A Short Little Jaunt Across the Border to Oman

The visa that I have for the United Arab Emirates right now is a visit visa that lasts but 30 days. My employment visa, like that of many of my colleagues, is still being processed by the government. Unfortunately, even though I am employed in the country, my visit visa is no longer valid after thirty days. So on day number 29 (September 19), I rode on a bus with about thirty of my colleagues (the bus was pretty much filled to capacity) over the border to Oman and back on what is commonly referred to as a visa run. UAE exit stamp, out of the country, into Oman, Oman entry stamp, Oman exit stamp, back to the UAE, entry stamp, home. One nice little loophole about being from one of the 34 countries that the UAE gives automatic visit visas to (as most of our new faculty is). In theory one could do this indefinitely, live in the UAE and just go abroad and back when your visa is just about up. Once was enough for me, though.

The bus picked us up from our apartment building on Friday morning (the first day of the weekend out here). 6:45 a.m. on a weekend. Way too early, but I was excited. This was the first time I had left the city of Dubai since arriving, so I got to see the neighboring Emirate of Sharjah (which our apartment building is really only a kilometer or so away from), as well as some dunes, mountains, and wildlife.

A few of my sightings, discoveries, and experiences on our short little jaunt across the border:

• The almost-perpetual haze visible when looking long distances in Dubai isn’t smog or construction dust; it’s desert sand in the atmosphere. The haze was just as bad, if not more so, over the isolated dunes as it was over the city.
• Lots of wild camels: camels grazing on desert brush, camels sleeping, camels eating out of a roadside dumpster.
• ATVs and offroad vehicles cruising the dunes.
• A herd of goats walking across a field and into a gorge via a real live goat path.
• The mountainous region southeast of Dubai known as Hatta, whose mountains largely look like they have the consistency of a tall gravel dump.
• My first exit visa from a country!
• I got chastised by an Omani border guard for taking a picture at the border of a sign that struck me as funny at the time. Oops.
• My time in Oman (for this trip at least) consisted of spending two hours in the welcome center, collecting travel brochures and maps, watching a rugby match in Arabic and the Oman travel video on the overhead televisions, and chatting with my colleagues while our passports got processed. Well, that and walking to and from the bus. I did stand on Oman soil, so it counts as a country I’ve been to.

I’m not done with Oman, of course. There’s still plenty to see there, from the sights of Muscat (the capital city) to the fjords of Musandam, and I’ve still got another visa run of sorts to do once my employment visa actually goes through. But it’s another stamp in the passport (technically, another six, all told, what with all the exits and entries), another adventure had, another memory made, another few dozen pictures taken. Especially the one I got yelled at by the border guard for. I’m definitely keeping that one.