South of Ibra stretch the magnificent Wahiba Sands (Ramlat al Wahiba; also known as the Sharqiya Sands) – “a perfect specimen of sand sea”, as they have been described. This is the desert as you’ve always imagined it. A huge, virtually uninhabited swathe of sand, with towering dunes, reaching almost 100m in places, sculpted by the wind into delicately moulded crests and hollows.