In addition to the 3 major Emirates, the UAE comprises 4 other Emirates with a less strong international profile. Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah and Umm Al Quwain lie at the northern part of the peninsula, just below Oman's Musandam Governorate. They did not get priority on the road to WH nominations. Abu Dhabi had to be first, of course, Dubai had to be second, but failed with Khor Dubai, and Sharjah succeeded with the Faya Palaeolandscape this year. But all other Emirates, except for tiny Ajman, now have sites on the UAE Tentative List. Together with fellow community members Philipp and Jay, I visited nine of them on a two-day road trip in and out of Sharjah City.

The original design of my itinerary, as posted here on the Forum, did not work out in reality. After calculating the driving times, the full loop would be too much to do in one day, so we spread it out across two days while also incorporating the Faya Paleolandscape WHS. Also, to do it Emirate by Emirate made no sense, as their boundaries are all over the place. Below is a day-by-day, chronological account.

Day 1: Center and East

We started from our Sharjah City hotel, seeing the control towers at the aviation museum (Sharjah the Gate to the Trucial States) in the distance (it is closed for renovation). Our first Tentative Site was Mleiha, right across the street from the Faya WHS. It is part of the same archaeological park as the WHS, but it covers much later ruins, those from Pre-Islamic times. By yourself, you can only peek into what once was the fort. The rest of the site is only accessible on a guided tour, and is part of the archaeological tour they give you at Faya WHS (more about that to follow in a separate review).

From there, we drove further east, into the mountains. Along the way, you'll pass the emirate of Ajman (with their ambition to turn the city of Masfoot into a tourist magnet in 2030). The TWHS we aimed for here is Hatta (Emirate of Dubai). According to news reports, this is a site that is being groomed to be a candidate in the next few years. And indeed, we found a site about half-completed, on the way to becoming a tourist destination. It has at least two typical watchtowers that are so common in this part of the country. And a large area with adobe houses, which looked quite picturesque.

We drove northward, following the Omani border first and later the coastline of the Indian Ocean. Here, we scouted for locations of The Rock Art of the Emirate of Sharjah. I had discarded this already early in my planning, but Jay and Philipp had done their research, so we decided to give it a try, but not waste too much time on it. The first official location we tried was at Kalba: it should be an important site (some findings are in the Faya Mleiha museum), but the spot nowadays is a total construction site and fenced off.

We then went on to Al Mudaifi in Khorfakkan, which immediately looked more hopeful. It has signs about it being an archaeological site and yes, there are rocks on a small, accessible hill. Jay and Philipp wasted no time, crossed an empty channel and took off on foot to find the rock art. I stayed behind, scouting with my superzoom camera and was eventually able to find some rock art (and steer the others towards it). Nothing spectacular on an international rock art scale of things, but still, it was the find of the day since we hadn't expected much.

The final tentative site of day one was the Al Bidya Mosque in the Emirate of Fujairah. Being the oldest mosque still existing in the Emirates, it is an important place and it sees its fair share of tourists and worshippers. It also conveniently lies next to the main road. The rather cute adobe design looks straight out of New Mexico.

Day 2: the West Coast

Driving northward from Sharjah City through Ajman, the next Emirate is Umm Al Quwain. Its only Tentative Site is Ed Dur, an interesting archaeological site (at least on paper). The main feature among its prehistoric ruins is a Temple to the Sun God. The site lies next to the main highway (on the East side, follow our location, not Google Maps). Philipp had seen on the satellite view that it was fenced off, and it turned out to be. It's actually a double fence: one around the whole area and then another one around the sets of ruins.

One or two intrepid community members may have sneaked in; I'll leave it to them to tell the story.

Further north, the Emirate of Ras Al Khaimah has no less than 4 TWHS. We started with the old pearling town of Jazirat Al-Hamra. It has a 'Heritage Village', so we had something to aim for. It led to a fun insight into how this part of the country is also trying to attract wealthy foreigners, both for a beach holiday and their retirement. We passed the Waldorf Astoria hotel, had to enter a gated community because of a road closure, and enjoyed its street names like Vienna Street. The Al Hamra heritage village is now fully open and we spent quite some time there.

A superficially similar site lies not too far north: the Trading town of Julfar. Here we found the (restored) main mosque and the remains of an urban quarter in a poor state.

And on we went, just another 20 minutes away, we found Shimal, an archaeological site known for its medieval "Queen of Sheba’s Palace". This is where the mountain goats separated themselves from the lowlander - part of the way up has nice stairs, but the last 100m or so is a real scramble, which I skipped. Still, I could shoot a few pictures from just below the top.

We finished at the fort and oasis of Dhayah. This is another item shortlisted from the UAE's Tentative List. It is a pretty fortress seen from a distance, but the site (although well-maintained) lacked some backstory.

Some afterthoughts

• The driving in this area, outside of the main cities, was easy and the roads are good. There are plenty of fast-food restaurants and gas stations for a quick break.
• We skipped Wadi Wurayah, UAE's nomination for next year, because it has been closed for ages and we did not want to do the Oh I have put my toe into the core zone -trick without seeing anything of its values.
• The "best" ones of this batch were Hatta and the Al Bidyah Mosque; however, none seem good enough to be fully recommended for inscription.

I came across an interesting statistic (thanks, Ian, for sharing) about the countries that have more than 1 WHS per 1 million inhabitants.

These are:

Andorra - Antigua and Barbuda – Armenia – Austria - Bahrein - Barbados - Belgium - Belize - Bosnia Herzegovina - Bulgaria - Cabo Verde – Croatia - Cyprus - Czechia – Denmark - Dominica – Estonia – Fiji - Finland - Georgia – Greece – Iceland - Israel - Italy – Kiribati - Latvia - Lithuania - Luxembourg - Malta - Marshall Islands - Mauritius - Micronesia - Mongolia - Montenegro - North Macedonia - Norway - Palau - Panama – Portugal - Saint Kitts and Nevis - Saint Lucia - San Marino – Seychelles - Slovakia - Slovenia - Solomon Islands - Spain – Suriname - Sweden - Switzerland – Vanuatu - Vatican City

(Considering “every country deserves at least 1 WHS”, the ones with more than 1 are bolded.)

Plotted on a map, the overachievers appear as follows. 32 of these 52 countries are in Europe!

A WHS for every million?

If we continue with the hypothesis that a country is allowed 1 WHS for every 1 million inhabitants, we can also apply it the other way around. Using the 2025 data on worldpopulationreview, the List would have 8250 WHS and

• India can have 1463 WHS (it has 44)
• China can have 1416 WHS (has 60)
• USA: 347 (has 26)
• Indonesia: 285 (has 10)
• Pakistan: 255 (it has only 6!)
• Nigeria: 237 (only 2!)

Surely Indonesia, Pakistan and Nigeria are among the most underrepresented countries on the List. Taken by % of global population: India could have 18,29% of 1248 WHS (228) and Pakistan for example, at 3.19%, 40 WHS.

From here, we can also derive the Most populous countries without a single WHS. These are:

• Somalia (19.6 million)
• Burundi (14.3 million)
• South Sudan (12.1 million)

How relevant is population size anyway?

Not so much, I think. It is irrelevant to Natural WHS – it could even be argued that countries with a lower population (and certainly a lower population density) are more suited to have pristine nature.

It is also not very relevant to cultural WHS: most WHS are between 50 and 3,000 years old. So the current population size of, let’s say, Nigeria, does not result in more cultural sites worthy of WH status (what it does is produce contemporary music and Nollywood movies). Having a large population spanning all or most of the 1st century BC to 1950 does seem to help. Countries that once ruled or were a main part of a large continental or global empire have a higher chance as well.

Which other parameters could influence the number of WHS per country?

There are:

• Land size: the larger the country, the bigger the chance that something worthwhile can be found. But it needs diversity as well. And a fairly large population, to get to those cultural WHS.
• Early date of ratification of the WH convention: says something about the enthusiasm, and also has had more years to nominate.

Looking at the Top 10 Countries with the Most WHS, as shown with number of WHS, ranking of its population size, year of ratification, and global ranking of its land size:

So you must be fairly populous, but land size is not that important. You must have joined within 12 years of the start of the WH scheme (Russia and China were fairly late).

Any statistics gurus out here that can find a correlation between the number of WHS and demographic or historical data?