CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 147 km round trip from Al Ain City - roughly 3 h 19 in the saddle. On the way it passes Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs, Hili 2, Bidaa Bint Saud and Hili Archaeological Park. It crosses from United Arab Emirates into Oman - carry ID and check the toll rules.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 26 km this is Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
For riders in the Gulf, there is a road that people talk about with real affection. Jebel Hafit, a long, rocky ridge that rises out of the flat gravel plain on the border between the United Arab Emirates and Oman, is about 1,240 metres high, and a smooth tarmac road snakes up its eastern flank in a long series of hairpins and bends to the top, a distance of about eleven kilometres. At the summit, a hotel and a viewing terrace look out over the oasis city of Al Ain, with the desert stretching away to the horizon, and at dusk the lights come on below like a field of stars. Motorcyclists and cyclists come here in the cooler months, usually early in the morning or at sunset, and the road is one of the best in the country.
Read the complete Jebel Hafit Desert Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jebel Hafit Desert Park is where the day begins. Next is Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs.
Jebel Hafit rises out of the flat desert at the edge of Al Ain like a long, pale whale, and on its lower slopes sit some of the oldest buildings in the United Arab Emirates. These are beehive tombs, circular cairns of stacked stone, built around five thousand years ago in the early Bronze Age, which give their name to the Hafit period of Arabian prehistory. Dozens of them survive on the ridges and foothills, and the ones near the wildlife park are easy to reach, standing in the open on a spur of rock with the town on one side and the dry mountain on the other.
Read the complete Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs comes up about 26 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hili 2.
Jebel Hafit rises out of the flat desert like a wall of grey limestone, and at its foot lie some of the oldest tombs in the Arabian Peninsula. Hili 2 is part of the archaeological park on the edge of Al Ain, in Abu Dhabi emirate, where beehive-shaped stone tombs were built around five thousand years ago, in what archaeologists call the Umm an-Nar period. The round towers of neatly cut stone, some with carved animals and human figures on the doorways, held collective burials, and the place is also home to remains of a Bronze Age settlement and ancient irrigation channels called falaj. The tombs, together with the oases and the hill, are part of the UNESCO listing of the cultural sites of Al Ain, inscribed in 2011.
Read the complete Hili 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 42 km into the recorded legs you reach Hili 2. Next is Bidaa Bint Saud.
Jebel Hafit rises out of the flat gravel desert near Al Ain like a lizard's back, a bare, folded limestone ridge about twelve hundred metres high that marks the border between the United Arab Emirates and Oman. It is the best-known landmark in the area, and the scatter of ancient sites around it tells the story of the people who lived here. On the lower slopes are about five thousand years old beehive-shaped stone tombs, the first examples of a type of grave that is now named after the mountain, and the Hafit period is a recognised phase of Bronze Age archaeology in south-east Arabia.
Read the complete Bidaa Bint Saud write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bidaa Bint Saud, about halfway. Next is Hili Archaeological Park.
Five thousand years ago, people on the edge of the Arabian desert built beehive-shaped stone tombs on the ridge of Jebel Hafit, and the oasis town below them has been continuously lived in ever since. Hili is part of the Cultural Sites of Al Ain, and the park holds a grave of the Umm an-Nar culture, the Hili Grand Tomb, built of precisely cut stone with carved reliefs of human and animal figures on its entrance. Traces of a Bronze Age settlement, with circular towers and wells, add to the picture of a society that had learned to farm in a dry land through the falaj, the underground channels that bring water from the mountains.
Read the complete Hili Archaeological Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Hili Archaeological Park sits at 69 km, about halfway. Next is back through Bidaa Bint Saud.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bidaa Bint Saud write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bidaa Bint Saud comes up about 95 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Hili 2.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Hili 2 write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 108 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Hili 2. Next is back through Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs, late in the day. Next is Jebel Hafit Desert Park.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Jebel Hafit Desert Park write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 147 km.
Jebel Hafit Desert Park → Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs is 26 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs → Hili 2 is 16 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hili 2 → Bidaa Bint Saud is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bidaa Bint Saud → Hili Archaeological Park is 15 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Hili Archaeological Park → back through Bidaa Bint Saud is 20 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bidaa Bint Saud → back through Hili 2 is 13 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Hili 2 → back through Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs is 18 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Al Ain Wildlife Park Tombs → Jebel Hafit Desert Park is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.