22-Apr-2006 -- The plan was to visit the following confluence points in Oman: 18N 53E, 19N 53E, and 19N 55E. I had already contacted the Degree Confluence Project of my intentions to visit two of them. However, James Scully had also contacted them with a potential visit to 19N 53E, but given that he had planned to do this within a time span of a year. Now almost 6 months had passed with no visit with summer fast approaching and temperatures rising, so we decided to include it in our itinerary, and it proved to be the toughest of all three.
David "Streaky" Chambers and myself Gordon "Sharky" Smith set out from Dubayy on Thursday, 20 April, leaving at 06:00 and arriving at Haymā' some 900 km later.
The first on our list was 19N 55E, and after a delay of one day at Haymā' to sort out some mechanical problem that had developed on Streaky's Discovery, we completed this point with relative ease. We left the sealed road near Muqšin, which was a bit confusing, as a new road has been built looping round near Muqšin, where previously it bypassed the small habitation. After some 40 km of unsealed road we then crossed on to gravel plain to the confluence point, and after completing the visit we followed the wādiy out to Katibit.
Continued at 19N 53E.