Part 1 of a 9-day Oman overland trip (YouTube vlog). Hosts Nate and Kara Buchanan travel in a 1985 UNIMOG camper converted by Freedom Overland (picked up in Dubai) and document driving lessons, border crossing, steep/off-road driving, wild camping (legal in Oman), and a vehicle tour (exterior, electrical system, interior layout, bathroom, beds, storage, and a unique balcony). They encounter mountain goats, remote towns during Ramadan, and a bioluminescent beach. The video includes a midroll sponsor (AG1) and practical notes about vehicle performance and onboard capacities.
Chapters
Good morning from Oman, the little country on the corner of the Arabian Peninsula. This 1985 UNIMOG, with an incredible camper conversion is going to be our home for the next week as we explore this country's epic nature.
Best day ever.
This is day two. From beautiful coastlines to massive deserts, rugged mountains, and even hidden oasis.
This is amazing.
This country has it all. But the best part is wild camping is legal throughout the entire country. Another epic spot. We'll hit the road soon, but first, let me catch you up on how we got here and give you a full tour of our new home.
This is awesome. Hey, little girl.
So this morning when we woke up, we could see this herd of goats on top of the mountain across the valley, and they've spent the morning making their way all the way over to where we camped last night. All right. Cara's attempting to make friends. What could possibly go wrong?
Shepherd Kara is watching over her flock. She is loving this. Also, that's my phone that she has in her hand, which means I now have 10,000 photos of goats on my phone to go through.
All right, so two days ago, we picked up the Unimog from a company called Freedom Overland in Dubai. They're the ones that get credit for the incredible build, and we are super grateful for them letting us use it for this trip. I'll be honest, when we originally planned this trip, I did not realize how big the learning curve was going to be for driving a Unimod. So the day started with a driving lesson, which, if I'm being honest, was pretty intense. Especially on the busy streets around Dubai, it's hard to find.
Yeah.
There we go. This thing has eight gears and it drives unlike any vehicle that I've ever driven before. Then it was time to make the two hour drive to the Omani border, which just happened to coincide with rush hour traffic in Dubai. This is such an intense place to drive something this big for the first time. Thankfully, we breezed through the border, like, almost a little too easy.
That's it.
We'll see when I drive away if they come to search the car. Our goal for the night was to make it all the way to the capital city of Muscat. But we quickly learned that the time that we saw in Google Maps needed to be doubled because the top speed of The Unimog is 49 miles an hour. And going uphill, it is incredibly slow.
We gonna make it up this hill?
I don't know. We're losing speed so fast. From there, all that was left to do was drive to the top of this mountain where we are currently parked. But this isn't where we intended on camping. Our first spot was quite a bit lower than this lookout point and we literally were parked right next to a Toyota Corolla. But then I saw this little dirt road going up a mountain that looked pretty intense. But I decided, what's the point of driving a Unimog all the way to Oman if you're not going to try to get to the most epic camping spots?
Oh, gosh.
This is actually nuts. So, yeah, thankfully we survived last night. We have an epic place to camp. I breathed a deep sigh of relief when we finally made it up here last night. But I don't feel like I've been able to fully exhale because we still have to make it down this morning. But first we'll give you a tour.
Our friends are still here, by the way.
We've lived in a lot of vehicles over the last few years. We spent two years living in this van during COVID and we've tested out a lot of other setups. But this has to be the coolest looking vehicle that we have ever lived in. Plus, there is one super unique feature that takes this thing to the next level that we will show you at the very end. I'm going to show you around the outside and then Carol will show you around the inside. This thing is from 1985. We're pretty much driving an antique overland vehicle around Oman. These lights also feel like they are from 1985. You can't see anything driving at night, which is pretty dangerous considering how many camels there are wandering around Oman. But I decided to get into the desert and test out these light bars. They're illegal to use on the road here. Boom, boom. Wow. Right, come here on the side. Check out how tall these tires are. So we've got massive military grade tires on this thing that we put to the test yesterday afternoon. We're pulling a house up the world's steepest road. So this might might sound kind of dumb, but when I was looking at this online, I actually thought it was smaller than our van. Something about the way it's shaped and the way the photos were taken. It just looked like this, this little cute vehicle. But this thing is a monster. It is literally three times bigger than it looks in the photos. So it turns out The Unimog is 3ft taller than our van, but it's 2ft shorter. So that's why it has this really funny but super cool looking shape. So this is the Original Unimog. Like this is the 1985 vehicle. And everything you see on the back half here was custom buil from aluminum by Freedom Overlay. And it's all powder coated in the super cool silver color with red accents. This is our 90 liter diesel tank. And then these are our max tracks that we can use in case we get stuck in the desert.
That was terrifying. But what I really like is this holder also doubles as an outdoor table. So as you can see, where you enter the camper is quite high compared to the ground. So you've got these extendable stairs, which are a little bit of a pain, but once you finally get them set up, they're a lot sturdier than they look.
Plus, the stairs make it feel super homey.
So the back has a super unique design. The entire top half opens up, and then down below you have a spare tire. And these back boxes for extra storage. There's a generator in the bottom in case we need more power. And then we're not even using this because there's so much storage space in this thing. Coming around to the side. More storage down here on the bottom. Right now we're keeping our air compressor hose in here. Another super unique feature that I like about the way they've designed this Unimog is they've actually done a conversion on the air compressor that's used for the brakes. And you can attach that hose to the air comp compressor underneath to air back up your tires if you need to. So that's a pretty cool design. Once again, I don't think this is gonna work, but I've just gotta try.
Inside this little storage compartment, we have our lithium batteries. We have 340amp hours of batteries, which feels a little small for this vehicle, but it also has an alternator charger, which means that it charges as you drive. And I think we'll be driving every single day. So power is definitely not going to be an issue for us on this trip. And back here, we have all the rest of the electrical setup. This electrical setup is so pleasing to eye compared to the mess of a cabinet that we have in our van. This thing is amazing. Lots of cool design choices and a few questionable ones. One of the questionable design choices being that in order to turn on the inverter, you actually have to come outside and hit that button. There should definitely be a way to do that from inside. Here we have our gray water tank and our black water tank, both of which are 100 liters, which are huge. We may not have to Dump these throughout the entire trip. But if we do, there are buttons underneath the steering wheel that make it super easy.
It's always a good thing we don't have to carry your pee bucket through your home.
Oh, I need your help. Okay, put the camera down. I need your help. All right, now let me show you around the cab, which is, honestly, I think, super cool because of how old it is. So these seats remind me of the old seats that are in my grandfather's vw, which I really like. And then all of these old physical buttons. There's something so satisfying about getting, like, a real click when you're turning on and off the headlights. This giant steering wheel makes me feel like I'm driving a bus. And there are eight gears in this thing, which makes it a little challenging to drive, Especially because when you're downshifting. This won't mean anything to you if you haven't driven a stick.
Fifth.
But, like, let's say you want to go from fifth to third or from like, seventh to third. So, like, you were going fast and you're coming to a stop, you have to go into fifth and then go over into third. It's a pretty complicated setup. It took a lot of getting used to, but after nine hours of driving from Dubai, I think I finally have the hang of it. There we go. This is how you switch from two wheel to four wheel drive. We do have AC in this thing, which is really nice, but apparently they couldn't get the old ac working. So, like, none of this here actually functions. It all comes out at Kara's lengths.
Which is great for me, I guess.
Because I'm so close to the engine here. Like, the front of this thing is really short. There is a lot of heat that builds up under here, and I have to have Cara put her legs up on the dash so that the air can actually flow over in my direction. This is a backup camera, which is essential because of how big this thing is. So down here, there are a few more things that increase the learning curve. This is the parking brake. This is forward in reverse. I've never had forward in reverse on a giant lever like this. Normally when you're driving a stick shift, there's just like a gear that you put it in here on the handle. So in my jeep that I drove growing up, I always had to go all the way to the right and then up, and that was reversed. So I've tried to do that a few times. Arms.
Muscle memory is such a fascinating thing. Nate has not driven that jeep in over 10 years. And his brain still wants to put it in the same reverse spot as this jeep.
And over here we have the glove box, which I really like because it has this little nod to the past on it. The Unimog actually started out as a military ambulance, so it's cool to think about the life cycle of where it started and where it's ended up.
Next to a herd of goats on top of a mountain in Oman.
All right, let me take you up top.
Whoa.
I'm serious. I have almost fallen out of this thing so many times because I go to step, and I just don't realize how far down it is.
Not really a good way to get all the way on top. A little terrifying, especially with this wind. Okay. For how much space we have up here, there's really not a whole lot going on. We've got a vent for the bathroom. 1, 2, 3. 400 watts of solar. And that is an air conditioner. Okay. And now I'm getting down because I feel like I'm gonna get blown.
Good morning from the future. Me and my goat friend would just like to thank our sponsor for today's video, which is AG1, who we absolutely adore. What do you think? You want to try it, buddy? I mean, how could you resist?
Whoops.
This is just a slight preview of what's to come. Trust me, you're going to want to keep watching, because somehow aman just keeps getting better and better. Let's just say road trips don't bring out the best version of myself. When it comes to nutrition, we like to call AG1 our nutritional insurance because it fills in the gaps in our diet when we're doing stuff like this. Just in case you haven't heard, just one serving of AG1 contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients that support whole body health from your digestion and gut health to energy levels. I am so thankful we discovered it when we did. Gosh, four years ago now, and we've been drinking it ever since. All you do is mix one serving with a little bit of cold water, preferably, and that's it. Well, hi. Do you Want to try AG1? This might be the cutest AG1 ad ever. What do you think?
I think these goats eat grass, which, contrary to the green color, this doesn't taste like grass. It actually has a sweet, fruity flavor to it. Like I said, Nate and I absolutely love AG1, and I think you will too. So if you scan our QR code on the screen or click our link in the description below. With your first purchase, you'll receive this shaker, the jar, and they'll even throw in, wait for it, a free bottle of these vitamin D3K2 drops, which we also take every day. Here's proof that's all we have left. And you'll get five of these travel packs for free. I'm so excited to show you around the inside. This is one of my favorite builds we've ever lived in. There are so many things I love about it. There are a couple things that I would probably do differently. It's very apparent to me that this was designed by men, but I'll get to that later. Let me start with, with the biggest, most beautiful feature, and that is this door. One of the reasons we're so excited to overland Oman is just the campsites themselves. We know we're going to have some really cool spots, and we're just going to be able to back into an epic spot and then simply open this door and boom. Like Nate said, The Unimog is 2ft shorter than our van, but it seriously feels like we have double the space. And a huge reason for that is because the bed is above the cab, which just opens up this entire room. But the best part is that's not the only bed. If you had more people, this bench turns into a second bed. And it is so simple. Literally, just turn these knobs and boom. It's huge. You could easily fit four people in here, maybe even five if you have.
A small person, small child lays here, two adults lay here.
I mean, this just blows my mind. But the fact that it's so easy just makes it a million times better. The bed in our van takes forever to set up and take down, and so we just never do it. It's just a bed all the time, which takes up more than half of our space.
So easy.
I'm still learning, obviously. Now, if you've seen any of my tours in the past, then you know that I love storage. And this is like the storage of my dreams. It is everywhere. We unpacked everything from our huge suitcases into this place, and we bought the entire grocery store, and we still have leftover storage. Nate has all of his clothes up here, and I have all of my clothes up here. I could fit more if I wanted to. Plus, there's some hidden storage beneath this bench. Nobody would ever know it was there. So we have some important things down there, like our passports, backpacks, and then there's also so much space under this bench. Now, now, let's Talk about the kitchen. This is another one of my favorite spots of any van build and they did an awesome job. But like I said, definitely designed by dudes because they didn't prioritize the cooking. We have this.
What do you call this? We have this little camp stove. It's portable. The whole thing folds up and goes into this drawer, which is actually really nice. And in the short time that we've lived here in here, I've actually come to enjoy this quite a bit. I like that you can put it away and have all the counter space back if you're not using it. And if you wanted to cook outside on that little extra table, you could do that. So I'm coming around to it.
Hi, guys. Thanks for hanging out.
Honestly, that's one of the highlights of the trip for me already. I don't know how it gets any better than this. We're parked on top of a mountain, all alone, overlooking the ocean with mountain goats.
I think they might just be regular goats. Oh.
We have all the food we bought up here in these cabinets. We have all of our drink related things in this drawer, plus our produce. A few glass things that I didn't want to like, fly out from up there just in case.
This drawer is what we have over plates and bowls and utensils. I don't even remember what. Oh, there's literally nothing in this drawer except for an apple and a pear. And that should technically go in this drawer. This is crazy. Here we have a dometic fridge, which literally just ate all the groceries that I put in it yesterday. Yesterday. There's a teeny tiny freezer here. We have a decent sized sink, and beneath the sink. Do I even need to say it? Look at all this storage. We have our trash down here, some cleaning stuff, towels, and a 10 gallon water heater. Also, I love how all these drawers have a latch so they don't fly open when we're driving. Oh, no.
What drawer flew?
Now, across from the kitchen, we have a microwave, which is pretty cool. But honestly, I'm a little scarred from living in our van and running out of power a few too many times. Times. I'm sure we could use this for a minute or two and be totally fine. But I'm gonna try not to use it because we're gonna be in some pretty remote places and I do not want to use all of our power. So just in case we need some more storage, I'll just put stuff in there. Speaking of things that suck up power, we have an air conditioner, which we do not have in our van. But once again, I don't think we're going to be using it just because it doesn't really seem worth it. Plus, after sleeping on the beach and sleeping on top of this mountain mountain with this ocean breeze, we have not even needed it. It feels amazing. On this wall we have our control panel and I love how simple and accessible it is. Up here. We have our freshwater tank levels so we have 200 liters of fresh water. And we can see exactly how much we have left in our van. Our water tank is hidden beneath the bench and we don't have this. So we're just guessing how much water we have left. Like we never actually know, which can be a little stressful. Beneath that we have have the gray water and black water tanks which once again, in our van, we don't know if our gray water is full until it starts literally leaking onto the road. So this is just so nice to have. Now this screen is all things power, battery, solar stuff.
We have 340amp hours. So right now we have 294 left, which means we have 87 of our power left. We're bringing in a positive 5amps. I don't know why the screen's flashing. That just happened recently. Hopefully that's not a bad thing.
Yeah. Moving on into.
Ow.
The bathroom. Yes. We have an entire bathroom. It is shockingly big.
You just push it.
Not so sure about this door. I'm sure it was great when it was new, but.
Follow me. I feel like there are houses with bathroom rooms this big. There's like a normal shower head, a nice big sink. This toilet is like a marine toilet. You use it like a normal toilet. It's great. Doesn't stink.
Most importantly, I also love the floor in here. It just feels nice.
It really does. Oh, also there's a fan that fits. Which is always a good thing in bathrooms in small spaces. Going back to the dude designed theme, there are two. Two things in here that are missing. Two very important things in my opinion. There's no mirror even in the bathroom. This could be a full length mirror. Easy. This could be a mirror. This could be a mirror.
We got it. We got it.
Can't check my fit.
Fit check.
I'm just saying. The second thing I would think is a little more important to every gender and that is a table.
We technically have a table. It's just in here and it's made to go outside. Yeah.
So we have outdoor table and chair and which I'm sure we will put to use. I've actually found myself sitting here, like in the mornings with my coffee and my little breakfast. This kind of acts as a table.
But for one person.
But yeah, Nate doesn't really have anywhere to go. Not a big deal for this week. Long trip, but just thought I would point it out. Now, last but not least, the bed. It's pretty tall, so they've provided some stairs that surprise each step can open up. I have all of my toiletries in this top one. This drawer, we've put all of our electronics and when it's time to go to bed, we've just been using them to get up here like this. I'd say this is about the width of a double bed. Pretty good mattress. Not very tall, as you can see. If you're claustrophobic, this might be a problem, especially if you're on my side. It gets even lower. However, the length is great. Like I have at least two feet down at the end. So if you're tall, this is not a problem at all. Unless you wanna sit up. My favorite part, though, is this window right here that. That opens. I've woken up two days in a row to the ocean breeze in my face. Conveniently right next to the bed, which I always appreciate. We have two USBs to charge our phones, and these run off of the 12 volt battery, which means the inverter doesn't even have to be on for these to work.
But all the other plugs, this one, this one, and this one, those all run off the inverter.
That pretty much does it for the inside. Now let us show you what is it is without a doubt our favorite part of this whole camp.
Let's see if I remember how to do this. Are you ready for this?
Yes.
We have a balcony.
This adds like 5ft at least.
This changes everything.
All right, before we drive down the mountain, Kara's gonna make us our last supper.
Nate.
I mean, lunch.
You cannot say that that. Is it gonna be that bad?
I don't know. I genuinely don't know. We don't do stuff like this. I think. We are not professional off roaders. I trusted the Unimog and kind of got myself in a little too deep to turn around last night. For some reason, going back down feels more intimidating than climbing up.
Tahini. Yesterday we stocked up on all of these beautiful locally grown fruits and veggies. I've made it little kind of like tacos. I don't know what else to call it. Flatbreads maybe. And then salads. Pretty much all the same things, but in a bowl.
How'd you enjoy that last meal?
Stop.
All right, you ready for this?
No.
Put these on so you can't see the fear in my eyes. Let's do this.
Bye, goat.
Bye, goats. Wow, what an adventure. This is a pretty intense start, just getting up over these rocks. I'm not even hitting the brake.
The gear is just holding us. I'd be burning up the brake if I was using the brake. All right, it's about to get exciting.
At least I'm distracted with these beautiful views.
This looks like a roller coaster. It just disappears. Oh, my gosh. This is terrifying. This might be the most intense part of the whole thing. Holy crap. All right, we got this. We got this.
Oh, my gosh. There's no way you can appreciate how like this we are right now. That's just as exciting as I thought it was going to be.
Take your seatbelts off. You know where the door handle is.
Yeah. I don't like it when you say that.
We're just crawling down.
Gosh, nothing does this justice. You have no idea how sketchy and scary this is. We go down. We go down together.
Wow. Oh, we're so vertical right now. Oh, my gosh, we're so close. Literally, we're so close.
Jesus. Take the wheel.
We made it. It was all worth it. My heart is pumping.
That's gross.
Are you having to pick that up? Yes. That's all used toilet paper. Don't be touching things, Rose. Bullets are your seat.
There's a dumpster right at the bottom of this mountain, making it the world's best campsite.
Thank you. All right, let's find some gas.
Go.
People watching this video like you.
That's an awesome truck. Oh, thank you. So one interesting thing about Oman, and I'm assuming this is because it's an oil rich country, is that the gas prices are actually fixed. So the sign by the road where you would normally see the price, it's just a logo. And right now the price is fixed at 25 omani real. So we put in almost 66 l and it costs 17 omani real to basically fill this thing from a quarter of a tank to full.
Okay, now we are heading to our new campsite for the night. Google Maps says it should take two hours, which means it'll probably take four, but that's okay.
Get out of the road, little guy.
Check out this Oasis Foreign.
We're driving through our first, like, official mountain town and it's just amazing. We're surrounded by these gigantic Mountains and all the homes are so ornate and beautiful.
There's also something about the white houses contrasted against the dark mountains.
We're just going to be getting more and more remote from here on out, so we just stopped to get some cash at the ATM and run a few more errands. And I'm so sad that we're here during Ramadan because I love stopping to get a coffee on road trips. And there are three coffee shops in this one strip. They're all closed because they're all fasting. I don't know. I might not be getting any local coffee in Oman. How cool is this town? These houses are huge. What is this place?
Wow.
So cool.
Also, believe it or not, we've actually been to Oman before. It's been several years, but we came here for five days back in 2018.
Okay. Yep. And we just rented this little car and drove as much as we could.
Because that's all we could afford at the time. It has been our dream to do this trip for six years since the first time we came to Oman because we could couldn't afford a camper. And everyone that we talked to that was like sleeping in a rooftop tent just had the most epic stories.
It's been on our bucket list ever since, and it is living up to the hype.
So when we first started traveling and set our 100 country goal, there were a lot of people that gave us a hard time about traveling so quickly. And I always said that we were young and the goal was to see as many places as possible so we could go back and spend more time in the ones that we enjoyed most. And we're actually doing it. If you had told 2018 Karen Date we were in Oman, who had just hit 100,000 subscribers, that we would still be traveling six years later, and we would be back in this country in this vehicle. Things went way better than we expected. Driving through such an epic canyon. The walls are tightening in. They're getting steeper. This is incredible.
Let me see. Hold on.
We're going for it. No, I'm kidding.
No idea if we can fit under this bridge.
Okay, I'm ready.
All right. Kara is literally up on the ladder making sure we don't scrape this bridge.
We're doing it.
We're good. Hopefully it's the same height all the way through.
This is so crazy. No problem.
We did it.
This better be a good beach. That was nice.
In 600 meters, you will arrive at your destination just driving off of the side of the highway towards the beach. Whoa.
Very.
Why are all our campsites so dangerous?
Wow. This is sweet.
So.
So the app that we're using to find most of our camping spots is called Ioverlander, and I was reading some reviews about this spot, and it said at night, they are bioluminescence in the water.
What? I thought you were gonna say good goats.
Hello, world. How good is this?
What a day.
Turns out we have a dining room after all.
Some reason I kind of feel, like. Want to fall off?
Yeah, it is a little scary. Wa. Look at the sky.
Wow. Honestly, if we just turned around and went home now, it was all worth it. This is everything that I hoped that it would be.
All right, we're heading down to the beach.
May or may not be going on a night swim.
Oh, this is gonna be good. I can see it in the waves already. Look at that. It's like a glowing string of neon lights being washed up on the beach. We've seen bioluminescence a couple times at this point in our lives, but I've always had to, like, go in the water and, like, splash really hard with my hand to see it.
It gets even brighter when you step on it.
Look. It's like stars on the ground. All right, let me see the bottom of your feet.
Oh, my God. I wonder if this.
Oh, that was a good one.
This is so magical.
Wa. I'm not sure if you can see what's happening right now, but we're just kind of moving our feet around in the sand, and it's just uncovering all of this bioluminescence. I'm sure there is science to it, but it just feels like magic right now.
I've never seen anything like it. I'm just mesmerized.
What is? Start to the trip.
Best day ever.
This is day two. This looks like the Milky way on the ground.
You're not supposed to feed wildlife. Blah, blah, blah. I just wanted to give them a little bitty bite of bread so they would love me.
They wouldn't take it.
I definitely should have finished my drink before we turn on this gravel road for the next 20km.
Turns out a goat sneeze. Sounds like a fart.
God. Tell me before you do something like that.
