When you come to Oman, people tell you to buy a jeep so you can do the Wahiba Challenge, but I didn’t. Instead I bought a Ford Focus expecting to hitch a ride with someone for the challenge while not really making an effort of joining a team. Thankfully a ride fell into my lap anyway.

It went something like this:

Mark stopped his car while I was working on the driveway, and asked “Hey, what are you doing November 17^th and 18^th?”

“Nothing” I replied.

“Want to do the Wahiba challenge?”

“Absolutely, you just saved me $10,000, because now I don’t have to buy a jeep.”

Fast forward a month and I am hooked, we’ve bought a Prado for family camping trips and the Ford Focus has been replaced with a Jeep TJ.  The switch to a Prado was already kind of on the books after we almost didn’t make it up to the Salma Plateau and had to really punish the Kia to get there.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Wahiba Challenge is a un-timed race where teams of vehicles travel from a common starting point through the desert to a mid-camp and then a finish point. It originally started as a Landrover Offroad challenge but has slowly been taken over by Jeeps, with a strong showing of Prados, FJ Cruisers and Xterras. There are prizes for the shortest route, best stuck picture and best team video.  Most teams meet in Muscat and then drive out to the starting point in convoy.

Teams have fun names and some teams even dress up. The team I joined is called the Dukes of the Dezert after the Dukes of Hazard. At the mid camp and starting camp we all dressed up as the characters of the show.

Crossing a part of the Wahiba sands in a Jeep is unlike any other driving I have ever done. It varies from really bumpy slow going to white knuckle peddle-to-the-metal dune climbing. As co-pilot, my job was to keep track of the rest of our team and help Mark know which way to go as we crossed dunes by watching the flags of the team mates ahead of us. Think co-pilot of rally car races and you get a bit of an idea what the co-pilot is supposed to do. We both agreed that having a little bit of a discussion about what the co-pilot is supposed to do before the start is helpful.

The other part of being co-pilot is being the rope bitch… you get to hook up the ropes between the vehicles when one of them gets stuck. Then hopefully with a slight tug the jeep will pop out of the sand and get moving again. We only had one stuck that required more than a few tugs and that was the three Omanis we found in the bottom of a bowl stuck without a shovel, a second vehicle or much of any other supplies. Our lead jeep driven by Evry, who I called “Captain my Captain”, even got stuck in the bowl and we had to use two Jeeps to pull the Omani’s out.

The first day we did a lot of climbing as we headed up large dunes, through the “false dunes” on the top and then back down the other side. It was great fun! The second day was a lot more false dunes which are 10-20 foot high dunes that are are irregularly shaped that you have to find a way through. The leader has a lot more work to do as he must scout a head and try find a route for the rest of the team to follow. More than once we had to turn back and look for alternate routes. Most of the time though he picked a good line that would get us where we needed to go.

We were heading west most of the day, with the windows opens so my arm was starting to burn. Mark had a cutoff sleeve that was part of his custom which I borrowed and it saved me a lot of pain. I will be getting a set of these. General wisdom is, you drive the Wahiba with the AC off because you want as much horsepower available as you can get to climb the dunes, also it’s way cooler especially when you are climbing and the wheels fill your seat with sand. On one hill climb, Mark’s entire window was filled and he kept on the gas with one eye open and spitting sand until we got to the top! Good times!

One thing that is a bit dangerous with dune driving is that you can’t see what is on the back side of any dune and you must have a good amount of power on to prevent getting high sided on the top of the dune. For a leader this means they have to try and adjust the amount of power/speed they have while climbing the dune so that they can make a turn once the front end comes down onto the backside of the dune. Sometimes there is huge hole, called a bowl, right behind where you crested the dune which requires a sharp turn to prevent getting stuck down there.

These sharp turns sometimes get people in trouble as the tire pressures used in the sand are very low for traction but with the negative effect of being able to pop the tire off the rim in a sharp turn. One friend of mine knocked a tire off and the next week had to take the tire in to a shop after the challenge to get the sand taken out of the tire.

At mid-camp, a team called “The Desperados” setup a bar with a light/laser show and gave out tequila shots while wearing rainbow colored ponchos. We headed down and enjoyed the atmosphere and novelty of having a party in the middle of the desert after spending a whole day bashing up and down the dunes. Many a participant over the years have ended up getting lost after too much tequila and end up sleeping in the dunes until it get’s light enough to find their tent. Our team took it easy, nothing worse then getting up early and driving with a headache.

The end of the challenge was a little anti-climactic. We crested a dune and ended up at a road with about 20 vehicles parked on it and people adding air to their tires for the drive home. Our team had a sandy lunch of nasi goreng with a Peanut Butter sauce – gritty but good. As we headed home our leaders jeep’s battery failed, so we had to find a shop to replace it. After two nights in the desert I thought we could all use an ice cream so I got some. A great reward after a weekend of hard “work”.  Maybe a new tradition.