The map calls this desert the Sharqiya Sands, which means simply the eastern sands, and the plainness is deliberate. The world knows it as the Wahiba Sands, after the Bani Wahiba. But five other tribes hold ground in it — Al-Amr, Al-Bu-Isa, Hikman, Hishm and Janaba — and the official name avoids putting one of them above the rest. This is owned country rather than empty country. When the Royal Geographical Society surveyed the sand sea in the 1980s, part of what it recorded was which families used which stretch of sand, water and grazing. The survey covered 12,500 square kilometres of orange dune in Oman's Ash Sharqiyah region, running in long parallel ridges that reach a hundred metres in the north. Drivers let the tyres down until the treads flatten and float, then take the truck up a steep face and slide it down the far side; on foot the same ridge is two steps up for one back.
Once the sand has stopped burning underfoot the climb pays. From a crest the dune lines run to the horizon and turn from gold to copper, and the wind lifts a thin veil of sand off the lip beside you. Down in the flat-bottomed valleys the horizon closes off around you, and at a camel's pace the only sound is the pads landing in the sand. The Bedouin here breed the animals for racing, which is the argument for them. Almost nothing else lives out here, and what does leans on the ghaf. The tree goes up twenty metres, sends a taproot about as far down after water no dune surface sees, and shelters up to twenty other plant species beneath it. From June the date harvest gathers the families at Al Huyawah, the oasis holding most of the palms. In a carpeted tent or a house on the sand, dates and cardamom coffee reach you before any conversation does. The cup comes a third full and keeps being refilled until you tilt it from side to side, which is how a guest says that is enough.