9 Days Overlanding Oman (Part 2)

Dive deep into the mountains. Are we going inside?

Yes.

You can go inside the pyramids.

Yes.

Take a wrong turn. Drive late into the night. Like many people told us not to run into a major problem with the truck and finally make it into the desert. So Amanda's flagged us down on the side of the road and he wanted to ride. This is what Van life dreams are made of. It just doesn't get better. This episode is a roller coaster, so settle in for a fun week of ups and downs. Oh, that was my computer.

Oh, shoot. This is a lot of pressure. I'm just not okay.

So far. There is one one major issue with overlanding here in Oman. That said, all the spots are too good. I don't want to leave. This trip could have been twice as long, and we just could have spent two days at every place we stopped.

It's like this tug of war in my heart because part of me wants to stay here so badly and just swim in the ocean all day, soak in the fact that we're so isolated on this gorgeous coast. And then the other part of me is like, there's so much to see. We have to keep going.

We are barely scratching the surface. We haven't gotten to the mountains yet. We haven't gotten to the desert yet, which I'm most excited about. So much good stuff to come. I had such high expectations for this trip and they've already been massively exceeded. Yeah, goats.

More goats. A. I just love them.

So we have just arrived at our first stop of the day, which is Wadi Shab. And I believe wadi means valley in Arabic. Some of the wadis here in Oman have, like, secret pools inside. It's like an oasis hidden in a valley. And this is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the entire country. So in order to get back to the secret pools, the first thing we have to do is jump on a little boat that's going to take us further back into the canyon.

Wow. This is incredible.

I am just blown away by a lot. Seven minutes down the road, we are on this beautiful coastline and now it's like we're in the rainforest.

Woo. Rainforest made of palm trees.

Wow. Canyons closing in on us. Beautiful river running through the middle of it. So Wadi Shab is a super popular tourist attraction here in Oman, so I fully expected this to be the busiest place that we visited on our entire itinerary. But so far.

We have it all to ourselves.

Dear tourists, welcome. If you like to see cave and waterfall, you start swimming from the first Pool as shown in the arrow. So the sign is kind of hard to understand, but from what I read on the Internet, you swim up the canyon and then there becomes a cave that you actually have to swim underneath to get to the final pool and waterfall.

Wow, that's fresh. I had a skin cancer cut out of my head, so this is so good. Thankfully, you don't actually have to swim the whole thing. It's waitable.

It's like a natural lazy river through the mountains.

This is going to save us a lot of water in the Unimog because definitely counting this as a shower for sure.

Ready? Three, two, one.

Wow. I've never seen so many leg kicks.

It just keeps getting better. We've entered the final deep pool before, the secret cave that we have to swim through. I'm calling it a secret. It was on the sign, but it sounds more fun if it's a secret cave. We swam back through this canyon, and it just ends into this little cave.

It's getting very dark and scary, and.

You can hear a waterfall on the other side. Whoa, it's tiny.

Aww, I'm getting claustrophobic.

Oh, gosh. This is way smaller than I thought it would be. Like, my head could barely fit through the rocks if I wanted to stay above water.

This is unreal.

This has to be one of the coolest places, places we've ever been.

Look at this waterfall. Nate just swallowed a guy back into the cave and he had a weird look on his toes.

This is amazing. This is one of the coolest things we've ever seen.

Evan, thank you so much. That is actually a secret cave. That was crazy.

The best day ever.

I think we got resistant time. There were like four of us on the way in, and now there's 50 people.

There are a few times where Nate gets this genuinely excited.

This was way better than I thought it was going to be.

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That adventure really worked up an appetite. We just happened to be here in Oman during Ramadan, which, if you don't know, simply put is about a 30 day period where the Muslim people fast during daylight hours. And unfortunately that means that majority of the restaurants that we've seen have been closed. Thankfully, we're traveling with the kitchen, so no big deal. I'm about to whip up the world's quickest lunch because we still have a lot of ground to cover today.

It does get warm in that canyon. I can't imagine what it would be like in peak summer.

Oh, it feels good. Should we shut the windows? Yeah.

I loved how in the last video I was like, definitely not using the ac. I don't think we're gonna be using it just because it doesn't really seem worth it. For lunch we are making a creation that I made up called Omani Tacos. They call this Omani bread O. It's in the shape of an O. Definitely not kind of like pita. But every grocery store you go in there's a big like cooler looking thing full of fresh Omani bread. Every grocery store in Mexico had the same thing, but with corn tortillas. I'm just putting a bunch of yummy things in this bread and we're eating it like crazy.

The food part of these videos might get a little boring because I think we've just had some variation of the same thing and every single day, I.

Have a few ideas.

Final product, the Taco. It was absolutely amazing.

Highly recommend Albo, Zaatar, Tahini, Arugula, and.

Then feta, which takes it to the next level.

FETA really brings it all together. I also got these, like, sliced shredded beets. Sounds weird. That's a great little crunch in there.

AC is coming down right on top of us.

I can't believe. Where's John and the AC right now?

Okay, so we just finished running the AC for just under 40 minutes, and we only lost 4% of our battery. So you can run this thing way longer than I expected. If it's the middle of the day and you're getting full solar, you can run this for hours without having any issues. Who knew we've been missing out on AC in the van this whole time. Another thing about this 1985 Unimog that's a little different from driving a normal car is that you have to start it and then let the air compressor that controls the brakes fill up. So if you haven't driven it for a while, you have to sit here for about five minutes before you can go anywhere. And now I just seem like that guy revving the engine in the parking lot.

Everybody, look at the big truck.

Well, just like everywhere else we've been in Oman so far. I easily could have spent twice as much time there. But at this pace, we're going to see about a fourth of what we were hoping to see in this country.

I'm just one of those people, like, wherever I am, I'm like, this is the best. It doesn't get any better. I'm never leaving.

I would still be in our first country if it wasn't for night. I say that all the time. But then I'm so glad. Like, if we had stayed at the beach today, like I wanted to and skip this, it should make you get better.

All right. Can I get out of the parking lot now that it's filled up and the backup camera is not working? Tell me if I'm going to hit that car beside you. How are we going to get out of here?

Maybe.

Yeah, if you don't mind. That'd be amazing. I can stream really loud.

Perfect.

Oh, I'm good. I'm good. Yeah, we can go for it. What a cool vehicle, by the way. Oh, thanks.

That's been awesome.

Thank you so much for the help.

Thank you. Safe travels. That was so nice of him.

Now what drawer flew open? It's worth putting up with all the little inconveniences of driving the Unimog just because of how much joy it brings people when they see it.

Yeah. Especially when we're going 49 miles per hour and everyone else is going 80. Like, no one's that mad.

They're, like, so true. Have fun. Definitely a commitment to drive an antique on an adventure like this. So far, I think it's totally worth it.

It really adds to the experience more than it takes.

All right, we're just topping up with diesel because we are about to head into the mountains and far, far away from civilization. We have yet to test the limits of this tank, and Google Maps is showing no gas stations for a very long time. But I have to imagine that they exist and they're just not on Google Maps. That's what I'm counting on.

So the plan for the next day or two is to head up and over the Hajar mountains. I say that confidently.

Yeah, I believe Al Hajar Mountains.

Al Hajar mountains. So up and over the Hajar mountains and into the desert. And I think it's gonna be a pretty big drive. But the scenery is supposed to be incredible.

It's pretty daunting driving right towards these majestic, gigantic mountains, knowing that, like, this has to go up and over those.

Look at what we're about to drive up.

What the heck?

I am so glad that we went to that campsite the other night and really just kind of like broke in the four wheel drive on this thing. Otherwise I would be terrified right now.

This is the way.

All right.

Gosh, the cameras just do it. No justice. We are climbing straight up this mountain on a gravel road in a tank that weighs 5 tons. It has yet to let us down, though. Shut the door.

My computer.

Oh, shoot. Can we get it? Oh, no. Oh, no.

Speakers are actually blown on it, and they kind of drove me crazy.

Slow down.

I can't really stop in the middle of the mountain. That was dramatic.

Oh, wow.

What?

Your trackpad is shattered.

You said that so happily it still works.

Looks really cool.

All right, off to an exciting start. I want to show you how fast we're going. Somewhere between 0 and 20. It just shoots. It just jumps around.

It is steep, it is bumpy, it is windy, it is fun, but it is epic. And we have no other tourists.

Wow, these switchbacks are getting tight. This has to be the biggest vehicle that's ever been driven up this road. Hopefully it doesn't get any worse than that. I just want to try to give this drive some perspective. That's the ocean, so that's where we started. And then this little road that you hit, see coming up the valley right here, that's what we're driving up. And then we just made those switchbacks over there. If I'm being honest, it's pretty terrifying, but in the best way possible. And the Unimog is holding up great.

Oh, our first Omani camel.

Is he coming to us? Yes. Oh, my goodness. Please stop.

Hello.

I find it funny that we've been in the desert for the last three days, and then we drive into the mountains and we see our first Campbell.

Oh.

We did it.

That was our last S curve climbing. And now we're on top. It's gonna be semi flat from here on out, or at least for a while.

That was more than I realized I signed up for.

That was stressful.

All the way down there, that spins. That's the town that we started in two hours ago.

I wouldn't say the plateau is all sunshine and rainbows like we thought it would be, but we don't feel like we're about to fall over.

All right, just as it's getting dark, we have a big decision to make. Remember, we are operating off downloadable maps, so we can't go to the Internet for any research. But this. This looks like the obvious path that continues up the mountain. But Google Maps is telling us that in order to get to our destination, we need to go here. So I'm not sure if you can tell in the camera, but, like, they've obviously tried to block this road off with dirt, but it is passable.

Yeah. The other side of it just looks like a normal road, and we can see that it keeps going. And according to the maps, this road just ends somewhere. It doesn't connect. Connect back to where we're going.

After you get over the little dirt hump, it looks like the road is great and that's the way that we need to go. But it feels like someone's tried to close it off, and a few people have decided to go that way anyway. And there are no signs that say, like, don't go. Maybe we just do it.

I feel like they would have. Like, all those rocks over there, I feel like they would have put here.

All right, we're gonna try the question we close road. Decision made.

I'm a little nervous. I mean, I've been a little nervous for a while, like, this whole drive, but this feels questionable.

Well, he sure made it look easy.

That was no problem for the Unimog. That's crazy.

Maybe it's a test. Like, if you can get over this, then you can make it wherever you're trying to go.

This road's pretty sketch already.

Wow.

I'm feeling great about it, if I'm being honest.

Okay, should we back up before it gets too scary?

I mean.

Yeah, I think they closed it for a reason. I guess I'll try to back up. I need you looking out that side to make sure I'm not driving us off the edge.

Okay, I can do that.

I need you to yell at me if I'm not going in a good direction. You're good.

So I need you on this side yelling at me.

Okay.

And now I have to back over the road closure.

Oh, gosh. Oh, this is a lot of pressure. Okay.

Stop, stop, stop. You just barely clipped the big rock. Yeah, try to get over a little more.

Just barely clip the big rock. That's all.

Stop, nate, stop. I hate this. This. I hate this. I hate this. Okay.

Oh, this is not good.

Start turning a little. But stop if I tell you to stop.

You're good. You're good.

You're good.

You did it. Oh, my gosh. I don't know if my heart has ever beat this fast in my entire life. Oh, that was so much pressure. No.

Oh, Nate, you're so talented and amazing.

Oh, my gosh. That was stressful. That was a great time for the backup camera to be doing this.

I guess we're gonna keep driving up this road.

Yeah. Lesson learned. If it looks like somebody's blocked it off, probably shouldn't go that way. Oh, my gosh. I'm just not okay. I was not expecting this drive to become what it did.

Congrats. We're having fun.

This is an adventure. All right, we're just gonna go up the road that Google says leads to nothing and hope for the best. And maybe tomorrow we drive back down the mountain.

I'd say there's a 60% chance that we're driving back down the mountain.

There's a little bit of. Of hope. The road that the map said was a dead end isn't. We kept going past the end of the road, according to the map. Now it looks like we can turn and take this other little skinny road that will connect us to the original road that we were trying to take.

All I have to do is reverse down another road.

Still might be able to make it.

I just remembered we hadn't tried out the light bar yet. Boom, boom.

Wow.

Night like this.

Bright side. This is one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen. And another bright Side if we're stranded out here because we either get stuck or we run out of fuel. At least we have shelter and food and water. We were just reminiscing on our little motorbike trip we took across Peru where we didn't have any of those things and found ourselves on roads just like this, but on a motorbike. And Nate had the clue. So that was fun. Fun. Talk about terrifying. This is way better. Not even scared anymore. No way.

What are you doing?

Breathing.

Five hours after leaving the wadi, we actually made it to the campsite that we were aiming for tonight. We had to do a couple of those hours in the dark. And the nice flat spot we found ended up being beside some 4,000 year old tombs, which I'm not exactly pumped about because I'm not trying to meet any 4,000 year old ghosts.

But I don't think I'm be able to sleep tonight.

Because of the ghost. No.

Nate is actually afraid of ghosts. I'm usually a pretty positive person. But it's like there was no happy ending in my mind for tonight. Like what? I just thought it was going to be a dead end and we weren't gonna make it. So the fact that we're here, I just have so many emotions right now.

I was planning on coming here when it was light outside, looking at the tombs and then leaving and camping somewhere else.

Are you serious?

Yeah. I wasn't trying to camp here.

Like the whole reason we drove up and over this mountain was to visit these tombs.

This was just like. These tombs happen to be on our route going up and over this mountain.

So we could have gone another way.

There was like a main road that would have taken us to the desert.

Are you serious?

Yeah. We may end up back on that road tomorrow.

It's a Roman kind of night.

Dinner served.

Wow. Dinner of champions. Enjoy. Kind of looks like an ice cream cone. I feel like I live three lifetimes in one day. Today it's been a roller coaster. We have a very big decision to make tomorrow. We have to decide if we turn around and drive back down the way we came, which absolutely terrifies me, or keep going and chance running out of gas. And there were a few small towns on the map and I figured those would have diesel. And now that we've driven through those towns, it's like four houses. Thankfully, we do have a little bit of phone service, so I'll try to do some research tonight, see what I can figure out.

I really don't want to turn around.

For now. We're Gonna enjoy our noodles in the morning. We have a big decision to make. I'm excited to see what this place looks like in the morning.

Yeah, seriously.

First campsite that we pull up to in the dark.

Oh.

Oh, gosh.

That's about how my night went. I did not realize how cold it was gonna get last night. Turns out we're sleeping at about 6,000ft. Brought no warm pants. All I've got is that little thin blue blanket. And I guess because this know MOG was built out in Dubai, they didn't put any heat in it, which fair enough.

But the good news is we didn't see any ghost.

The sun is coming through the window and hitting my back, and it feels so warm and nice. Also, I'm still not over last night. It was just such a raw coaster. Like, getting up to the top was a challenge, but it was like a fun challenge. And then we, like, celebrated like we thought we had done it. And we were just gonna have an easy drive on the plateau over here to these tombs. And then that turned into another challenge, and then we took the wrong turn. Then it got dark, and there was just so many unknowns.

The rest of yesterday was so exciting that by the time we got here last night, I. I completely forgot that my computer got smashed. Oh, well, that is what a shattered trackpad looks like. Surprisingly enough, though, it still works. It's just a little sharp right here where it looks like the crack originated. I tend to keep halfway broken things for a very long time, so I'll probably have this computer like this for another two years.

All right. This is not the decision that I thought we were going to make last night while we were eating noodles, but we have decided to continue on over the mountains. Google Maps claims that there is a gas station 80km that way. We still have over half a dank, which I believe should be enough to get us there. And I just feel like whatever road lies on the other side of that mountain can't be as bad as the one that we just came up.

What's crazy is we only drove 35km yesterday, and it felt like we missed made it across the world.

But there is a chance that this takes all day. We're hoping that because we're up on the plateau, it's going to be quite a bit faster. But it wasn't really the case last night. We're optimistic.

This morning I'm feeling good, feeling refreshed. Had my coffee. Very proud of us for getting here last night. I think it was all worth it.

But before head down the mountain, we're gonna go check out these tubes.

I am so excited about these. This is one of the most remote I've ever felt. And we've been to some crazy remote places.

Gosh.

Every morning in Oman has just started out so epic that I'm like, there's no way today gets any better. First morning, we woke up on the beach. Second morning, we woke up on top of that insane mountain overlooking the beach. Third night, we woke up on a cliff overlooking the ocean.

And then the last time, we woke up here amongst the tombs.

This is awesome.

So are we going inside?

Can you go inside?

I mean, there's a door. Yes. You can go inside the pyramid?

Yes.

You tell me if there's any ghosts. Wow. They're huge. Oh, my gosh.

Can't fathom something that, like, humans touched and built right here 4,000 years ago. And now I'm touching them, it just blows my mind. Like, I feel like we're back in Egypt right now.

How old are the pyramids? Are these older than the pyramids? Are they? I don't know.

I would just like to pay respect to the person who's buried in here.

This is a pretty incredible place to be buried.

You look like Indiana Jones.

Oh, it's quite a bit darker in here than I thought it would be. Okay, we made it. There's no ghost. Wow. I didn't realize how much of a point that it came to. Like, from the outside, it doesn't look like it comes to this perfect hole in the center at midday when the sun's shining down through that hole. It'd be so incredible in here. So these beehive tombs are stacked limestone. I don't think they really know very much about them, except for the fact that they found human remains and pottery in here that date back to 2000 BC. So that's how they know they're over 4000 years old. And from what I've heard, the legend is that these were built by demonic spirits. But historians believe that the reason that that legend exists was to keep people from messing with the graves.

That makes sense.

This is the most well preserved one we've seen. But there are over 60 of these dotted around this mountain. All right, let's see if we have 80 km worth of diesel left in this thing.

Don't love this at all. So skinny.

It lived.

Yeah. I have no clue how they paved the roads all the way up here. And there's no way a cement truck is driving all the way up. They must do it by Hand.

Stressful times.

Yeah.

Attacking the drone, a person passing us. So this morning we were actually able to get Google Maps to give us a route and a time to get to the gas station. That.

It would take an hour and a half, which would put us there at 10:45, which I think is going to end up being pretty comical with what time we actually get there. You just can't take this thing fast downhill out of fear that it'll get out of control. And if you hit any bumps going at any speed, the whole thing just wobbles back and forth and throws everything out of the cab.

No way.

What is this?

I think we might have done it. I don't want to celebrate too soon, but we might be on a paved road for the next 40 kilometers.

Oh, my gosh.

Which is good considering the fact that it's already 11 o' clock and we're not even halfway.

11 o'.

Clock.

44 km to go, but I feel.

Safe putting my seat belt back on now.

Wow, we have done it. Turns out we have just under half a tank, and it was never an issue. Felt a lot scarier than that when we were up in the middle of the mountains.

So we unfortunately have a another issue. Not sure if you can see it or not, but, like, my foot is swimming in fluid. So last night after we parked, I realized there was a little puddle in the floorboard underneath the clutch. Didn't seem like a big deal at the time. I wasn't going to worry about it. But then today, it's gotten a lot worse. The puddle's huge. My foot is completely drenched, and whatever fluid this is dripping out of the little compressible rubber thing above the clutch. So one thing that I don't think we pointed out in the tour is that this bathroom actually has a manual bidet, which has come in very handy for washing the sand off of our feet after seeing the bioluminescence. And now for washing the brake clutch fluid stuff off of my foot. I've been scared to Google if this stuff is poisonous because my foot's just been sitting in it all day. It's kind of starting to burn, so I figured I better clean it. Ready for this? Boom. Problem solved.

Brilliant.

No more clutch foot. Oh, clutch foot. The plan from here was to head into the desert for the next three days and basically be totally isolated. So this seems like an issue we should probably get looked at before we do that. The problem is today is Friday, which is pretty much a holiday here in Oman. It's kind of like Sunday in the US it's the day that people take to rest. And I'm not sure that even if we can find a garage that it'll be open. So.

We'Ve got some stuff to figure out. This way. Yeah, Go straight and maybe 7 kilometer. Ibrahim, there is a big one garage. Thank you so much. Okay. That guy seemed to think that a garage would be open. And the next town, we'll head there, see what happens and go from there. Hello, how are you? It's this, the rubber.

Here you go into workshop.

Okay. Eight kilometers straight. I cannot work. Okay, thank you.

Them.

So we found a street that is like the Mecca of auto part repairs. The only problem is every single building in this entire town is closed. There was one that was closing as we were pulling up. And the four guys that were here were nice enough to stick around, take a look at it. Basically they said it's an easy fix. They just don't have any Mercedes parts in this town. The only place to get Mercedes parts in the country of Oman is back in the capital city of Muscat.

Muscat is where we started, in case you didn't know. So it feels very defeating to be turning around and going back on the highway when we just had such an epic route getting here.

Yeah, good point. It does kind of feel like all of that that we did yesterday was for nothing.

Foreign.

We are back in business. Long story short, on Friday we ended up driving back to Muscat, but all the garages were closed. So we got a hotel, took a nice long shower. Because shower in a hotel is just just not the same thing as a shower here in a vehicle.

We needed it.

And then yesterday the Unimog spent all day in the garage getting the clutch piece repaired. And today we're picking back up where we left off.

Yay.

You know, it was a nice little reset. From spending two years in a van. We learned that with any vehicle that you live in, distance truly does make the heart grow fonder. Not that we weren't having an amazing time in the Unimog, but I'm definitely coming into it with a renewed spirit sense of excitement. After sleeping in a hotel bed last night, I just saw this sitting underneath the bench and it reminded me that yesterday before we took the UTOG to the garage, I left the lights on and we learned how to jump start the car.

So the plan for today is to drive three hours on the highway back to where we turn off to the desert. Once we get there, we need to air down our tires, fill up with Water, maybe grab a couple extra snacks. And if everything goes to plan tonight, we will be sleeping in the desert, which is what I have been looking forward to most on this entire trip. Like, the entire reason we rented this car was because of the vision that I had of driving this thing through the dunes.

You weren't envisioning climbing straight up rock cliffs.

It was like dunes and beaches. And I've had to wait a little longer than expected, but I think it's going to make it extra sweet.

Okay. As you all know, we spent a lot of time in the car on this trip. But today's conversation has revolved around the question, what is your favorite country?

Because that is by far the question we get asked the most.

Every single person we meet. That's the first thing they ask. I know they're going to ask it.

And we don't have a good answer.

We thought we'd do a little reflecting on our 106 countries that we have visited in the last eight and a half years. And we've compiled a list.

We attempted to make a list of.

Our favorites in no particular order.

We'll put the list on the screen here.

Technically, There's a top 18.

Yeah, this is a very random top number.

There are some bonus transfers that I've added on there if anybody's curious. You know, countries that I'm not like 100 sold on as a whole, but, like, the experience makes it worth going to the next.

Let us know if you agree with this list, if you're saying that you think should be added or taken away.

I feel like there's probably, like one gigantic experience that we just, like, totally forgot about.

I believe we have officially passed where we broke down two days ago, which means we are now the closest to the desert that we have ever been and we are making more progress. So we have 200 liters of water in the Unimog. We've been in here for a week and we probably only used half of it. We don't use it for drinking because it's not filtered, but we use it for, like, brushing our teeth, washing dishes. That kind of stuff we've yet to have to fill up with water. I don't think, like, putting water in a camper is a normal thing in this country. Most people just live out of rooftop tents. So we're going to have to figure out where we can get water. First stop is a gas station, because I read that some gas stations have water and will let you fill up. Hello. Do you have water? Okay.

Ah, Shukrona.

Shukron.

Can we pay for water? I'll show you.

You.

I might have you come up on the ladder and make sure we'll make it in okay. All right. We struck out at the gas station. They tried to help. The Unimog is too tall to fit into the car wash where they were going to fill it up. So on to whatever is next.

I really like those guys.

They were great.

We didn't fill our tank up with water, but we did buy eight of these water jugs because I'm not taking any chances in the desert. Already thirsty. We haven't even gotten there yet.

If we broke down, we have enough food and water to last us for a month. We're going to be out there for two days.

Kind of been driving in circles in this town looking for water, and we just saw some guys literally filling up on the side of the road.

He smiled and waved like it was fine.

All right. It feels like a public place that people would come to fill up, like, their water jugs. All right, let's see how this goes.

Oh, sand. This is going to work great. Maybe these are all around the country, and that's why the guys at the gas station thought I was crazy.

Is it going?

It's going. It's a trickle.

Sounds like it's going so slow. This is how much water pressure we have to fill up. Oh, fill up. 100 liters.

This might take a while.

All right, well, Nate's filling up our water. I'm gonna make us some lunch. Amani tacos again. Except for this time, they're gonna be extra good. We bought this za' atar bread at the store yesterday.

Irresistible. I'm gonna use this as the taco shell.

Actually, it was way faster than I thought it would be. Wow, this AC feels amazing. I know. Have a bite of this. Oh, you already took one. I would just like to apologize to any of our Omani viewers. I feel like this could be the equivalent of going to Italy and putting ketchup on pizza. So it's. This offends anybody because you feel like we're eating your food wrong. I'm very sorry, but what I will say is it is delicious, and maybe it's worth trying.

We did shop in the grown in Oman food section at the store, which I love that they have so many of. These are local ingredients. We just put them in a different format than you probably eat them usually.

So good.

I think we now have enough water. Important that if we come across a caravan of people and camels in the desert that we'll be able to hydrate all of them.

All right, we have officially left the pavement behind. We are about to enter the dunes. The tires are currently at 50 psi and we're going to air them down to 20 so we don't get stuck in the sand. I've done this a couple times in the past, but every time I've done it, I've had, like, a specialized tool that deflates it perfectly to the right. Psi. This is a gauge that tells me what psi the tires are at. So I'm letting air out with the key and then I'm checking it with this. Almost there.

All right, we are officially heading into the desert. And I'm not gonna lie, it's a little intimidating. We've actually been here before, but it was on an organized tour to go to, like, a desert desert camp. And driving it alone is a totally different feeling.

Wow, the desert. How do you know where to go?

Whoa, look at the camels.

Remember how much fun a camel hated me?

No problem. Okay, get it. My front, my front.

Wow, look at this.

It's so chill. It doesn't care at all. Hi.

Hi.

I feel like if I had food, it would come eat something out of.

My hand right now we have tons of bread. Hi, camel. I love her. Oh, there's two more. Hi. This is insane. They're massive.

So I just entered and I don't want to get my hopes up, but so far there's a very well defined road.

Like, should we put Google Maps on?

Google Maps will not navigate you through this desert. But the good news is we don't really have a final destination. The goal is just to drive into the dunes as far as we're comfortable, find an epic place to camp for.

The night, live the dunes life.

This area that we've just entered is called Wahiba sands, and it's 5,000 square kilometers of desert.

What?

It stretches all the way from here, the town called Badia, all the way to the coastline. This is obviously like a touristy thing. We can't have anybody try to sell us something in this country, like hustle us to give them money for something. Until we got to this town and we've had two people drive up beside the car asking to show us through the desert. Come, come. Follow us. Come, come, come. Good. Which maybe, yeah, it sounds. I'll look back and go, well, we should have done that. I don't think we're going to get stuck. But this thing does feel heavy in the sand. Do we look as cool as we feel right now. Yeah, you can see quite a few of these camps that are set up for people to come out and spend the night. My goal is to get past these camps and just find somewhere in the desert where we're completely, completely alone, as far as I can see. But I will say, even if you're just coming out here to go to one of these camps, it is totally worth it. That's exactly what we did last time, and it was the most incredible experience.

Oh, this is fun. For some reason, I was picturing on, like a flat road, but we're going up and over little dunes.

This is epic.

I have no clue where I'm going.

We pretty much have no plan. There were multiple entry points to come into the desert. We just picked one of them, and now we're just driving. I said this morning that this is what I was looking forward to most, and it's already everything that I hoped it would be.

Yeah.

I have never felt so cool in my entire life.

Driving ourselves into the desert in a 1985 Unimog.

And the one thing it does scare me a little bit is if we do get stuck, what vehicle can pull out a 5 ton Unimog?

Hello.

Where are you going? You're going to hold on to the ladder. Okay.

Okay. Do you want to get inside?

We're picking up a hitchhiker. I'm not really sure where we're taking him.

All right.

Hector's just going to milk his camel.

So Van just flagged us down on the side of the road. I thought he was going to try to sell us on taking us on a tour, but he wanted a ride. So Hector's hanging out in the back and I guess he will tell me when to stop and where to go.

He was obviously pretty desperate for a ride because the first thing that he offered to do was hang off the ladder on the side of the uniform on. I kind of assume there's like one road that goes through the desert and his stop will just be somewhere along this road.

Karen Actor.

Just hanging out in the back. All right. This is going to be a serious.

He's impressed.

He's impressed. That's good.

This feels pretty sketch. Oh, we're going to make it. We're going to make it. Yeah.

Oh, that's it.

Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Oop. Nice jump. Okay, thank you. Bye.

Bye.

He was awesome. Well, Hector was just so sweet.

Where did he go?

That way. He's just walking.

We just dropped him off in the middle of the Desert. This looks no different than when we picked him up. I mean, I'm sure there's something out here.

He just put me in a kid.

He's showing photos of his children and his wife and his mom and his dad.

All right, so we found a pen on the camping app. We talked about an epic campsite between two big sand dunes. The road to get up there is a little intimidating.

As usual in the camera, it looks like absolutely nothing.

It feels good just, like, to get off the main road and really back here into the dunes. I love this so much. This is an epic spot, Right. I'm gonna push it just a little bit further to get to the perfect parking spot. I'm only recording this in case something goes wrong.

One of my favorite things about Nate is he goes big or he goes home. And if he's gonna camp in the desert, he's gonna get the best spot, which requires me getting out to make sure he doesn't flip over.

Nice.

You did it.

Honestly, I don't think it gets better than this. I'm not excited to get out of this spot in the morning, but for now, I'm so happy.

I cannot believe this is real Life.

This is 10 times more epic than I thought it was gonna be. Did get the heart rate up.

Nice work. Good driving. I trust you with my life.

Yeah, Obviously.

One day I'm gonna push it too far. That day is not today.

Oh, I could not be happier in this moment.

Life is good. Could it get any better?

No. This is epic.

Honestly, if I had a bottle of wine, this would be potentially the best night of my life.

We've basically driven up to one of the highest dunes in the desert. We have this view down over the valley, and then the sand dunes just start going up from there as far as the eye can see.

Just feels so.

Raw. I just want to show you the view from inside. This is where we're hanging out tonight. This is what van life dreams are made of.

That's zero. Zero. Because we're in Oman.

Cheers. Cheers.

This moment right here was everything I pictured and more when we were planning this trip. This is it. It doesn't get better. Oh, I can't believe we made it up here. This is so good. All right, we're gonna enjoy our night here in the desert. We will see you for part three next week, where we.