An adventure for 40 dirham

Saturday, December 3rd: our first working week in the Emirates starts. It’s great weather, 29 degrees Celsius and the sun is shining. First we cycle to the office of 7Days, the daily we gave an interview two days ago. Unfortunately we do not manage to get hold of a copy of the article that has been published.
From the emirate of Dubai we in no time reach the emirate of Sharja, on our way north. Whereas most emirates are quite liberal in maintaining the cultural restrictions of the Islam, Sharja most definitely is not. Dresscodes are strict and alcohol is completely taboo for everybody, since the sheikh’s son killed himself a couple of years ago after having spent the night in ‘a Western way’.
The first-rate map of the Emirates that we bought can not keep up with the dizzy developments: where our map just shows sand, our eyes see houses, shops and new villages and are industrial sites being built at a murderous pace. Between old and new villages we catch a glimpse of traditional life, where fishermen go to the sea in small boats, camels trudge through the deep sand and greying men, following the call of the muezzin, shuffle to the mosque for one of their daily prayers.

At gasstations and mosques we tap water from purifying-installations that deliver cool water free of charge; one of the major assets of this country, especially for cyclists.
Just like in Dubai we find hard plastic telephone-cards with the most beautiful pictures everywhere alongside the road. We collect and save them for Peter’s father, an avid collector. Looking for them is a nice pastime, although there are so many of them and the Arabs treat their garbage so sloppy, that we never manage to get into a nice cycling rythm. Always there’s that beautiful, unknown card that we have to pick up. The stack in Peter’s steering bag grows like mad and gets heavier and heavier.
Apart from telephone cards we see Indian rollers (related to the Lilac breasted rollers) and small green bee-eaters, an unexpected encore after the bird paradise that’s called Africa.

In the third emirate, Umm Al Quwain, we pitch our tent on the beach and are visited by the local police. They think it’s great what we’re doing and leave just as fast as they arrived. During a short walk along the beach we discover strange yellow flowers that grow on the floodline like glassy gladioli that try to reach the heavens from the briny sand. Who wants to grow here?
Undisturbed by muezzins we sleep for over ten hours.

Like in many other countries, in the Emirates we’re noisily accompanied by hooting cars and trucks, greeting and appauding hands and clicking camera’s and cellphones. Once in a while we are stopped by a car driver that cannot control his curiosity.
Just after Ras Al Khaimah the dry desert mountains of the Rus Al Jibal appear in front of us, but the road stays level as long as it leads alongside the Arabian Gulf. After 77 kilometres we reach the Omani border, that is to say, the border of the UAE with the Omani enclave in the northern point of the Emirates. We plan to cycle into Oman from here north until we reach the Strait of Hormuz, then take an unpaved road through the Rus Al Jibal Mountains back south, to the eastcoast of the Emirates. People in Dubai told us that landscape-wise it’s a beautiful route, very doable by bicycle.

The exit stamp at the Emirati border costs twenty dirham per person. Through no man’s land and past excavated building sites with a lot of fresh concrete, we cycle to the Omani immigration. The friendly official looks at us, smiling and kind of disturbed at the same time. And there is always the inevitable question about where we’re headed on those packed bicycles. Truefully we tell our story and rattle the planned route, while the official typs the information from our passports into his computer.
“But that’s not possible,” he suddenly says when we tell him our plan of leaving his country at Dibba. What do you mean, it’s not possible, of course it is. Why shouldn’t it be?
“Because there’s no borderpost. On top of that the unpaved road through the mountains is very bad and only passable with a very sturdy fourwheeldrive, there are no villages in the mountains, there is no water and you will have to return the same way you came to exit the country.”
We are thunderstruck. This contradicts all the information we laboriously gathered in Dubai. But his collegue is also deadserious and compelled by necessity we decide to cancel the visa request and return to the Emirates.
“That’s not possible either, because we already stamped your passports. You’ll first have to pay the 120 dirham for the Omani visa and then you can get an exitstamp. Otherwise you cannot enter the Emirates, you do need an exitstamp.”
The 120 dirham also doesn’t add up with our information, nota bene from the website of the Royal Omani Police. According to them the visa for Oman is free when you are in possession of an Emirati visa. A financial disaster threatens to happen: spending 40 plus 120 dirham (almost 40 Euro) for absolutely nothing. I cycle back to the Emirati borderpost and inform whether or not it’s possible to enter the Emirates again with a cancelstamp instead of a normal exitstamp. Peter utters a sigh when I return with a smile on my face. The Emirati official told me it’s no problem at all.
The Omani border official puts the cancelstamp in our passports and with the 120 dirham still in our pockets we return to the Emirati borderpost, feeling reassured that we will obtain a new visa without problems. The same official I spoke to just minutes before makes our blood boil when he bluntly refuses to give us the visa he just promised. Obviously he didn’t understand a word I said before.
Without excuses or explanations he wants to send us back to the Omani border to get a exitstamp, which will cost us 120 dirham. We ask for his boss, who persists that rules are rules.
“Even when we have to spend the whole night here, I refuse to cooperate with this official nit-picking and tourist-harassing,” Peter tells me, boiling with anger.
Desperately we walk to the other side of the road, where we an hour earlier had a nice conversation with the official that provided our passports with the Emirati exitstamps. Peter explains the situation, but doesn’t need to say much, because they already know about the situation. The cellphones are still hot.
Dejected we’re standing in front of the office, in the burning sun and listen with half an ear to the fierce discussion in fast Arabic. After ten minutes the official looks at us and says: “Go back to the entry-office at the other side, they will let you in.”

Half an hour later we’re sitting in front of our tent at the beach. In the Emirates that is to say. Stubbornness and determination have won, and well: the whole theatre was worth 40 dirham, looking back at it.