20.11. Rub Al-Chálí, Ubar

In the morning, we are again drawn by the penetrating light from the tent, the children are already playing in the sand again. We pack and try to have breakfast, but a cloud of flies discovered us, so we try to go somewhere else. But it turns out that they are everywhere, especially where there is any civilization or people nearby. So we choose the tactic of stopping, taking food from the trunk to the front, driving (flies can be quite decently blown out the windows while driving) and then eat in the car.

On iOverlander, I found the place where the nearest dunes are, so we go back a bit and turn onto another path. There is road work going on there, so we get stuck for a while because we probably won't get there, but then we remember that no road work here means closure, either we wait until the machine clears the road in a while and drive through the construction site (in the mountains) or it just goes around. We look for footprints and fearlessly throw ourselves into the sand. Road workers lay asphalt. To our surprise, after a while the road begins and according to the tracks, it is already being driven, so we go too. After a few km, there is a section without asphalt, which is being worked on, and after another detour, the asphalt road continues again. We drive past a place where there is a giant empty parking lot, we don't understand why, but there is a sign "Festival Oasis". A little further on is a road sign: "Tourism experiment area", I don't understand it and it sounds a bit scary.

We drive on and soon the road ends and the compacted desert road continues and it ends after a while and there are only tracks rutted in the sand. Ota lets the children make fun of him for a while and finally throws himself into the sand with determination. We kind of swim in it, it's like driving in the mud, but we keep going, we haven't gotten stuck once. We arrive at a nice dune and think that's enough, we stand under it and have breakfast. After a while, a group of cars with tourists arrives and without hesitation they drive to the dune, that's how it's done! In a few minutes, a car with two guides stops by to see if we need help and if we should go up. In fact, we say we dare not. "Do you want to export there?". Ota goes to the next car and the fighter takes him up over the dune, they are there in a moment. The second fighter sits behind our steering wheel, it can be seen that he is not driving in the sand for the first time, the ride is like on Matějská in the hills under the dune, we drive several times because he is unable to drive on the dune, he tries to turn off everything he can, he turns off the air conditioning (it saves the car ), ABS and all the other features, will eventually drop the tires (also recommended in sand), but it still won't help. He says that there is something with the traction, that it will block it, that we have a very smart car full of electricity, that they have simple ones. Even so, he takes us halfway to the dune. It's a great experience, not only riding in the sand, but also how nice and sympathetic the people of Omania behave. So far, the tourists have seen the dune and when they leave, the guy makes sure that everything is ok and that we can leave. We also go for a walk on the dune, the children slide down their butts and eventually their bellies. On the way back, we stop and look at the local flora and try to find the fauna, but we only find different kinds of footprints and holes in the sand overhangs, there are also beautiful blooming thick-leaved tall flowers and several types of bushes.

The next stop is Shisr, a place 170 km north of Salalah in the desert, where in 1990 NASA discovered a place using a satellite that could be the mythical rich city of Ubar, which is written about in the Bible and the Koran. No one knows whether it really is, but an archaeological survey has shown that the place was inhabited as early as 5000 years BC. This legend is more interesting than reality. For an entrance fee, you can see a small fenced area with the remains of restored walls. But we have it on the way, so it's a nice diversion. We arrive in Salalah in the early evening, staying in the hotel we found through booking.com for 4 nights. As Ota says, we will make a vacation within a vacation. This time we are lucky, the apartment is large, clean, there is a washing machine and working wifi.