Winter is a busy time for us motorcyclists in the UAE. The mercury drops down quite a bit and it’s a wonderful reprieve from the blistering summer heat. Over the last few years, our small little friendly motorcycle gang has made it a point to travel to Musandam/Khasab, Oman and enjoy the long, twisty costal road that is by far the best motorcycling road in this region. We also throw in a bit of off-road trails that criss-cross the hills in order to enjoy our dual-sport adventure bikes.
The ride to the border with Oman is quite boring, especially on motorcycles. But the boredom is worth it. You can head north east on either E 11 or E 311 (preferable) and get to the city of Ras Al Khaimah. Once there, you have to travel through the city on E 11 till you make it to the border check post at Darra.
The exit stamp at the UAE border costs AED 35 and the visa for Oman costs AED 50. Ideally, you won’t be spending more than 30 minutes at the border if you get there before the tourists do. We were at the border at 7am and through and into Oman by 7:40.
As soon as you make it through the border gates and customs, you are onto Khasab Coastal Road. This is the road to enjoy. We had plotted a good off-road route along the highway and headed off into the hills for a pretty challenging 14km off-road excursion that turned out to be a quite a handful.
We had lunch at the Golden Tulip Hotel which is about 40kms from the border check post before making our way back to Dubai. There are many more things you could do in this part of Oman like diving, fishing, and a host of other water sport activities.
In all, we spent about 12 hours on the road and it was yet another wonderful motorcycling experience.
