Sir, Do You Know How Fast You Were Going on the World's Longest Zipline?

Everyone who’s ever been there, and has a modicum of taste, knows that Dubai is the Middle East’s equivalent of the Meatpacking District: effectively the most difficult place ever, frequently by the difficult-to-please people, and drinking the most expensive drinks. It’s the pits, unless you’re into the engineering marvel/environmental calamity of skiing in the desert.

Dubai, though, isn’t the whole of the United Arab Emirates anymore than the Meatpacking is the whole of Manhattan, and especially as you travel in the direction of the Omani peninsula of Musandam — well, Musandam is spectacular. Go, now, before everyone else gets there.

UAE zipline (5 images)

Because if this news is any indication, everyone else might: Today brings news of the world’s highest zipline, at the peak of Jebel Jais, a summit in a mountainous region that straddles the U.A.E. and Oman. Unless it, in turn, is quickly over thrown by another ridiculous zipline, this should be the world’s longest, perhaps the highest, and certainly one of the fastest, with speeds approaching 80 miles per hour. If ziplines are your thing, you should put it on your bucket list.

If, however, you only love someone obsessed with ziplines, be sure to pair this trip with one to Musandam, where dolphins frolic alongside dhows ferrying visitors out for a day on the turquoise waters of the Strait of Hormuz: Look across it, and you’ll see Iran. It’s magic. And that’s probably better than any zipline could hope to be.

Meet your guide

Diane Rommel

Diane Rommel has written for The Wall Street Journal, Outside, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Travel + Leisure, Wallpaper and Afar, as well as The Cut, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and McSweeney’s. She once drove from London to Mongolia, via Siberia.