G’day g’day all, I trust today’s post finds you well. Continuing on the exposition of my trip of earlier in the year today I’m writing about the adventure that was from Muscat, Oman to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. This was a journey by bus.

If you’re wondering why I would be taking a bus on this leg when obviously flying would be much easier, I haven’t mentioned in a bit but the goal of the Dhaka to Dakar adventure was to travel by land (and sea) as much as possible. So in fact I would travel by land from Muscat to Dubai to Riyadh and Jeddah all by bus. And this was the shortest and fastest of all three bus journeys. And yet it took most of the day and was the most problematic.

Why was it problematic. Well, continuing on my form from Muscat of things not exactly going to plan, I went to the Mwasalat bus terminal. I thought I booked a ticket for the 630am bus to Dubai the next day. I turned up the next day to find out I had not. They weren’t even running buses to Dubai! The man who sold me my ticket had sold me a ticket to a place that sounded a lot LIKE Dubai. A LOT. Now look, I just did a search online and saw a post, dated June 2023 that they were running a number of buses to Dubai (Mwasalt – the main bus company in Oman) so perhaps they have recommenced services. I certainly had researched online and this was the strong advice I received was to use Mwasalat. And that buses were running but they were not. I was able to get a full refund and was then sent to the offices (a long way away by Uber) of another bus company, and I heard from my driver that the reason that Mwasalat weren’t operating buses to Dubai was because of a big accident they had had in UAE who wouldn’t let them drive there anymore.

The other bus company that thankfully DOES run buses between the two cities in Al-Khanjry Transport. I was sped over there but unfortunately had missed their 6am bus and their afternoon bus was full. It meant it was 6am the next day for me and I had another night in Muscat before heading to Dubai. Al Khanjry operates from the Ruwi Bus Station area, it’s a little behind the main part where the local buses leave from.

The next morning I was there well in advance and the bus was ready. By 615am or so we were allowed to board. There were a few foreigners on the bus but I think the majority of people were those going to work in Dubai who found the bus a cheaper option than flying. Many had to sort out working visas on the bus – as in making sure their paperwork was all good to go.

As the sun started to rise, we headed out through Muscat. The total distance is somewhere between 400 and 500 kilometres, I had read varying figures saying it would take 6-7 hours. But no, I was told on the ground it was 9-10 hours. And that’s what it turned out to be. And bus travel is often like that in the Middle East, when you are quoted a time on the ground (when buying your ticket for example) it’s fairly accurate, or is the minimum you can expect it take. The cost of the ticket was 10 Omani Rials, which works out to be around $26USD – so yes, much cheaper than any flight you’re likely to catch.

The bus itself was okay, worn and not all the mod-cons working, but it wasn’t dreadful by any stretch of the imagination. The majority of the journey is in Oman, and as you get closer to the border you climb into some mountains, and the scenery in Oman is generally pretty impressive. Some of the seats didn’t recline properly, and I was lucky to be behind the fridge at the back door (in the middle of the bus). There was decent leg room there but looking at the other seats it was clear I was lucky. On top of that the TV didn’t appear to work and it wobbled on its bearings the entire trip.

The Hatta border is where you cross, surrounded by mountains it’s a pretty cool location all said. The Oman side seemed easy enough. We all got off the bus and lined up in a spacious building, and generally for foreigners it was a five second deal getting stamped out of Oman. But those going through to work had their visas checked here before being allowed out of Oman, which I guess is fair enough.

There was one person who had an issue – it was something to do with the date on the visa, I think he was trying to enter a day before his visa said he could. Well, this left everyone else in the bus waiting (after being processed) for an extra 45-60 minutes. Once that was sorted, we drive through a sort of no-man’s land to the UAE border post, which actually was quicker and again, if say you’re lucky enough to be a tourist from a country like Australia and you don’t require a UAE visa, it’s super fast.

The bus wasn’t search or anything like that on the Oman side of the border and no-one had their bags checked, which was a mercy. However it was stopped for a while at the UAE side and the bottom opened. One person had to get out and show their bags. It wasn’t too bad but it seems the whole crossing in total was nearly 3 hours, so that added a fair bit of time to the whole trip.

From there we slowly descended the mountains. Once we were down, the rest of the journey sped past. UAE is an hour behind Oman, so my phone automatically changed to an hour earlier. We sped through a lot of desert here, and eventually we were in the outskirts of an ever-growing Dubai. I followed much of the trip on Google Maps. We were suddenly passing the airport and before you knew it, we were in downtown Dubai.

The bus was descended upon by taxi drivers, however there was also a metro station less than 10 minutes walk from where the bus dropped us off, not a bus station of any kind just on the side of a Dubai road.

To get to my hotel it was 45 minutes or more by metro because I was in the Jumeirah/Al Basha Heights area. A tip – pay extra for the ‘first class’ cabin. The metro is packed to the hilt in Dubai and after 9 hours in a bus, standing wasn’t so fun.

The bus left around 7am and got in around 3pm Dubai time (4pm Muscat time) so the total was around 9 hours. The air conditioning worked, I was comfortable enough although I was glad to get off when we arrived. I only had snacks there was no lunch stop anywhere so I was pretty hungry when I got to my hotel as I decided to go straight there rather than grab something to eat downtown (although I was looking for a roadside shawarma place or something I just didn’t walk past one).

Would I recommend the bus? Probably not if you are happy to fly, but if you like countryside and are happy to make a trip to the office a day or two in advance, well it will save you a fair bit of money and of course – it’s a better for the environment.

Thanks for popping in today. Take care wherever you are in the world – and May the Journey Never End!