Hili sits on the border of two countries, and for a rider the line is the first thing worth knowing. Al Buraymi on the Omani side and Al Ain on the Emirati side share a single oasis belt at the foot of Jebel Hafit, and the border runs through the town in a way that has been softened by the long shared history of the tribes who live on either side. Take your passport, check what your insurance and rental papers say about crossing, and expect to be waved through slowly rather than quickly.
The oasis is the older story. Date palms planted in rows, shaded by their own fronds, grow beside narrow irrigation channels called falaj, which carry water from underground sources and from the mountains over distances that make you stop and think about the effort. This system is thousands of years old, and the Hili area has Bronze Age tombs and a settlement site that shows people have farmed here since before writing. The graves are round, built of neat stone, and sit in a park where you can walk around them for little or no money.
Riding around Hili is not about corners. The roads are wide and straight, with roundabouts in neat rings and wide verges planted with trees, and in the evening the heat leaves them slowly. The only real hill in sight is Jebel Hafit, a hard limestone ridge standing alone out of the plain and looking larger than its height suggests. In July and August the air is brutal, easily above forty degrees by midday, so do your riding at dawn or after the sun has gone. Between November and March the weather is mild and the light is good, which is when the place makes sense.
Fuel is plentiful and cheap, as the Gulf generally is, and Al Buraymi with its roughly seventy thousand people offers everything: shops, cafés, petrol stations, a restored fort. Carry water on the bike all the time and top it up at every stop. Dates and Arabic coffee are offered as a courtesy in many places, and a small cup of the latter, with cardamom, is a perfectly good reason to sit in the shade for ten minutes.