse was sleeping happily in the car, I made the descent alone, spotting a very large lizard (the largest I've ever seen in the wild) on the way.

The sinkhole was so deep, that I couldn't see all the way into it from my vantage point. There's supposed to be water at the bottom, but I could only see as far as birds flying around in its gaping maw. Further down, everything looked black.

I climbed back up the rocks and we continued on our way over 16 km of graded track along a plateau. This carried us to the top of Jebel Samhan, with lovely views out to the coast.

The descent of the range was steep, for 4x4 only, and carried us to the coastal road, where we turned left and headed towards Mirbat.

Mirbat has definitely seen more prosperous days. Entire neighbourhoods have fallen into decline and buildings stand decrepit and dilapidated. The roads in these neighbourhoods have decayed to the extent that they are now, to all extents and purposes, unsurfaced. The area makes for an interesting drive, however.

Turning down towards the beach, we stopped in front of the Mirbat Castle and went inside. A loud voice was emanating from one of the rooms by the entrance. As the doorway came into view, we saw a bunch of men, sitting on the floor, sipping tea and animatedly discussing some topic or other.

They beckoned to us to come inside, so we took off our shoes and joined them in the room. One man poured us some tea, which turned out to be very, very sweet; I don't like tea in any case, but as I've said before, it's very impolite to refuse hospitality here.

The conversation quickly turned to children. Everywhere we go in Oman, people's first or second question about Eloïse is whether she's our only child. Logical, because I'm no spring chicken (nor is Sarah, for that matter) and people expect you to have several by our age. One of the men in our group had six children and his wife was now pregnant with a seventh.

They told us about the local abalone, which is supposed to be an aphrodisiac, or "our Viagra" as one man put it.

After the stop at the castle, we left Mirbat via the same road and immediately turned left to get to Bin Ali's Tomb. Bin Ali was a 14th century prophet and scholar.

There's a very old cemetery in the grounds, which makes for quite an stirring sight, with its hundreds of tightly-packed headstones, two for a man and three for a woman.

The tomb itself is an interesting-looking building from the outside, but non-Muslims are allowed inside only as far as the incense room.

Continuing back, we stopped at a grove of Baobab trees 3 km up the unsurfaced road that had brought us to the coastal road. The Bradt guide got the direction of the turning wrong, which had us scouting around, looking for the trees. Eventually, we found them, though. Sarah was more impressed by them than I.

We backtracked the 3 km and turned right on the coastal road, which carried us to the turn-off for Khor Rouri. This is the site of an ancient city that was of key importance to the frankincense trade. It has been excavated and can now be visited (although the Lonely Planet guide will tell you it is still closed to the public).

It's also the site of a harbour that has silted up and been closed off. In the distance, we could see camels drinking the fresh water from lush grasses along the bank of the old harbour.

Our final stop for the day was Wadi Dharbat. At its best during the khareef, it was nevertheless impressive and quite verdant, with a river of some kind flowing over the plain. Camels were here in abundance. One can only imagine how lush it must be during and just after the khareef. I hope we can return to see it some day.

That was the end of our final day of travels around the province of Dhofar. We put 550 km on the clock, so we got a good impression of the region.

We picked up fruit shakes at Taj Al Arab on the way back to the hotel and then went down to the children's playground in the hotel grounds so that Eloïse could run about and climb.

We got talking to a Lebanese woman who teaches at Salalah University. We told her of our desire to visit Lebanon and expressed our sadness at what Israel had done to her country. We chatted for quite a while, as Eloïse played with her son.

Eventually, it was time to go to dinner, so we said our goodbyes. She asked us to come to her house in the coming days for dinner and to be shown around Salalah, but we regretfully had to tell her we were leaving the next day. It was another shining example of the unbelieveable Arab hospitality that greets us wherever we go.

What an amazing thing travel is. In January, we were in Iceland with just a few hours of dim daylight per day and temperatures of -10°C. Now, we're on the Arabian gulf, close to the equator with sunset at virtually the same time every day of the year. It's scorching hot and as humid as a sumo-wrestler's jockstrap.

Every day that you wake up, feel healthy and get to travel like this is a gift from... well, Larry and Sergey in our case. Thanks, Larry. Thanks, Sergey. And thanks, also, Lady Luck.

It was a stifling 36°C in Salalah today, but will reportedly drop somewhat tomorrow, only to rise to 39°C again on Friday. Tomorrow, we're getting out just in time and flying to the north again, where it will be somewhat cooler (or perhaps less hot is a better way to describe it).

After breakfast, we had just enough time to drive back to Salalah's Frankincense Souq to purchase another kilo of the venerable sap.

After checking on-line and discovering that 25 g of the stuff costs half as much back home as a 1 kg bag over here, it was clear that it would be foolish to find ourselves buying more of it in the near future in The Netherlands. So instead, we added another kilo of weight to our luggage.

After purchasing a couple of small bananas at a fruit stand, we filled up with petrol and drove to the airport. There, we dropped off our hire car and checked in for our flight.

The flight was another pleasant one, although Eloïse was restless and fidgeting a lot. Sarah was soaked by the end of the flight, as Eloïse spills a lot of water as she drinks from cups and bottles. Fortunately, it's so hot that it doesn't really matter; it dries again so quickly.

Back in Muscat, we retrieved our original hire car from the car park (three days of parking just a two minute walk from the terminal cost just OMR 3.100 [± €6]) and drove to the Amouage Perfumery for a tour of the place.

I thought this would be a bit like a brewery tour, but with perfume in the vats instead of beer. It turned out to be nothing like that, however; it was more of a potted history of the brand, followed by summaries of the individual perfumes, complete with main ingredients, launch years, etc.

The most interesting part was when we were taken behind the scenes to see how the perfume is bottled. Muslim ladies were busy manually putting bottles in boxes, boxes in cellophane, and sticker seals on the cellophane. I was thus surprised to discover that every single stage of the process is performed by hand, even the packaging of tiny samplers.

Amouage is set to release a new perfume, Reflections, at Easter (earlier in Oman). It was hard to resist purchasing a pre-release bottle of the potion, so we bought a bottle of the men's variant, along with a bottle of a different scent for Sarah).

That was all we had time for today. After that, we drove across the sprawl that is Muscat to reach our hotel, where we checked in and dropped our stuff in our room.

Dinner was at an excellent Mexican restaurant called Pavo Real. The waiters, mostly Indian, were dressed as Mexicans, complete with bandana, gun belts and tassled waistcoats. I was reminded of the Thai men we saw in Chiang Mai, back in 2002, wearing complete Bavarian regalia, including lederhosen, at a German restaurant.

Thankfully, what could have been a kitsch disaster was actually kitchen bliss, as the chef turned out to be a real Mexican! The food was therefore surprisingly excellent. There was even a live band, playing cheesy pop covers.

Tomorrow, we check out and head back west to a city split across the border between Oman and the UAE. On the Omani side, it's called Buraimi. On the Emirati side, it's known as Al Ain. We'll be staying on the Emirati side.

That doesn't mean we're finished with Oman, however. If all goes according to plan, we'll reenter Oman in the form of the geographically isolated Musandam peninsula in just a few days' time. This peninsula is physically separated from the rest of Oman by UAE territory and is supposed to have a character all its own. Hopefully, we'll see.

The family split up for the morning, with Sarah and Eloïse going for a swim outside, whilst Papa stayed inside and tried to contact a hotel to make a booking for our stay in Musandam next week. It took a long time to finally make contact, by which time the girls were back from their swim.

The single most tedious aspect of unscheduled travel is having to make bookings and reservations en route. This means having to be flexible in your schedule (sometimes taking different nights at a hotel than the ones you wanted; sometimes taking fewer nights; sometimes not getting the only decent hotel in town), replanning your itinerary (going to B first, then A, rather than vice versa), dealing with communications difficulties, paying extortionate hotel phone tariffs, recovering from botched reservations (they were expecting you two days ago; or they made the reservation for one night, not two, and now the hotel is full on the second night), finding travel agents to book flights, finding flights that aren't full, hiring a car at the other end, booking excursions, etc., etc.

There's really no other way, however. Even with the most exhaustive research beforehand (not that we were exhaustive for this trip), one can't always conclude how many nights will be needed at each location or, indeed, which locations should be picked for each overnight stay. Even if you did have things tightly pinned down, you can still find yourself wanting just one more night somewhere, or finding yourself in special circumstances that dictate one night more or fewer somewhere.

Besides, the sense of adventure and exploration is that much greater when you plan as you go. With relatively little hassle, one's itinerary can be changed at the drop of a hat, which means that only your flight arrival and departure dates need be set in stone.

So, you take your chances and try to arrange everything whilst on the road. Sometimes it doesn't work out, but usually it does, even if some kind of compromise is necessitated. At this point, there's only one night left in our trip for which we don't have a hotel booking.

At noon, we bade Muscat a final farewell and took the Sohar road that first brought us to the Omani capital back in February. I had forgotten what a dull drive it was, but at least we managed a steady 120 kmh all the way to Sohar.

Sultan Qaboos must really love his flowers. The dual carriageway in and out of Muscat is embellished for a good 50 km on both sides by a stunning blaze of colour. I can't imagine how much work it must be to keep that length of flowerbeds looking as beautiful as they do.

We stopped to fill up with petrol and food in Sohar. An anonymous, menuless chicken-and-rice shop provided the calories and we were on our way again.

Thankfully, the drive towards Al Ain now became more interesting. The road began to bend and wind its way past hills.

The border crossing into the UAE was painless. We filtered into an aisle containing three checkpoints, and stopped first to show our passports and car registration paperwork. They were handed back with a slip of paper bearing a scribble (probably to verify payment of vehicle fees, but our car is registered and insured in Dubai).

We then drove forwards 50 m to the second booth, where another official withdrew our scrap of paper and printed out an A4 sheet, apparently with three visas in Arabic. He then handed it to us and waved us on.

50 km ahead, we handed the visa paperwork to the third official, who stamped our passports and welcomed us to the UAE. Perhaps nowhere in the world is government bureaucracy and labour duplication quite so evident as at border crossings. I suppose it keeps the unemployment figures down.

Soon afterwards, we were on the outskirts of Al Ain and arriving at our hotel. By that point, the headache that had been with me since the early afternoon had now developed into a real grinder. I wasn't up to going into town, so we took Eloïse to the playground at the back of the hotel.

It was full of expat families, who come here on Thursdays -- it's the weekend, after all -- to relax, use the playground, socialise, etc. The immediate assumption of those around us was that we, too, were expats.

I was forced back to the hotel room to catch forty winks in an attempt to suppress my headache. I awoke at 19:30, my strategy having at least partially worked, and now just in time to drive us into town for dinner at a Lebanese/Iranian place called Al Dewan.

Al Ain is very big, much larger than I had anticipated. The reason for this is that it is a low-rise city, and such cities frequently suffer from urban sprawl. Reykjavík is another such city that comes to mind.

We need to get a good night's sleep tonight in preparation for packing in all of the sights tomorrow.

At this stage of the trip, we've covered more than 2500 km.

After breakfast, I made the final hotel reservation of our trip, so barring any unforeseen changes, the rest of our trip is now solidly planned. Our restaurant reservations for each night in Dubai have also been made, as we learned at the start of our trip that it's impossible to get into some places without booking in advance.

We dropped off some laundry at a local laundrette and then drove into town to visit the local livestock market. That was quite a hoot, with goats and cows being loaded, unloaded, carried and driven all over the area.

We watched and smiled as goats were sold from the back of SUVs, and looked on with pity as others were purchased and placed in unventilated saloon car boots, the lids slammed shut, and then driven away.

A number of merchants placed goats on the ground or pulled them forward in their pick-up trucks, so that Eloïse could stroke them. While I was away grabbing a few photos, an Arab man posed for his picture with Eloïse , which Sarah took with the man's camera phone.

I enquired about the prices and discovered that a goat would set me back some 400 dirhams (± €87), whilst I could expect to pay a good 3000 (± €650) for a bull. No doubt haggling would work as well here as anywhere else we've been.

After the livestock market, we wandered through the oasis, lush and teeming with tall date palms, crisscrossed by falaj irrigation channels.

This oasis is where the original Al Ain began, and just 50 years ago, the only way to reach here was a 5 day camel trek across the desert from Abu Dhabi. Today, the journey will take you under two hours in an air-conditioned car along a tree-lined highway. How times change.

All modern countries have undergone such changes, of course, but more commonly over hundreds, if not thousands of years. In the Arabian peninsular countries, however, such changes have occurred in a matter of a few decades. Somehow, they have managed to assimilate such changes, including the great wealth and external (read: western) influences without losing their identity. On the contrary, the governments of these countries have done much to protect their society, its traditions and values.

Our wander through the oasis brought us to the local souq, which was very disappointing: just a handful of shops selling domestic appliances, hair products, scarves and such.

We walked to the Hut Café, which we feared may be shut (most things are on Friday), but were happy to find open for business. The food and drinks were delicious and the surroundings very pleasant, too. It was clearly popular with locals, in spite of lots of concessions to the western pallette.

Soon after we arrived, the door was locked behind us, as typically no-one is allowed in or out around prayer time.

After lunch, we returned to the hotel, as Eloïse had become inconsolable. Back in the room, she turned out to have diarrhoea, so she's obviously a bit under the weather. Perhaps it's the heat, although Al Ain is famously cool by UAE standards, or perhaps she ate something dodgy. Hopefully, it'll turn out to be a one day thing.

After Eloïse has slept a while and I had read today's edition of Gulf News, we tried to go to the Al Khandaq Fort on the Buraimi side of town. I forgot our passports, but that shouldn't have mattered, because both of our guide books tell us that you can pass freely between Buraimi on the Oman side and Al Ain on the UAE side.

Unfortunately for us, that turned out to have ceased relatively recently. This open border crossing has now been closed and a passport is thus required to go from one side to the other.

I couldn't be bothered with going back to the hotel to pick up the passports and then deal with the formalities of two border crossings within as many hours, so we instead chose to drive into town and have a look at the Al Ain Museum.

This turned out to be a nice, relaxing way to wind up the daylight hours. The museum wasn't too large and had some nice exhibits, including a nice selection of old black-and-white photographs of various Emirati cities, back when they were just small towns and the UAE hadn't yet been born.

Dinner was at Luce, the Italian restaurant at the Hotel Intercontinental, just up the road from where we're staying. It was really good and I recommend it if you're feeling saturated with Indian, Lebanese and Iranian food.

We thought our plans to go to the camel market tomorrow were scuppered, as it, too, is just over the border in Buraimi; or so we thought. In another fine example of printed matter being out of date by the time the ink dries, the camel market is now located on the Al Ain side, so no border formalities will be required to visit it. I'm glad we asked at our hotel.

I also enquired about the new border checks and was informed that the Emiratis instituted these a few months ago. It has nothing to do with the Omanis, so they're not checking passports on their side, either as people enter or as they leave. Only the Emiratis are performing checks and it's apparently really annoying to the locals, as some live on one side of the border and work on the other and commuting is now a lot more awkward.

Tomorrow, the camel market awaits, and then we leave Al Ain behind us, as we continue westwards through the emirate of Abu Dhabi to its eponymous capital city, which also happens to be the capital of the entire UAE.

One final thought: I keep forgetting to mention that Wiesje has discovered a fondness for Arabic music. As we drive, she sits in the back of the car, clapping her hands and shaking her head to the upbeat songs coming from the radio. She likes other types of music, but Arabic seems to be her favourite.

An early start again, as we wanted to visit the Al Ain camel market.

It turned out to be quite a spectacle, with hundreds of camels of various sizes and colours in various pens. We were met as soon as we parked by a bunch of enthusiastic camel traders, who quickly coralled us along the pens, encouraging us to take photos and even trying to remove my camera from around my neck, so that they could take photos of the whole family. I was wary of letting them do so, however, and kept a firm grip on it.

We posed for pictures, touched some gigantic, fearsome-looking camels, and cooed over baby camels as we walked from pen to pen.

After about ten minutes came the shakedown. One of the men, the one who had been grabbing at our camera, suddenly demanded 50 dirhams. I should have seen it coming, of course, but I didn't; I mistook the whole performance for ebulient hospitality.

On the other hand, I have a lot more respect for people who try to make a quick score from tourists if they're up-front about it and a price can be agreed in advance, so I was unimpressed with the tactics employed.

I decided on the spot that a few photos with camels wasn't worth 50 dirhams of my money, so I pulled out my wallet, handed over a 20 dirham note (± €4.20) and made it clear that I wasn't going to haggle. To be honest, I saw the 20 dirhams more as a self-inflicted fine for being so naïve than as a payment for services rendered.

He backed off, but then the next of the traders indicated that he was ready to receive his 20 dirham note, too. Nice try, mate, but nothing doing. I shook my head and we simply walked away.

We took a few more photos and talked to a couple of traders about prices. We were told which camels were for meat and which were not. The latter category are presumably for breeding, riding or even racing.

Ever since childhood, I have recalled the cliché of the westerner who visits Arabia and is offered camels in exchange for his wife. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the same happened to me today. I was offered a whole batch of camels in return for Sarah, plus a sizeable lump sum of cash for Eloïse . I made it clear, however, that Sarah is good breeding stock, and that I'm therefore hanging on to her for the time being.

With the camel market ticked off, we picked up our clean laundry, went back to the hotel, packed and checked out. We pointed the car in the direction of Abu Dhabi and sped off across the desert.

What an amazing road. Route 22 to Abu Dhabi is a six-lane motorway (three lanes in each direction) with almost no traffic. It runs in what amounts to a virtually straight line right across the desert; you could make a safe attempt at the land speed record across most of it.

This massive boulevard is lined with trees across its entire length, but not just with trees, either. No, the entire length of motorway is also illuminated by lampposts, which must make it the longest stretch of illuminated road I've ever come across.

As in America, cars cruise along the middle lane with little regard for what's going on to the left or right of them, never mind behind. Dunes rise up on either side, then fade away again, only to return a few tens of kilometres further down the road.

One need never take one's foot off the accelerator until one reaches the first set of traffic-lights on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. We drove all the way into the city until we could go no further, then turned right along the corniche and admired the stunning skyline of the nation's capital. It's an impressive sight, it has to be said.

We pulled up in front of our hotel, unloaded our bags and left the car in the hands of the valet while we went inside to check in.

We're staying in the Sheraton, which in my experience is usually a so-so hotel: perfectly comfortable, but unremarkable; a bog-standard hotel, in other words. Not so this one. The reception area is beautiful: gorgeous high ceilings, exquisite furnishings and tasteful masonry.

We were greeted with glasses of chilled apple juice to drink while we checked in. Then, it was up to a really lovely room on the fifth floor to enjoy the view of the sea from our balcony.

Sarah and I were champing at the bit to get out and explore the city, so without further ado, we had our car retrieved and then set out to inspect the Abu Dhabi Mall, which comes highly recommended as a taste of the city.

As expected, it wasn't quite the almost surreal experience that Dubai's Mall of the Emirates offers, but it was great fun to see the cosmopolitan spectacle of men in dishdashas, women in beautifully adorned abayas (which the Muslim women use to great effect to express their personality), western expats, Indians and people from all over the Asian subcontinent. What a fabulously diverse and international place this is, and with little sense of racial tension, too.

The modern shopping mall is really the latter-day equivalent and logical extension of the age-old souq. Here, too, as in the West, women love to shop for the latest fashions and designer brands, which they sport under their alluring abayas. Behind their veils, they press the latest model of mobile phone against their ear and catch up on the latest gossip from friends.

I have come to think about Muslims quite differently during this trip, especially the women. Like so many people, I once saw the veil as a form of oppression, but for some women, it can lead to the discovery of a type of freedom unavailable to many women in the West.

One western woman writes: "From simple hair-tie to hat, from scarf to veil until finally the full outfit. With every step, the reception was warmer and the freedom fuller. From within the veil I could see without being seen, understand what without being understood, and ogle the magnificent tribesmen without suffering inspection myself. It protected me from the sun and kept out the dust. It hid blemishes and bags. It concealed uncombed hair, a crumpled shirt or clumsy cosmetics. When I returned to London, the pressure to appear feminine, au fait and fashionable again seemed overwhelming. To my surprise, I secretly longed for those days in the veil..."

Having travelled around this part of the world for the last few weeks, I can completely understand those sentiments. Yes, for some women, the veil is a cultural obligation, but in practical terms it affords them as much freedom, if not more, than it removes.

The visit to the mall was Sarah's idea, but, as usual, she ended up buying nothing. This time, however, I shopped until Sarah dropped at the Virgin Megastore.

An attractive Muslim girl in headscarf helped me pick out various Arabian CDs to listen to. We've had music blasting from the car radio throughout this trip, but I have no idea who any of the artists are. Faced with an overwhelming selection of Arabian artists, I needed some help to navigate the field.

Between her and the store DJ with whom I struck up a conversation, I was more than catered for with one fabulous CD suggestion after the other. I'd expected to buy just two or three CDs, but I eventually left the shop with no fewer than nineteen (with plenty more yet that I would have listened to, had I been alone). Sarah was grimacing with boredom by this point.

After a cup of coffee, we crossed the road and went to a small shopping centre with vendors selling goods of a more ethnic nature. We spent quite a bit of time in a Persian carpet shop and were rather shocked to discover how cheaply one can purchase a sizeable, hand-made carpet over here.

From there, we returned to the car and drove back along the corniche, stopping just before sunset at the Family Park, where children were flying kites and playing on the best set of climbing frames, swings and roundabouts either Sarah or I have ever seen.

As the sun went down, the place really came to life.

Parents and children here seem to keep different hours. Whereas a European park would be desserted by 19:00, this park was now buzzing with life, as children ran and jumped in every direction, whilst their parents, mostly the mothers and their female friends, sat on large mats on the grass, eating a picnic supper and smoking wonderfully fragrant shisha in large hookahs, the scent of apple tobacco wafting through the air like an orchard.

People from every walk of life were present in the park. It was clean and unspoilt, there were no unsavoury types hanging around, and the atmosphere was joyful. Eloïse joined in with the rest and it was easy to imagine being a part of life here.

Amazingly, a cool breeze had begun to blow through the park. It's the only cool breeze we've felt during our entire stay in the region.

What a great place Abu Dhabi is revealing itself to be. We're eager to sample more of what it has to offer tomorrow, but already we're sure we'd like to return.

The Sheraton gets full points for its breakfast spread. No fewer than five different freshly squeezed juices were on offer this morning, along with the usual vast array of breakfast items. Surprising treats were bowls of baked yoghurt and strawberry smoothies. So, as you can see, we're really going without our creature comforts over here.

We retrieved our car and drove around town, looking for a carpet shop mentioned in our guide book. In spite of locating the correct street corner, we couldn't find the shop, so we dialled the number in the book and received directions to its new location.

Upon our arrival somewhere close to the shop's new location, however, we found ourselves in front of another Persion carpet shop, and decided to visit that one first.

Well, this shop contained quite simply the most impressive collection of Persian carpets that either Sarah or I had ever seen; and we've seen quite a few, especially on this trip. Consequently, we never made it to the shop we'd originally been searching for.

Expansive, pure silk carpets hung from all the walls. Some of them were 5  m x 3 m or greater, which is larger than most shops back home (and a good few here) can even display.

One side of the shop was adorned with photos of foreign heads of state and similar VIPs, purchasing their carpets in the shop. Clearly, we had come to a high-end supplier.

The woman who assisted us was Iranian and very helpful. She gave us a full tour of the shop, which was spread across three floors, and showed us carpets more beautiful and detailed than anything you can imagine.

She explained to us the reputation of the shop, that it deals purely in Persian carpets (no Afghan or Indian, etc.), that it was the first such shop to be established in Abu Dhabi some thirty years ago, and so on. Her family runs it.

The time came to commence the enjoyable and somewhat fatiguing process of looking through the shop's stock. We had in mind a nice replacement for the living room rug that we purchased from IKEA a year ago. That sad old thing is looking tired and stained now, as if it has suffered repeated and unrestrained attacks from a rampant baby. Funny, that.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we found a nice 3 m x 2 m carpet with an extremely original and striking geometrical motif, yet still very traditional in overall appearance. I loved it at first sight. It was made in Tabriz in north-western Iran.

Some time later, we finally left the shop with the carpet rolled up and packed in plastic, our wallet much the worse for wear.

A nice, long walk along the corniche was called for, in order to cogitate on our purchase and allow Eloïse to sleep. We parked the car along Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum Street (commonly known as Airport Road or Second Street -- are you surprised?) and then walked up to the corniche and along it, stopping periodically for snaps of the impressive skyline. A strong wind had kicked up and made for a very breezy stroll.

On the way back to the car, we stopped off for a spot of lunch and then headed over to the Marina Mall to purchase a cheap suitcase in which to haul our carpet back to Amsterdam. We managed to find a decent-enough one on sale and were pleased to find that its dimensions were just large enough to accommodate the carpet.

Afterwards, we took some more photos of the Abu Dhabi skyline, but this time from the breakwater near the mall. We then drove all the way along the corniche to the carpet market, but it just wasn't in the same league as the shop we had been in that morning, so we left immediately.

Back at the hotel, we took Eloïse down to the paddling pool and then relaxed while she played on the slide.

We haven't done all that much in Abu Dhabi, but I must say that I have enjoyed my time in the UAE's capital. I look forward to returning.

There is a reported $100bn of construction going on here at the moment. The city's skyline is set to change drastically over the next five years, with all manner of cultural institutions, hotels, apartment complexes, restaurants and so on being built.

The plan is apparently to turn Abu Dhabi into a major global destination, in much the same way that London, Paris and New York have enjoyed being for as long as any of us can remember.

I think they'll achieve it, too. No other country in the world has the resources, either financial or physical, to take on the development projects that this country has contracted. The world's most famous architects have been commissioned and are building modern feats of engineering that will put Abu Dhabi on the world's map.

It remains to be seen whether the UAE's capital city can compete in this regard with Dubai, which is the world's fastest growing city and home to development projects, such as the palm islands, whose scope takes one's breath away.

Tomorrow, we head north and exit the UAE for a three night stay in the geographically isolated Omani province of Musandam, along the Strait of Hormuz. There's not a tonne of infrastructure there, so I doubt we'll have access to the Internet during our stay.

One thing's for sure: it'll be a stark contrast with the metropolis of Abu Dhabi.

Today has been a long day; our longest, I think, in terms of kilometres travelled and without a doubt the longest day of driving.

Because we have to time our departures around Eloïse 's sleep patterns, we revisited the Family Park in the morning and let Eloïse play around on the various climbing frames and slides. The place was virtually deserted in the daytime heat. As we had seen on the day we arrived, it doesn't really come alive until the late afternoon.

And so we bade Abu Dhabi a fond farewell around noon and headed for the Al Maqta Bridge to take us in the direction of Dubai. On the outskirts of town, we stopped to take photos of the humungous mosque that is being built there. It's already very impressive. The original plan was to make it the largest in the world, but the Saudis got upset at the idea of the great mosque in Mecca being displaced from the top spot, and so Sheikh Zayed relented and scaled it back. You wouldn't know to look at it, though; it's huge.

As I've suggested before, they certainly know how to build roads here. A four-lane highway in each direction links Abu Dhabi with Dubai. The absence of cruise control was, once again, a royal pain in the arse, as one never has to lift one's foot from the accelerator as one races across the desert from one modern glass and steel oasis to the other.

When we flew into Dubai, we had no car, so we spent our two day stint there being ferried arround by abra and taxi. This made it possible to see that Dubai was big, but not exactly how big.

This time, our drive to Musandam would take us right alongside Dubai, which loomed up on the horizon when the clock was still reading a good 50 km to go before reaching that most famous of the emirates. The road widened to six lanes in either direction and started to feel more like a race track than a utilitarian road.

The sprawl of Dubai has to be seen to be believed, and it's not due to the city being low-rise, either. On the contrary, this city has skyscrapers to dwarf those found in New York, Hong Kong and other cities. It seems like no two things are within walking distance of each other in Dubai. A visit spanning a few days could probably run to a few hundred kilometres if not planned correctly, without your ever having left the city.

We followed route 11, driving close by the world-famous Burj Al Arab hotel, its sail-like form quite unlike anything else protruding into the Dubai skyline.

Another building, planned to be the world's largest when it is finished, currently reaches some eighty stories into the sky, just half the number it will boast when completed. Looking at Dubai is like looking at a vision of the future from a science-fiction story written just a few decades ago.

As we headed out of Dubai near the airport, the traffic arteries started to clog up as we reached the next emirate of Sharjah. (We'll spend a night here before returning to Dubai.) The signposting also worsened, and it became increasingly less clear which exit we should take from each passing roundabout. More than once today, we would take the wrong road and have to figure out and correct our mistake. Thankfully, we incurred only slight delays each time.

Sharjah gave way to the emirate of Ajman -- blink and you'll miss it -- and then to Umm Al Quwain, where we finally stopped, much too late, for lunch. A rice dish for me and hummus for Sarah would plug the gap until dinner.

Whilst there wasn't time to visit any actual towns, it was clear that Umm Al Quwain is a much more understated emirate than either Abu Dhabi or Dubai. It, too, has a good number of construction projects, but nothing of the scale of what is going on in its two famous cousins.

With fewer visitors coming to this part of the UAE and fewer commuters, the road had long since narrowed to two lanes in each direction.

Ras Al Khaimah was the final emirate we would pass through today. Here, the signposting of the roads became truly useless and Sarah began to navigate by the position of the road relative to the sea and the mountains. The road surface, too, was becoming less and less worthy of its purpose, as it carried us past towns of ever decreasing size.

Finally, we reached the border with the Omani province of Mussandam at just before 17:00.

There was a fair bit of bureaucracy, but no problems, unexpected or otherwise, to deal with. Our only surprise was needing to fill in and purchase three UAE exit forms, which set us back AED 60. We hadn't needed to do that at the Hatta exit point back in February. Different place, different rules.

With that out of the way, we could drive the 50 m or so to the Omani checkpoint, where three more forms needed to be completed and three visas purchased. We were given the option of paying in dirhams, so we did, to the tune of AED 180. We also had to demonstrate that we had appropriate car insurance for Oman, and we did, as the insurance we had purchased when passing the Hatta border in February was still valid.

The border formalities had taken half an hour, so we had only a little more than thirty minutes to reach our destination before sunset. Happily, we were only another 35 km removed from it at this point, so we made haste and followed the winding road as it hugged the side of the cliffs, first inland and then sharply curving back towards the sea.

The clearly visible strata of the cliffs and the small villages tucked into coves at their base reminded me quite vividly of the Faroe Islands, although the cliffs here were much less green, of course.

Around 18:15, we reached our hotel after some 340 km and checked in for the evening. We'll spend three nights here before heading back along the road that brought us.

We've booked a half-day dhow cruise for tomorrow, as the only way to see a lot of Musandam is by boat. Roads are a relatively new invention here and one village, Kumzar, can still only be visited by boat, a journey that takes two hours by speedboat.

In a single day, we've travelled from the bright lights of the UAE's capital to this Omani outpost, Arabia's least-known and least populated corner.

Musandam is cut off from the rest of Oman by Emirati territory to the south and the Strait of Hormuz to the north. How did this come to be?

Well, basically, the semi-nomadic Shihuh people who live here didn't really care which country they were in, but then came along the British in the sixties and early seventies, and they wanted to grant oil concessions to their companies. This meant that all of the tribes in the region had to pledge allegiance to one of the big-wigs, and the Shihuh chose the Sultan of Oman, rather than the Sheikh of Ras Al Khaimah.

And so it came to be that the Musandam peninsula is a slither of Omani territory, whilst being physically and geographically separate from the rest of the country.

There are no exploitable commodities here -- no oil, no copper -- and that has ensured that the peninsula has remained relatively isolated. Fishing, goat herding and limited agriculture are the staples of the local economy.

Beyond the Strait of Hormuz to the north lies Iran, and we're informed that Iranian smugglers also help bolster the local economy. Perhaps we'll see a few in the next couple of days.

Breakfast at the Khasab Hotel is definitely the worst of our trip (so far, I should say, but we're in the home straight now). It consisted today of white bread, some of which was toasted, and some individually wrapped portions of jam, butter, cheese and honey.

Only after eating most of it did we discover that an ommelette could also be ordered, albeit it at extra cost. We were in for a long day, so we ordered a couple anyway, but this made us a little late for our 09:00 pick-up for our dhow cruise.

Down at the harbour, we boarded our dhow and were delighted to discover that we had the entire boat to ourselves. In fact, we are virtually the only people staying at our hotel, too. There's only one other guest, as far as I know.

Part of the reason for that is that Oman Air has flights to Khasab only on Thursday and Friday, so anyone who wants to fly here from greater Oman either has to stay one night or six. Dubai, on the other hand, has daily flights (although I'm unsure which airline operates them; probably Kish), so Musandam is a popular weekend destination for expats.

Anyway, aboard the dhow, cushions flanked either side of the boat and carpets were draped over the remaining areas in the middle, so the boat looked comfy and inviting. We took up position along the left side.

Our crew consisted of two men, an older Omani gent and a younger one, probably in his twenties. Neither spoke a word of English and we speak no Arabic, so sign language would have to do.

We headed out into the Khor Ash Sham, a long and sheltered fjord (then again, which fjord isn't?).

Before long, we saw the village of Nadifi in the distance on the south side of the fjord. We passed by at quite a distance, however. The boat doesn't land at any of the villages on this trip, in order to respect the privacy of the locals. These are very remote communities, accessible only by boat.

Nadifi has about a hundred inhabitants, mainly fishermen. Because there's no access by road, the children travel by boat to school in Khasab and stay over from Saturday to Wednesday.

Next up was Qanaha, which we passed by more closely. Stone houses could be made out in the distance.

At this point, Telegraph Island (a.k.a. Jazirat Al Maqlab) loomed up ahead, the former site of a British telegraphic relay station in the 19th century. The sheer isolation of the island, behind a bend of this remote khor, apparently drove many of the workers stationed there to madness. The saying "to go around the bend" still persists to this day. So now you know.

Ahead lay the village of Maqlab on the right-hand side. This is a mountain village, where the people earn their living from goatherding and fishing. Maqlab comprises about ten or so houses and can also be reached by climbing over Jebel Maqlab.

At this point, the men on the boat brought us into the shallows and made it clear we could jump off the side and go swimming here in the beautiful green water, but we indicated that we didn't want to swim and were offered a slightly longer journey along the fjord instead.

We gratefully accepted and fared on towards the end of the fjord. Seebi Island could be seen in the distance.

To our great astonishment, some kind of flying fish would periodically leap out of the water and literally run across the water for a good 10 - 20 m using its tail fin as a leg. It was one of the strangest sights I have ever witnessed first hand and it was totally unexpected.

We now turned, looped around Telegraph Island and passed by Sham, which we passed by more closely than any of the other villages on our cruise. Again, this village is home to about a hundred residents, but not a soul was stirring, as had been the case in each of the other villages. They could have been deserted, for all we knew.

Along the route, we were kept watered with tea, Arabic coffee, water and soft drinks; and nourished with fruit.

On the return voyage, we stopped at a cove to observe dolphins swimming in formation at the left side of our boat, then in front of it, then off to the right and finally behind. I think this was the high point of Sarah's day, as she had been very excited at the prospect of seeing dolphins and was even more jubilent now at having got to see them so close.

Eloïse seemed to enjoy the trip, too, and was very well behaved. By the time we made it back to Khasab's harbour, she had fallen asleep. Sarah expertly managed to get her into her car seat without waking her.

With only one more full day in Musandam, it was important to make good use of the afternoon, too, so we decided to head up into the mountains. It was now 13:30 and the guide books made it sound like a tricky 4x4 drive, with narrow roads hugging the mountains, precipitous drops, and vertiginous views.

We decided to see for ourselves; we could always turn back if it got too hairy.

As we began the drive, signs at the side of the road warned of the steepness of the gradients and cautioned owners of non-4x4 vehicles not to attempt the ascent.

The road probably was the most difficult we have tackled on this trip so far, but at slow speeds it was still comfortable (mentally, that is; physically, it was somewhat less comfortable). A handful of incredibly steep switchbacks put the car under considerable strain, but we eventually made it to the top of Jebel Harim, the tallest mountain in the area. We parked near the radar station to rest.

On the way to the summit, we had passed the wonderfully verdant Sayh plateau, where goats wandered without a care in the world and some obvious agriculture was being cultivated. If you looked at that plateau out of context, you would have no idea it was high in the mountains; it looked like a meadow at sea level.

At the stop of the mountain pass, we took some time to take photos and change Wiesje's nappy, after which we began the descent. On the way dowm, we passed a convoy of Hummers, doubtless ferrying cruise line passengers on a mountain excursion. We had seen a liner docked in the harbour that morning and surmised that that could be the only source of enough tourists to fill six or seven Hummers.

The descent, which I imagined might be hairier than the ascent, was made quite quickly, as we were now familiar with the terrain. We found ourselves back down at the base of Jebel Harim by 16:30.

That left enough time for the 10 km drive to Khor Najd, the only khor accessible by car, which rewarded us with a glorious view of the surrounding mountains and fjord.

We made it back to Khasab with enough time to stop off at a beachside park, where Eloïse could tire herself out, prior to going to dinner for the second night in a row at the Golden Tulip Hotel, just outside of Khasab.

The advantage of eating there was that there's an office of Khasab Travel & Tours located in the hotel. After dinner, we arranged to charter a large speedboat tomorrow, which will take us to the remote settlement of Kumzar. This is the northernmost settlement in Oman and reputedly the remotest on the whole of the Arabian peninsula. There are no roads and a two hour speedboat journey (or four hour voyage by dhow) is the only way to get there.

The villagers of Kumzar speak a language known as Kumzari, which is a mixture of Farsi, Arabic, English and Portuguese and Hindi. I think it's going to be a fascinating visit to an area of the world that has almost certainly retained its own character and remained largely impervious to the onslaught of the western world.

The voyage will take us out into the Arabian Gulf and then into the Strait of Hormuz. Somewhere in the distance to the north will be Iran, but that's as close as we'll get on this trip.

Today was possibly the highlight of our trip so far, but tomorrow has a sporting chance of surpassing it. Either way, it'll be a terrific day, I'm sure.

What a day. We're knackered, and I do speak for all of us.

Our speedboat was a partially covered affair with two outboard motors. We set off from Khasab harbour pretty punctually, after the food and drink had been loaded on board.

The first leg of the journey went very quickly, with the boat bouncing up and over the waves as we headed out towards the Strait of Hormuz. Our guide explained to us in good English that he had learned the language simply from talking to tourists. He had received no formal English tuition. In fact, he then informed us that he had not attended school of any kind, making his linguistic ability all the more impressive.

The scenery was pleasant, the wind created by our speed refreshing, and Eloïse looked very sweet in her little lifejacket. She was not happy to be on the boat, though, and had protested loudly about not being taken to the park instead.

As we headed out into open water, one yellow fibreglass speedboat after the other rocketed past us in the opposite direction, its crew almost catapulted from the vessel with each wave they rode. Our Kumzari guide explained to us that the occupants were the notorious Iranian smugglers, heading towards Khasab to pick up their bounty of household appliances, electronics, cigarettes and other contraband -- all of which arrives at the harbour tax-free from the UAE -- to bring it back to Iran, which I'm told is some 50 km from here. There, it will be sold on the black market.

After about half an hour, one of our outboard motors gave up the ghost, slowing our pace dramatically. When the motor died, the skipper stopped the boat and, at first, it wasn't apparent that the other motor was still working, so it was quite a relief when that one was started up again and we stopped drifting.

The only stop on the way was to drop off a passenger, a friend of the skipper, at a fishing boat moored along one of the cliffs. High above, on top of the cliff, a look-out post was manned by someone searching for fish down below in the clear water.

Just before noon, we got our first view of Kumzar as it came into sight. We docked, but there was no sight of the promised smaller boat that would bring us to shore.

No matter, we would just walk, and it turned out to be an interesting walk, bringing us past fields of glittering sardines, lying baking in the sun, waiting to be picked up after three days spent drying. Our guide told us that up to 1000 kg of sardines are landed here some days.

Our walk towards the village took us past a desalination plant (for producing drinking water), a power station, a small hospital and a school. Schoolchildren were walking towards us on their way to attend the afternoon session. Both the boys and the girls were wearing immaculately clean uniforms, although they were nothing like the school uniforms we have in the West.

The girls in particular were very interested in Eloïse . Not many white babies make it out here and even fewer of them are redheads. In fact, according to our guide, only three or so trips come here each week, which means just a handful of visitors (unless yesterday's cruise liner has docked, in which case an excursion might contain as many as 25 people travelling here by dhow).

The girls posed for some pictures, but were very shy. Then, the boys got in on the action and were considerably less shy, jostling for position and striking macho poses.

Finally, we arrived in the village and were met by smiling, happy faces everywhere.

We walked through the rocky streets of the village. The road is unsurfaced, which makes sense, as there are no cars here. The married women wear facial masks similar