Re: comments relating to Sharjah/Dubai road. Early '66 it was three to four hundred yards wide, being a flattened area of the desert. Late '66, oil was sprayed on a narrower width to provide a bitumen like "road". To stop people driving on it whilst the oil soaked in and dried, 44 gallon drums were set up across it at intervals with armed locals sitting on them
Same setup in 1963-64. On the Sunday after payday a 3 tonner drove us from Sharjah to Dubai to visit the only shop that sold electrical goods (and was air-conditioned). One memorable view was of a young lad sat in the street with a Calor gas-fired oven (dome of baked clay about 3 ft in diameter) baking chapatis - one crate of condensed milk, one big bag of flour; mix flour with milk to form a flattened circle of dough, remove previous now cooked dough with a stick, deftly flick the new dough onto the inner roof of the oven. Next to him was a pile of cooked chapatis, it was black with flies!