On the map, driving to Muscat looks straightforward. Get from Abu Dhabi to Al Ain, cross over into Oman, go through the Oman “border” post about 30 clicks inside the country … and make a right turn at Sohar. Eventually Muscat; can’t miss it.

“On the map”, however, gave us no indication of possible delays at passport or customs control, and huge delays at those two stations turned a five-hour trip into an 11-hour ordeal.

A classic case of not asking around, failure to perform due diligence, just being generically lame … led to lots and lots of wasted time and our first visit to Oman turning into a colossal pain.

Let’s just do this as a timeline.

–Arrival at UAE border station, in Al Ain. This was at about 1:15 p.m., a little later than we expected, after leaving Abu Dhabi at 11:30. The leg was complicated by a strange lack of signage, in Al Ain, indicating where we could find the crossing point to Oman. We were on our way to Dubai when we turned around, went to a service station to ask for directions (how retro) and were told to go back the way we came and turn left at the third roundabout.

–When we pulled into line at the border, we could see about 20 cars ahead of us in two-lane traffic. Not awful, right? But we had just grounded on the iceberg: What we couldn’t see was going to be the problem.

–This realization came slowly, but we had picked perhaps the worst date and time to drive from the UAE into Oman. It was early afternoon, December 2 — National Day in the emirates, which we knew but discounted because “everyone would want to stay home and watch the celebration” — or some such silly nonsense. A basic fact we didn’t know was that it was also National Day in Oman. And what we really didn’t know is that the long weekend in the UAE (at least four days for everyone, five for government employees) gave a lot of people the same idea — a road-trip to Oman with the fam!

–So, yes, the crossing was overwhelmed with people. “Chaos” is a fair description. No parking, no organization, no directions, no food, no water, and I was embarrassed for the UAE that it was party to this.

–After a half hour, we had gone through the unmanned first gate, and now we could see the mass of cars coming from all sorts of directions. We recognized we had hit the iceberg. After another half hour we had moved another few feet. Somewhere in there we decided — perhaps because so many passengers were snaking through the cars with green slips of paper and five or six passports in their hands — that we were going to have to do some paperwork. It wasn’t a “drivethru” sitcho.

–Out of the car, over to the little trailer (calling it a “building” would be kind) where 20 or 30 people were gathered around a little door … waiting. And did I mention it was about 95 degrees Fahrenheit? Asking around, among people from half a dozen nations, I divined that I needed a numbered ticket before I could get inside to get an exit visa. But the official blocking the door said the ticket machine was out of order. That state of affairs went on another half hour … till someone showed up with a roll of tickets — and would not give me one because I didn’t have a stamped green customs slip.

–He eventually did give me the green slip, and we walked over to the customs shed — where it was stamped by a customs guy in a matter of seconds. However, by the time we got back to the visa trailer, we had fallen maybe 25 places behind on the ticket roll. At this point, Leah took over from the sweat-soaked line-stander … and was allowed to get inside the trailer, which (at least) was air-conditioned. (Some advantages to being female, in the Gulf.)

–Now, the slow grind through the tickets. Four agents looking at passports. Every suppliant needing about five minutes, so there went most of another hour before we could hand over the passports, watch the woman turn the pages before smacking it with a stamp showing when we had left the UAE. Oh, and it cost us Dh63 (about $17) to leave the country.

–Back in the car, gingerly backing into the gridlock of cars, back to the customs shed, where a guy in uniform looked in the trunk, then waved us ahead to another checkpoint, where a guy looked to see that we had stamps in our passports … and pointed us towards Buraimi, the dowdy Omani twin of Al Ain.

–Now we’re rolling through the emptiness of western Oman (first time!) … till we get into the mountains and reach the Oman border patrol office, which straddles the road. At the drive-through window we are told to “go around back and park” — and go inside.

–Now it is Oman’s turn to be overwhelmed by agitated travelers. Hundreds of them. However, the process is at least straightforward. Pick one of the four lines … and get ready for a very long wait. At least we are inside, and the men’s toilet works. (Not the women’s. Sorry.)

–An issue here is that Oman is pretty much a Third World country. It has its good moments, but its border people apparently have no modern machinery, and they examine visa requests by hand (filled out by the travelers), one by one, and make their own notations on the forms. A process multiplied by several times because these are mostly families traveling. We chose the wrong line because it is packed with people who are traveling with three, four, maybe five others — and every one of those passports has to be examined and stamped.

–After two hours, six guys are head of me in line, but I can see that among them they have something like 25 passports. After another hour, I reach the front, where the agent takes a bathroom break and has a little chat with his neighbor, asking to borrow his chair for a while. I certainly can relate to standing for three hours, but I wish he had attempted to solve the problem after he was done with me.

–We are charged about $25 for the pleasure of entering Oman. Our officer wants to know how long we will stay, and we considered telling him, “We are turning around and leaving right now, actually.” But decide to push on. It has been another three hours and it is dark, the kind of really dense dark you find in barren mountains, and we have at least 340 kilometers (about 210 miles) still to drive. According to our plan, we would have been in Muscat hours ago. Instead, about two-thirds of our drive lies ahead.

–So, continue on the 7 highway, one of three in the country, through one police checkpoint where some kid in a uniform says “insurance” and as we begin to reach for the glove compartment, he laughs and says “Go!” Just screwing with us? Who knows. We manage not to drive off the road which, at least, has some feeble light coming from the median — except for the patches where the lights aren’t working.

–Over to Sohar, on the Arabian Sea/Gulf of Oman (depends on whom you ask), where the transfer to the 1 highway is made through the middle of a construction zone, which includes some distance on what appears to be a parking lot. Driving over curbs, mired in traffic.

–We escape Sohar, and had mostly east. The sea is to our left, but we can’t see it. Actually, we can’t see much of anything because that part of Oman is not well-lighted. Sharing the (mostly) two lanes with semis and speeders, hoping not to hit goats or, especially, people, who get to the other side of the highway by running across it — even in the night. Especially in the night.

–As we reach the outskirts of Muscat, the capital, we are sure no restaurants will be open, and hotel room-service food is not appealing so, yes, we stop at a McDonald’s, the anchor of a sort of strip mall that includes a gas station. A McArabia for me. A Happy Meal for Leah. The irony went unnoticed.

–Another half hour to find the Holiday Inn and by the time we backtrack through dirt lots and quasi streets (after missing the Holiday Inn exit), we reach the hotel.

What we thought might be a six-hour journey, ahead of dinner with a friend, has turned into 11 hours of punishment and collapsing in bed.

Whose idea was this trip, which instantly is in the running for Worst … Idea … Ever?

I’d kick that guy in the ass, if my leg were limber enough.