Donut

What's a donut? It's either a small ring shaped type of cake that is deep fried. Or it's a 360° turn made in a car or boat. Both are life threatening, in a way. But deep in the desert of the UAE exists another donut of sorts. And how is this defined - well, it's a little tricky. But let's put it like this:

There is an enclave called Nahwa. It is part of Sharjah, and it is completely surrounded by the Omani territory called Madha. Madha, part of Oman, is completely surrounded by Sharjah. And while the split up of the UAE is confusing enough, this little anomoly, makes for some interesting research.

This is where it roughly located:



And looking in a bit more detail, here is how the donut is made up:



with a bit more detail, it is halfway between the Musandem Peninsula and the rest of Oman.
The enclave is on the Dubai-Hatta road in the Emirate of Sharjah. It covers approximately 75 km² and is towards Khor Kakkan near the Hajjar mountains.



and this is the complicated make up of the emirates in the UAE:



From a nerdy persepctive it is all quite interesting, but why this happened is anyone's guess. Maybe when the Brit's were drawing up the map of the emirates by surveying allegiances, they came across some Omani - and that was that. Madha becomes an enclave and an exclave, and Nahwa becomes an enclave of that exclave.

From the pictures, you can see that Nahwa only consists of a few houses and Madha is pretty small as well. This is certainly not going to be the next real estate hotspot, but to me it looks pretty serene:



Apparently your mobile phone switches from Etisalat/du to Oman Mobile, so that you know you are in another country....but no border control here!

For good measure, here is a picture of a some real donuts/doughnuts. Hungry now?



Nahwa
Wikipedia
Madha
Krispy Kreme