After one month of planning to arrange dates to cover three of the remaining four confluence points in Oman, we met at the Dragonmart EPPCO at 0600 on Thursday morning 20th April on the outskirts of Dubai on the Hatta Road.
Both our vehicles had been recently serviced, my SII had just had it’s 110K Km service at Al Tayer Motors (Official Land Rover Dealer) three days before. However Streaky’s SI had only been delivered to him from and independent garage dealing with Land Rovers the night before, with a combination of screw ups involving wrong connections onto the second battery and some other idiotic problems that can only be attributed to the usual Middle East incompetency found in large amounts in this region.
We met up at 0600, temperature 23°C and then drove to the Hatta / Wajaja border posts. Plain sailing for exiting UAE and entering Oman then we continued on the outskirts of Muscat making good time. We met up with one of my colleagues, Ram Mohan, who lives in Muscat, and from him we collected a case of beer to supplement our other rations, before continuing on the Nizwa Road, then heading south at Firq.
Two more fuel and break stops at Adam and Ghaba then on to our destination for the day Hayma.
About 30 Km from Hayma, Streaky’s Disco began to lose power and we pulled over. As soon as he stopped, smoke came billowing out from under the bonnet and very calmly he asked me for a fire extinguisher, which fortunately I had made easily accessible considering we were both carrying 120L of fuel in Jerry cans on boards.
Fortunately the extinguisher was not required and the reason for the lack of power was a burst hose on the coolant system however this did not please Streaky as this was supposed to have been changed during the service.
Our supplies of spares included this item, and once replaced, the amount of water we put in far exceeded what would be required and a leaking head gasket was now suspected. Once more Streaky was a tad annoyed (to say the least) as this was another item that the garage was supposed to have checked and fixed.
We drove very carefully into Hayma and then Streaky joined me in a search for a garage, which we found after not too long, Hayma is not a big place. The mechanic was Mohan Singh. We tried to contact the Land Rover agent in Salalah, however it was now 1700 hrs and they were now closed and not open until Saturday.
Above Mohan Singhs's Workshop
Streaky then called Gulf Stars in Sharjah and we were put in contact with somebody in Salalah, who then arranged for a gasket set to be sent by bus to Hayma for a price of OMR100 (£143, eek!). What could we do?
We then decided to eat, and were told that the bus would arrive around 2230. We drove out of town and found a camping spot and after a couple of beers made our way back to meet Mr Singh and go to the bus office. Once there we found that the bus would not arrive until 2300, then 2330. So Mr Singh went back to sleep at his garage and we waited.
We then met the official from the Oman Bus Service and he told us 2400 but most likely 0030. Anyway he assured us that tomorrow morning he would be there at 0800 and would have the parcel for us to collect so we could go and sleep.
Needing no further persuasion we left and returned to our camp with a couple of R & Cs as a nightcap.
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