I am now in the planning stages of a journey starting in Oman in an Oman-registered vehicle.

First, I am getting conflicting information about whether it’s advisable to leave on original licence plates or export plates. Could anyone offer advice on this?

Second, I wonder about the whole thing of travelling with Oman plates. Vehicles registered here cannot be common in countries outside of the immediate region (may well might never have been seen before) and my fertile imagination is wondering whether Oman plates could provide a pretext (or even a genuine reason) for border officials to say “You must have carnet” (even though European etc. vehicles don’t need one) or look for extra ‘special payments’ because their “rules” or rules don’t apply to an Oman-registered vehicle.

Do you have any comments or advise on this, please? Would travelling on Oman plates be a bad idea, or perhaps cause problems that wouldn't apply to vehicles with more "mainstream" plates?

My Dad and I drove home from Oman to UK in an Omani registered V8 Land Rover in 2000. Obviously things may have changed since then and I was a Brit with a Gulf residents Visa although I don't think that should have any affect on things

(by the way, I had a UK registered motorbike as well at the time which I exported to Oman without telling the DVLA and then after five years reimported it back into UK on Omani export plates and just stuck the old UK plates back on - I hate crappy government bureacracy. Anyway I digress.)

Basically, we just drove out of Oman into the Emirates and drove home. Saudi, Jordan etc etc into Turkey, Greece, Europe and home. We didn't get stopped once or searched or anything all the way home.

The Land Rover was fully loaded with roofrack, jerry cans, sand ladders, all the usual crap and at every single border point we were waved cheerily through. We had a few small UK flag stickers on the car but nothing too jingoistic. At Dover, we didn't have a clue what would happen, but we just waved our Brit passports at the Border post from a distance of about 40 yards and got waved on with a big smile. And my very English old man is 70, with a big beard, bonkers suntan, wearing a shemagh and was constantly referred to as "Hajee" by Arsbs

Mind you, this was all pre 9/11 and attitudes might be very different now

But my experience of the journey was nothing less than delightful and I would recommend just kicking the tyres, lighting the fires and off you go

have a safe trip

Dick