Surfing Sand in Oman’s Wahiba Sands
The tyres let out a long hiss as our guide crouched next to the car, carefully releasing air from each one. “Now you won’t get stuck,” he said with a grin. His name was Ali, and from the moment we met him at a Shell station on the edge of Bidiyah, he had the quiet confidence of someone who’s driven more desert miles than most people have driven in their lives.
I was on day five of a week-long self-drive road trip through Oman, travelling in a rooftop-tent-equipped Toyota Land Cruiser with my friends Fedor and Barret. We’d arranged the whole trip through iDrive4x4, and Wahiba Sands, the golden sea of dunes stretching across central Oman, was our grand finale.
Following Ali in his white pickup, we left the paved road behind. At first, it felt deceptively easy. We cruised along a hard-packed track with dunes rising on either side, and I wondered if this was as “into the desert” as we were going to get. A few camels drifted by in the distance. A shack or two marked the final frontier of civilisation.
Then we went off the main track and we were in it. There’s no real way to describe the sensation of driving through dunes unless you’ve done it, it’s like surfing in slow motion. The Land Cruiser moved with a strange, smooth rhythm, floating up the slopes, dipping into hollows, tilting in ways that made you clench your teeth then laugh. We blasted some music and fell into that mesmerising rhythm of engine hum and soft sand.
At the crest of one particularly sharp ridge, Ali stopped. He climbed out of his truck and started motioning to us, hand gestures showing where to go, how fast, when to brake. It wasn’t a spoken lesson, but we understood all the same. We edged forward. The nose tipped. The horizon vanished. And suddenly, we were sliding down the dune like a sled, sand spraying on either side. It was terrifying and brilliant.
Eventually, Ali led us to a spot in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Not a tree, not a structure, not a phone signal in sight. Just an open, flat patch surrounded by gently shifting dunes. He stepped out, smiled, and said, “You can camp here. I’ll come back in the morning.”
And then he drove off.
It hit us more slowly than expected, that odd weight of desert silence. Of being alone. Of having no backup, no map, and only the sky to orient yourself. It was equal parts thrilling and unsettling. But we’d booked this through iDrive4x4, and something about that made it feel solid. Trustworthy. Still, watching our guide vanish made my stomach do a little flip.
With sunset approaching, we unpacked the sandboard. Barret (for reasons still unknown) changed into a ridiculous mankini and scrambled up the nearest dune, throwing himself down the slope with more enthusiasm than skill. We all gave it a go, mostly tumbling, laughing, and eating sand.
The light turned amber, then blood-red. We cracked open some beers and climbed to the top of a ridge to watch the sun melt into the horizon. A small herd of camels wandered past below us, silhouettes moving slowly through the heat haze like a dream. It was the kind of evening that doesn’t need photos. You just… remember.
Dinner was quick (pasta stirred together on a camp stove) and finished just in time. The wind came out of nowhere, lifting sand in fine, stinging clouds. We hadn’t set up the rooftop tent yet, so we dove into the car and watched a few episodes of a downloaded series while the storm rattled outside.
Later, when the gusts finally calmed, Fedor and I climbed into the tent while Barret zipped himself into his ground tent. The night was dead quiet. No wind. No insects. Just the occasional moan of shifting dunes.
We woke up with the sun. The wind was gone, the sand smooth and untouched. We brewed coffee and sat barefoot in the silence. And right on schedule Ali appeared, back exactly when he said he would be.
We packed up, brushed off the sand, and cruised one final time through the dunes before reaching the edge of Bidiyah.
And just like that, the desert slipped away behind us. But it stuck in the air around me, the smell of sand, the memory of motion, the taste of a night spent in the middle of nothing. Wahiba Sands had let us in, just for a moment. And I’m still not entirely sure it was real.
