Winter is a fantastic time to ride off-road in the UAE. Surprisingly, due to one reason or another, I didn’t see dirt for almost two months. After our last off-road ride sometime in mid-December, things didn’t fall in place for a good 7-8 hour trip to the hills in the western region. A couple of my riding buddies went off to ride along the Dakar route, another friend was recovering from an injury and I too got busy with restoring a 1981 Honda GL1100 that I picked up in January.
So, needless to say, I had a fantastic time riding off-road on some fairly technical tracks yesterday. We were a group of seven riders with a 1996 G 350 following us. The area we rode in was close to Al Ghail on E18. We’ve been in this area before but we manage to find new tracks each time. There are plenty of gravel tracks around the main road that lead to some pretty good climbs and dry riverbed crossings. The surface is mainly loose gravel with pebbles and stones thrown in the mix. Eventually, the track led us to the road going up Jebel Yibir. This road used to be dirt but now it’s all tarmac. There is a military installation on atop Jebel Yibir so we had to turn and head back when we came across the no-entry sign but we loved the climb. It was one of the steepest I’ve ever been on in this region. We went from about 500ft to 4,500ft in about 20 minutes. We might just do a few more off-road rides this season.
If you’ve got a bike that can handle some mildly tough terrain and want to join, give me a shout.
