Puzzled about vehicle licencing: please advise
 

For travelling overland with one’s vehicle, the registration/licence papers are needed. This seems obvious enough. If a vehicle has to be re-licenced every year (as is the case where I am, in Oman), when the licence for a particular year has run out, the vehicle is unlicenced. Clear enough

Pursuing this logic, if I am travelling outside Oman in my Oman-registered/licenced vehicle, with Omani plates, of course, and my vehicle licence runs out, then I’m driving a non-licenced vehicle. When I arrive at a border, I don’t have a current licence to show. Any insurance I have, or ask for, is for an unlicenced vehicle.

But surely this must be a common situation for those on multi-year overland trips? I know of a couple who’ve been travelling with their vehicle for 24 years, and surely they aren’t relicencing it every year in their home country, in Europe.

So what is the answer? Does one travel in a vehicle that is in fact unlicenced, or is this no problem (that going country to country, it doesn’t have to be licenced in one particular country)? In my case, once I leave Oman I won’t be coming back and won’t be able to relicence it here.

Sorry if there’s something obvious I’m missing, but I hope someone can advise.

Ask them. I think you'll find they are licenced.

I'd suggest you contact you local licencing people and talk to them about it ... it might take them some time to find the answer of how to do it .. but there should be a method.

I suspect that its only a problem if your vehicle is registered in a Country or State that has an annual inspection of "roadworthyness" which forms part of the registration requirement (eg UK's MoT, Germany's TUV).

For the rest of us we just keep on paying the fees (via the Internet) and getting the label mailed out in the post.

I wonder what Germans or Brits do, then, when they're away for a long time.