That’s what we got through………and it wasn’t a breeze.
*Daves Dastedly DC (Desert Circle) 1,100km in 2 days
The preparation
Tentative plans were set. Decisions not taken. Would it be the sensible Southern Wahiba option which promised cool breezes and small distances, or would it be the mammoth Internal Desert Circle?
At 5pm on Wednesday Dave turned up to Grumps’ house, and out came the drills. Perfect DC training…..making holes in plastics to fit bolt on accessories.
5 minutes later and Daves spanky new CRF had a 6 litre rear fender tank on the back to accompany his 26 litre tank on the front, and the 3 litres of masafi petrol bottles he would be forced to carry by Grumps. Yes, we were off to the middle of nowhere again!
It was an uneventful 3 hours drive to Adam. We camped down in strong winds, at the turnoff to Fahud. Snuggly hidden away in our sleeping bags, sheltered from the wind by the Prado, we enjoyed a single beer, and closed our eyes at 11pm hoping for some sleep.
Day 1 (24 July 2008)
At 4am the alarms chimed and we were up. Driving to Adam petrol station and setting off on journey into the unknown at 5.30am.
With 4.5 litres of water each and 34 litres of fuel in front/rear tanks, strapped to forks, rear seats and in the rucksacks we set off direction Fahud and then Yibal.
2 hours of tarmac in the cool. We completed the 200km by 7.30am and filled up with lovely pink regular fuel.
Another 100km or so down graded roads and sand tracks. The Saudi border approached, this “track” takes you within 3km of the border. But then as we approached the check point we turned left off the main “highway”. Directly in land, to cross the “Mother of Poison” dunes direct. It was 9am, and the next waypoint was 100km South –West across sabkha and dunes.
“We will try to go round the dunes won’t we, none of this follow me its easy lark today, OK 
Grumps?” “Oh yeah, don’t worry!”
By 1pm (4 hours later) we had crossed the mighty dunes. We’d reached QA099 a randomly chosen waypoint, in the middle of nowhere, but signified where we would turn again to start another 100km of dunes!!!
In those 4 hours we had fallen, stalled, slid, cursed and cheered. Some of the most amazing dunes, barren landscape and ridiculously soft sand had been conquered. What an achievement…..but it was HOT. No….I mean REALLY, REALLY HOT.
Obviously no trees for miles. In fact nothing but rocks, dunes and sabkha … and some tracks from Youcef and Grumps from the previous were where we had ridden to before bailing back. We decided to have a quick rest before heading off on the next stage, which would take us underneath QA and to the bottom of the Wahibas, Mahoot.
It was too hot, within minutes we were suffering heat exhaustion, a mistake to stop. I cracked my tooth on a date stone….Grumpy? Yep. The tooth was half hanging out, but thankfully no nerves exposed. Throbbing, we continued on.
After 50km of literally life sapping dunes (these don’t even compare with the Sawadi named equivalent!) we hit a graded road where a pipeline was being laid. It was maybe 30km south of Barik.
This was one of our bail points, all pre-planned. There were several 
options earlier but we had chosen to continue in our treacherous quest. But now, at 2pm the heat was too much, we approached the workmen and asked for water and shade. Sitting in their air conditioned car they kindly asked us if we would like to join them in their work (sleeping collectively in their wonderfully air conditioned bus). We filled our water up, and bedded down for 2 hours kip in their bus. Heaven. We cooled, recovering from what was rearing heat exhaustion. The workmen continued to sleep.
By 4pm we felt good. But it would have been daft to continue the final 80km’s to the road due East. So we took a graded road past Barik, towards Al Ghubar the easy way through the dunes, and then we forked off across lovely flat open gravel plains towards the main North/South Salalah road.
We’d done 550km so far. And 350km since the last fuel stop. We were getting low on fuel (Daves bike using more than Grumps).But we’d found the tarmac and it was only 120km due East to the petrol station. Hmmmmm. Next problem… Did we have enough fuel??
Well, no not really. But we did have enough for one of the bikes to get there, so we ensured mine had just enough and siphoned off in installments into Daves who was using a bit more fuel. Finally with the petrol station in sight at 7.30pm Dave ran out of fuel for the 3rd or 4th time. I sped on the 2km, topped up with fuel and returned to Dave. It was dark, and with no rear light on Daves bike it was a tentative ride in the now incredibly cool air to Mahoot, fully laden with fuel again…..just in case Mahoot did its Nam of Opal trick of having no fuel.
By 8:00pm we were checked into the Mahoot Motel (which can only be described as “not as good as it was previously”. Previously is best described as “sh*te”, so you can imagine….no flushing toilet, pink 2 tone walls, no bed sheets, towel or soap. But on the positive side, the toilet smell did manage to distract from the smell of our boots!
Curry; chicken and prawns, followed by an extra portion for Dave, some drinks … water, tea, coke and fruit juices. Plus 7 bottles of water for tomorrow. It all amounted to a staggering 7 rials….possibly the most expensive roadside curry known to Oman, but it was worth it. Oh, and it was as windy as AFTB’s behind, and can you believe it…we were cold!
A few bed time stories passed quickly before eyes closed around 10.30pm, and unshowered bodies finally rested.
Day 2 (25 July 2008)
5am……the alarm clock snooze button pressed many times and it was 6:30am before we were off. Breakfast consisted of half a sweaty cheese sandwich which had travelled the 700km with us yesterday.
Daves bike was as dehydrated as us, and gladly gulped down almost ½ a liter of oil before we set off towards “Landy” on the far side of the dunes. Today we had a mere 350 km’s of West-East southern Wahiba crossing, followed by South-North Wahiba followed by ½ a Wahiba Challenge crossing in the North at the end. And then another unexplored gravel plain crossing back to Adam.
Bikes duly topped up with fuel, and us full of water we set off, direction “Landy”.
The most polite way of putting this is that Dave had a few tumbles. One tumble resulted in fuel dripping constantly from the carb. Save stripping the whole thing down we took the engineers solution of bashing the carb with a hammer. This didn’t work. Neither did turning the bike upside down and bashing it again. Neither did swearing. So we throttled the fuel flow with the valve tap and hoped that being a Honda it would fix itself.
At first the throttling was too much and Dave kept running out of fuel, but we eventually got it right.
However, we’d lost a lot of fuel and Dave had lost a bit of energy. We decided that although we were still 19km from Landy and the coast we would just head North and make our way up through the Wahibas, to save on fuel etc, in case the situation got worse.
We also fixed the footpeg on Daves bike which had come loose…..and noticed that Daves Leatherman was no longer in its pouch. Ooooops another 90 quid lost in the desert.
We then hit the huge dunes, which were….huge, and steep, and white, and very, very 
soft. Thankfully the soft bits were on the down sides. However, on numerous occasions Dave powered past Mr G who was starting to regret not putting a new tyre on, and trying to negotiate soft sand on slicks (sound familiar!?). Anyway, we got through them.
We had a small rest to transfer the final amount of fuel. At this point, we were joined by 6 friendly local chappies who were extremely happy to see us and be photographed. One of them suggested placing a stone in between my exhaust and rear fuel tank to protect the tank, whose insulation tape had come off. I pointed out to him the likelihood of the stone jumping out on the first bump I hit, and he grinned as inanely at me as the others were at each other.
Finally after 100km or so of off-piste sand bashing we hooked up with a track and headed towards the desert camp. Just beforehand we pitched up on a high dune and sat in the sun and wind and enjoyed our final packet of beef jerky. My tooth finally conceded and the broken bit came loose, and hence was stored in my wallet ready for the tooth fairy.
From the camp it was just a simple ½ Wahiba challenge crossing which was possibly the toughest 2nd half I have ever done in very soft sand and ridiculous temperatures. But, in just under the hour we were out. Now just a case of cruising 40 odd unchartered kms due West towards a graded road to lead us to Sinaw and Adam.
Hmmmm, this became a hideous journey over rocky bumpy horribly difficult terrain. Probably would have been great on a light bike, early in the morning, in winter, but as it happened we’d been riding heavy, fuelled up bikes for over 1,000km. We were exhausted, Daves ribs were possibly cracked from one of his technical over the bar “lay-downs” both of our backsides resembled the nappy rash of a sick 2 year old, it was 45 degrees C and quite frankly ……we’d both had enough!
In a wadi, we stopped under a tree, lay down in the little shade there was, drank some water, chewed on nuts and closed our eyes for an hour. We were hopefully only 3 or 4 k’s from a road….but we needed this rest. The maps came out again to check the route. 1 hour later, we continued on, found the road after perhaps 8 or 9km’s which we followed as it turned into tarmac.
I don’t know why but rather unsportingly Dave preferred to ride tarmac we found towards Sinaw adding maybe 2km to our journey, instead of my offer of off-roading direct!! He he, I only wanted to test his sense of humour.
Finally by 3.30pm ish we were back in Adam. True to form the CRF carburettor problem had sorted itself. I guess the stuck float bowl had unstuck itself. I love Hondas. Bikes loaded and off we set.
Our prize was a warm coolbox full of 50 degC yellow nectar. We found that buy buying ice cold 7-up from the shop and holding the nectar by the air co for a few minutes before mixing, an incredibly enjoyable luke cold shandy would result. Glorious!!
We also concluded that Air Conditioning really is the best invention known to man. Toyota air-co designers……we salute you.
Lozza luv
Grumps & Dave …(certified as “Ready for the real DC” !!)
With the next season of Dubai Motocross Baja events mandating the use of GPS navigation equipment it is an opportune time to have a look at the best available options. Traditionally mounting a GPS unit on an off road bike entailed all sorts of mounting hardware prone to damage during the occasional off.Luckily Garmin has come to the rescue with a range of units intended for hiking that adapt well for use on off road motorcycles. Even though the track and map screens ar
e way too small to pay any attention to while trying to navigate camel grass and dunes, the direction/compass screen is perfect for navigating.
are available for both wall outlets as well as in car use with the Garmin ForeTrex 201. The car charger however does not come with the unit so if you need one it would have to be purchased separately.
