Driving around Oman

If I were to describe Oman in two words, it would be "hot Iceland"!

Our onward flight to Oman was delayed, taking off 90 minutes later than scheduled. However when we arrived at the airport it was practically deserted, even though it was 7:30pm. The airport is only a year old so very new and shiny, a complete contrast to Nepal!

As most people use Muscat as somewhere to change to go to other destinations, there were only five people from our flight actually entering Oman. As a result, our bags were already there when we arrived and we were picking up our hire car within about twenty minutes of landing. It was all a bit weird!

We made our way to our accommodation for the night, which was only about 15 minutes from the airport and went for a fantastic dinner at the restaurant next door.

Day One

The next morning, after a tasty falafel breakfast, we started our drive south towards Sur along the coast road. The scenery was just odd, really rocky and desolate, like how I’d imagine Mars to look.

After about an hour, we arrived in Quriyat, a small fishing village with a fort in the centre, which we initially struggled to find. After dodging various goats and narrow streets, we arrived, had some lunch then went to the supermarket across the road to have a look around. Imagine my surprise to find chocolate Danettes, my absolute favourite dessert, which you can normally only buy in France. I had to have some!

We had a look around the fort, which gave good views over the town and appeared to be lived in, although with no information boards, we weren’t really sure.

Our next stop was Bimmah sinkhole. This a natural hole in the rock where you can go swimming, or if you’re brave enough, jump in! We had a quick swim in the water, which was lovely to cool off. As we were leaving, one boy jumped from the top of the hole, at least 20m. I wasn’t sure whether to be impressed or incredulous that anyone could be so stupid!

We continued down the route 17 to Fins beach, a lovely white beach which we had a quick wander along. However by this time, we were getting a bit behind schedule so didn’t stay long.

Our destination for the night (as there is very little accommodation along the road from Muscat to Sur), was the Ras al Jinz Turtle Reserve. Unfortunately, when we turned up, we were told there had been a problem with our booking and instead they’d arrange for us to stay at another hotel 20 minutes away at Ras al Hadd. This actually worked out OK as it was significantly cheaper and we still got to go on the turtle tour that evening.

As an aside, one particularly odd thing about Oman is the number of speed bumps in the roads, even on roads where the speed limit is 100km/h! This is ridiculously dangerous if you’re not used to the roads, particularly as the signs aren’t always clear or far enough away to brake sufficiently. There were seven speed bumps in about a 3km stretch between our hotel and the turtle reserve, which got a bit tedious!

After a quick dinner at the hotel, we drove back to the turtle reserve. During our briefing, we were warned that being low season, we may have to wait a while to see some turtles, if we see any at all. However, we were extremely lucky and set off only about 20 minutes after the briefing.

On the walk to the beach, we got to see lots of stars as the beach is kept dark so as not to disturb the turtles. When we came across our first turtle, I was shocked at how big it was! The reserve has been going for 10 years, covering 45km of coastline, of which 3km is open to the public. They only have green turtles here, coloured due to their diet of algae and plankton.

The first turtle had already laid her 100 eggs and was in the process of covering them with sand using her flippers. However, the second one we saw was actually laying. The eggs are the size of ping pong balls and it takes about 20 minutes to lay all the eggs.

Our next stop was to see some baby turtles hatching and making their way to the sea. They were so small! Apparently, out of 1000 eggs, only about two or three will survive to adulthood, as a result of predators such as foxes and seagulls. Apologies for the poor photo quality, but it was very low light!

Down by the water, as the surf hit the beach, we were also able to see bio-luminescent plankton lighting up the waves. Overall, we were extremely lucky to see everything we did, it was truly amazing.

Day Two

As we’d been so successful with our evening tour, we decided to skip the 5am tour and get up at a reasonable hour instead!

We headed back north to Wadi al Shab, an incredible canyon you can walk and swim through. Unfortunately there’s a sign at the entrance saying swimming is prohibited so we didn’t take our swim things. But this turned out to be wrong and with it being so hot, we decided to just go in with all our clothes on!

After taking a very short boat ride to the other side of the wadi, we started the 45 minute walk to the pools. The walk up through the canyon is incredible, really dry but then you come across patches of palm trees and vegetation. We were following a group of school kids so got talking to the British expedition leaders along the way (you can just see them in the bottom left hand corner of the picture below).

At the pools, the first part is deep enough to swim but then it becomes very shallow and pebbly. I really struggled walking on this and ended up bruising both my feet, but made it through eventually. At the other end, you can swim in another pool before passing through into a small cavern with a waterfall in it. It was an amazing sight, particularly swimming back out as the water was an incredible green colour.

We made our way back to the car, drying off as we went. We then drove back to Sur, where we would be spending the night in an apartment. This was really exciting, as in addition to a bedroom, we also had a lounge and a kitchen! You really come to appreciate the smaller things in life when you’ve been travelling for a while!

Having not really had much lunch, we went to a nearby KFC for a snack, before driving to the beach and to see the old town. At dinner that evening, we massively over ordered, ordering what we thought would be a couple of small bread dishes but turned out to be full size pizzas, followed by two huge grills. Luckily the restaurant was kind enough to let us take the leftovers with us for lunch the next day!

Day Three

We had a slight nightmare checking out of the hotel as they didn’t accept cards so James had to go on a bit of a wild goose chase round Sur trying to find a working cash point, whilst battling a sand storm!

Finally on our way, we stopped at Qalhat, the old capital of Oman. However due to an earthquake and the invasion of the Portuguese, the old buildings are now in ruins. It was pretty hot so we didn’t stop long and continued our drive back to Muscat.

We stopped off at Quriyat again on the way back to eat our leftovers and have another Danette!

From here we continued back to Muscat. After a few wrong turns, we finally found a hotel to stay in before heading out to see the Royal Opera House. This is such a glamorous building! We had hoped to do a tour but were told on arrival that there was a rehearsal on so we could only see the lobby. We decided to go in anyway as it only cost £2 each. However once we were in, one of the staff came up to us and asked if we wanted to see the auditorium if we paid him the extra it would have cost for the full tour! So we got to see the auditorium too, with the orchestra warming up.

From here, we drove to the beach, where we spent a good hour watching a jeep pull in a fishing net while the sun was setting. I have to say, we’ve seen some pretty amazing sunsets on our trip, but all the stops were pulled out for our last night!

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to pack up ready to go home the following day.

Day Four

We chilled out in the hotel before heading to the airport. Again, the airport was incredibly quiet so we breezed through passport control and security. After a quick snack to use up our remaining currency, we made our way to the gate. To get to the gate, you had to go through another security check, which was annoying as it meant you couldn’t take water through. At the time our plane was meant to depart, we still hadn’t boarded and were told the plane was delayed indefinitely due to an operational fault. There was a complete lack of information provided by the staff over the next two hours when we were finally told we were being transferred to another plane. Finally, 2h 40mins after our scheduled departure, we took off, heading home for the first time in over 100 days!