How wonderful it would be to have a driveway leading towards one’s house, unfortunately most people in the UK have to settle with the idea of parking on the street. However, take this a stage further and imagine how nice it would be to have your own private road to drive as carefully or recklessly as you please without endangering others, brilliant.

But brilliant only if you are an arab sheikh living in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road in the UAE has been classed as the greatest driving road in the world. Stretching for 7.3 miles and climbing nearly 4,000 feet, it boasts 60 corners and a surface so smooth that it would flatter a racetrack.

It could easily be described as the eighth wonder of the world, but almost nothing is known about its creation. The road is cut into the Jebel Hafeet mountain, the highest peak in the UAE, the oil-rich Persian Gulf state. The mountain spans the border with Oman and lies about 90 minutes’ drive southeast of the thriving city of Dubai.

It looks down upon a dusty, desert landscape that is a stark contrast to a nation of astonishing wealth. The Jebel Hafeet Mountain Road must have cost $100 million to build, but its origins remain shrouded in mystery.

You can buy an enormous guidebook detailing the hydrogeology of the local spring, or the DNA of the resident butterflies, but info on the road itself is almost impossible to find.

Local hoteliers state that the road was completed about a dozen years ago with some accrediting a Swedish Architect, but that contradicts a claim made in a natural history guidebook that says the road was built in 1987.

Official sources suggest it was built as a honey pot for tourists who travel from nearby cities to sample the mountain air. But with the exception of a small hotel, there’s almost nothing to do or see there.

Perhaps the real, unspoken reason for the road’s existence is to be found a mile from the hotel. There, sitting on top of the mountain, is the huge palace belonging to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

His face also adorns a huge banner announcing the entrance to the road and it’s under his watch that it was constructed. So there you see, this incredible feat of engineering is actually no more than a giant driveway, something which would make the likes of other billionaires green with envy.