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!
