Al Jimi is one of those places where the desert simply stops being the main character. The oasis sits in the old part of Al Ain, a city the Emiratis call the Garden City, and a few kilometres on the other side of the line lies Al Buraymi in Oman. The two towns grew up around the same underground water and the same date gardens, and for most of history nobody drew a border through them.
What makes the oasis worth a stop is the system underneath it. Water was brought down from the hills through falaj channels, narrow stone and mud conduits that run for kilometres and still feed the date palms in turn, each plot getting its share by a schedule that older families remember. Walk in under the fronds and the temperature drops by what feels like ten degrees, the air smells of damp earth and sun-warmed dates, and the noise of the road vanishes. The Al Ain oases were put on the UNESCO list in 2011 together with the Bronze Age tombs and the Hili sites, and Al Jimi is one of the easiest to visit because it is right in town.
The riding is not the point here, honestly. You arrive on wide city roads with roundabouts every few hundred metres, and the real scenery is on the horizon: the long grey ridge of Jebel Hafit, which climbs to roughly 1,240 metres and carries one of the most famous motorbike roads in the Gulf up its eastern flank, a ribbon of tight hairpins with a hotel and lookout at the top. That is the reason a rider ends up in Al Ain at all. Do the climb early, before the sun is properly up, because from May to September the afternoon heat is brutal and the tarmac gets greasy and soft.
Fuel is no issue, since Al Ain is a city of hundreds of thousands and the stations are everywhere, as they are in Al Buraymi. If you cross into Oman at any point you will need your passport, your bike papers and the right insurance, and the formalities take longer than the distance would suggest, so plan accordingly. Winter, from November to March, is the season to be here: dry, bright, mild mornings, and the oasis at its best. Stop for a coffee with dates in the shade, listen to the falaj trickle, and let the engine tick as it cools before the next climb.