Tag Archives: Landscape

Oman Day 5 – Just Deserts

Monday 25 Feb. Today was spent transferring to our final camp, in the Omani desert (Wahiba sands, to be more precise). The first part was a reversal of our way in over the salt flats, obvs. We passed the incoming Hudhud truck, which was there to take away the beach camp which had been our home for the last couple of days.

Then we joined the Salalah-Muscat coast road, which I had expected us to follow for a long distance to take us round to the north of the desert that lies south of Muscat. But no; we linked up with Said, a pal of Rashid’s who is bedouin and hence who knows his way around the desert, so that he could take us on a short cut across the sands.

En route we encountered a pretty well-understood hazard of driving in Oman:

A fairly standard Oman road hazard

(remember the sign from yesterday?) and also unusual-looking formations of what we thought was rock

but which turned out to be layers of sand which had been rained on, solidified and then covered in more sand and rain and once again solidified. Striking, but actually very soft and crumbly.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the desert is, well, deserted. And it has to be said that there can be long distances between highlights; but highlights there were.

The first one was a bedouin settlement. Not tents and camels, but a collection of shacks in which they live

this settlement, called Juraywah, even has a school, which you can see in the background here:

Rashid debunked any idea we might have had about Bedouin being a separate race who lived an ancient and nomadic life among the dunes, carrying their tents and camels with them as they moved. “Bedouin” simply means “nomad”, and today’s bedouin, who are mainly found around Oman and the UAE, are nomadic, but largely between two established bases – the desert in Winter and the coast (as here) in Summer. Rather than their camels transporting them, they nowadays drive the camels in 4×4 trucks (remember my picture from the Days 3 and 4 post?)

It turned out that Said had his own reason to cross the desert – he was taking equipment out for another (non-Hudhud) camp. So Rashid helped him and some mates load up.

Amazingly, everything fitted!

Then we were off into the unforgiving sands of the desert, which have a variety of colours depending on age and mineral content.

We had to stop so that Rashid could let some air out of the tyres, to make the journey safer and more comfortable.

As we bowled along there were a surprising number of distractions from the landscape, which was pretty uniform all the way to the horizon.

with, threading through it, tracks that only the bedouin can confidently navigate.

For example: goats;

Goats in the desert, Oman

Goats in the desert, Oman

bedouin habitations;

a couple of Pakistani guys who have lived in the desert for four months whilst digging a 50-metre deep well, paid for by the local people to replace an older nearby well that was no longer useable;

a mosque;

A mosque in the desert, Oman

in fact there are several in the desert, each of which has water for travellers and their animals.

This was actually our lunch stop, under one of the only trees available for shade.

after which the desert carried on in its relentlessly sandy fashion.

Oman desert sand - multicoloured

until we reached the first outposts of “civilisation” – a tourist camp.

We made a small detour to see the father of our bedouin guide, Said, who is devoted to his racing camels.

I took this photo to record the distinctive way that Said’s father stood while chatting to Rashid.

Soon after our little detour we were running through Biddiyah, prior to turning off once again into the desert, in the Wahiba sands area. The wind was really whipping up the sand – not quite a sandstorm, but certainly enough to make it uncomfortable standing outside.

We arrived at our camp soon after.

If you look at the dunes on the right above, you can see the wind whipping the sand up – and sand was everywhere.

Camp manager Patrick, waiter Janaka and cook were the same team as we had looking after us in the moutains, so a joyful (and warm!) reunion ensued! The tents this time, fittingly, were bedouin style, made of woven sheep and goat hair.

and perfectly comfortable (of their sort).

Patrick reminded us to be careful about our footwear. He had checked for scorpions and cleared the main camp area, but in any case, it was worth taking care and not walking around barefoot. Scorpions tend to bury themselves just below the surface of the sand, so it’s very difficult to see them. We went on a scorpion hunt later that evening and Patrick had with him a neat trick for detecting scorpions – an ultraviolet light, which really reveals them. So, for example, you might hardly notice one just below the surface

but he/she/it becomes much clearer under the UV light:

We found a couple of them around the site, a good reminder to take care. The pictures really are quite remarkable!

A scorpion under ultra violet light

We had another splendid dinner, although we had to move the table into the majlis as the wind was still gusting and sending the sand flying. The camp crew fought a losing battle sweeping and clearing our bedroom and bathroom tents, only for everything in them to be covered in sand again in no time. After a couple of gins and a convivial chat with Patrick we retired to bed (along with a cricket or two, much to the surprise of the crew who have never had crickets in the desert camps before. Jane had to pursue and catch one of them twice before successfully ejecting it from our bedroom tent). I tried my hand at taking pictures of the stars, but I’d frankly had one gin too many and the best I can say is that lessons were learned for the following evening. I will post the results of those efforts, and the photos from the rest of the day in tomorrow’s blog post, which I hope you’ll want to read. See you there?

Oman Day 3 and 4 – In Transit (well, Toyota Land Cruiser, actually) to, and a day at, the beach

Saturday 23 Feb The day had a fairly relaxed start, as the main objective was just to get to our next camp. This was in Barr al Hikman, by the coast, and a good six hours’ drive; so we weren’t expecting to tick large numbers of tourism boxes. But there was interest and scenery in the day even so.

The first thing we did was to go and peer into the local gorge. Near our Jabal Shams camp was a sheer drop

with a view so staggering that it’s impossible to capture on camera.

see what I mean? I tried various video tricks to capture it and I will post any that worked here in due course. But it was a gorgeous view (see what I did there?)

The first stop on our journey was in a town called Bahla, which has a couple of highlights worth seeing. It enabled me to capture a shot of what a typical set of Omani shops looks like.

These are typical of the small, individual booth-type shops that stand by the roadside (there are national brand shop chains, banks etc as well). By decree of the Sultan all shops display a description of their trade or products in English as well as Arabic, which lends a strange familiarity to a very unfamiliar scene! As it happens, these shops were next door to Bahla’s Grand Mosque, which is a striking building.

Grand Mosque, Bahla, Oman

The main thing that Rashid wanted us to see was the fort, which is being reconstructed, and is a very impressive edifice.

(In front of it is the special local hall for celebrations such as weddings – but for men only. This exercised Jane somewhat, unsurprisingly.)

Rashid also took us to a viewpoint which enabled us to see over the whole of Bahla, showing what a dominant landmark the fort is.

View over Bahla, Oman

A significant endeavour is the wall which runs right round Bahla. It’s of rudimentary mud brick construction, but stretches right round what you can see above. The authorities have also built a rather imposing gate over the main road into town.

Bahla Gate, Oman

On we motored, and the scenery changed dramatically to reflect the sort of landscape that covers a huge part of Oman – basically desert of various sorts. Plain sand

scrubby vegetation revealing the presence of some water

Mirage, Oman

and mirages of non-existent water; and the ever-present risk of bumping into a camel.

Road Sign, Oman

(this means itinerant camels, of course. We also saw another way that you could find camels on the highway:)

Moving camels in bulk, Oman style

This was the scenery that we had for our lunch break.

At about 3.15, we reached Muhut and linked up with the manager of our beach camp, a South African called Devon, who led us on a 50 minute drive over the salt flats to our site – a necessary step, since Rashid didn’t know where the camp was (each camp pretty much gets set up from scratch and the exact location will thus move), and you can get seriously lost when the landscape is nothing but flat sand and scrub. That said, there are markers which those in the know can use, such as this, which shows a fisherman’s track

(my caption for this photo is “The Crate Outdoors”. Thank you. Thank you for listening to my little joke).

Tyres are used to mark junctions.

Tyre as waymark, Coastal desert, Oman

None of this, however, matches good new-fashioned GPS as a navigation aid, which was what got us to our beachside camp at Barr al-Hikman. This was the same in principle as our mountain camp (majlis, bedroom tent, bathroom tent), but in a very different style:

and it was lovely and warm!

We went for a short stroll along the beach to see what was what. Behind the camp is a lagoon where there were actual flamingoes

There were crabs all over the place

and some mystery plants actually growing in the sand.

The rest of the day panned out pretty much along the lines of our previous, mountain, evenings, only without the shivering – so I was actually able to take a sorely-needed shave.

We ended the day with a splendid dinner on the beach in nice temperatures and with a breeze whose coolness was, for a change, welcome.

And we wound down after dinner shooting the breeze with Devon and making our way further down our supply of gin – a pleasant and relaxed end to a wonderfully relaxed day.

The night passed comfortably enough, but for one noisy distraction – a crab had dug and entered a hole below where our tent was sited, and this wasn’t noticed when the tent was pitched. So the poor thing was scratching to get out for much of the night, but was trapped under the ground sheet. Devon rigged up an escape tunnel in the morning, and it looked like the critter got out OK.

The beach camp is basically 90 minutes by 4×4 from anywhere, so it’s not a base for excursions. Our expectations therefore for Day 4 were of sloth. This turned out to be the case.

Sunday Feb 24 Breakfast was at a relaxed 9am

and we spent the day entirely at leisure. Jane took the occasional stroll to look along the beach, coming across a nice selection of objets trouvés

and I took the opportunity to document the holiday so far (these blogs don’t write themselves, you know). We had a lovely lunch and I tried to capture some photos of local wildlife, with distinctly mixed results. We saw sandpipers

curlews

a heron

and any number of the crabs as they burrowed in for the night (not, thankfully, under our tent this time).

Beach crab, Bar Al Hikman, Oman

and we whiled away the day in contented relaxation. Tomorrow we have to transfer to the desert, so the story will continue then – tune in again to find out how it went.

Oman, Day 1 – starting off on the wrong boot

Wednesday Feb 20 – Thursday Feb 21. So, at last! The day of our departure for our Oman adventure, under the aegis of a company engagingly called Hud Hud Travels*, had arrived! Our itinerary took us around northern Oman, taking in mountains, beach and desert before a final few days in Muscat, the capital city of Oman. Jane was excited; I was apprehensive, since the first three locations were in camping sites. OK, special, luxurious, private camping sites, but nonetheless…..

*Hud Hud is the Arabic word for a bird, the Hoopoe

Our flight to Oman was not until the evening – 1945, to be precise. One might be forgiven for thinking “what a luxury – the whole day to pack and get everything just right before a smooth departure for the airport in a taxi”.

That was the theory, and it worked in almost every respect. We ended up with lots of time on our hands and so we relaxed with a final cup of tea (for we had decided to revolutionise our holiday experience by not taking tea bags with us in order to experience the full mystique of the Arab way of life, don’cha know?). Then suddenly the taxi was there and so we piled in, and negotiated a curious route to the airport in order to avoid the inevitable rush-hour congestion on the M25. It was only when walking towards security at Heathrow that I realised I had forgotten to change into the walking boots I had carefully set aside for the trip as we had been told that there would be some hiking involved. In the great scheme of things, this doesn’t count as a disaster, but I wasted a certain amount of champagne drinking time cursing my own stupidity.

There are no shops in Heathrow Terminal 5 which will sell you walking boots.

Anyway, the rest of the travel went very well. We had lashed out on Premium Economy, the aeroplane was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and so we had a comfortable, if somewhat sleep-deprived, flight.

We were met in Muscat by our guide, Rashid, whose English was fluent if uniquely quirky, grammatically speaking, but who proved himself to be an excellent, thoughtful and knowledgeable guide. I’d been expecting a chance to sit down, have a coffee and get a briefing on what to expect for the day. But off we drove straight away, and before I knew it, there we were in the midst of our first Omani market, the fish market in Barka, a town neighbouring Muscat. I confess to being on the back (unsuitably shod) foot, so I didn’t get photos and videos that I feel really captured it. Like other markets we visited, it was crowded and noisy, with all the buying and selling being done by men

Barka Fish Market
with many counters selling fish that had been caught that day

(above, Rashid poses beside one of the counters).

Outside the fish market area there was also a thriving trade in non-fish items. Across the road was the area where the fish are brought in, by fishermen on small boats. Sadly there was no action to photograph, but Rashid explained a little bit of the way the system works. People on the quay buy the catch off incoming fishermen and then sell it on to other people who operate in the market. Sometimes these people sell the fish direct, but often they split the catch and sell different parts either to different traders, or to people who further prepare (e.g. fillet or salt-preserve) the fish before selling it on. Complex and multi-level, but lots of opportunities for individuals to make their cut. I couldn’t make head or tail of it and couldn’t see money changing hands; but it clearly works.

Fish market duly visited, we were off again towards the next destination. We considered the idea of buying me some trainers or some such, but then decided that the shoes I was wearing (M&S finest Nubuck) would probably be OK. All that self-cursing was wasted emotional energy. Like it almost always is.

As we left the Muscat area, the terrain changed quite abruptly, and it was clear that we were heading towards the mountains.

So, via a stop to buy some snacks, we headed towards our next destination, en route to which we got our first initiation into what many of the roads in Oman are like.

Oman Mountain Road

Rashid parked up some way along the track at the start of something he called “Snake Gorge” (heaven knows what it is in Arabic), and we got out to take a look.

Snake Gorge, Oman

This was, had I known it, the first test of my footwear choice. I thought we had merely stopped for a photo opportunity, but no, this was going to be a bit of a hike, including wading through shin-deep water. So, while I think I would have been happier leaping from rock to rock in boots, I would still have gone barefoot for the wading bit.

I’m not quite sure how to describe Omani mountain scenery. It demands to be photographed, but it’s a bit stark to be what I’d call “picturesque”. Here are some snaps from our hike.

Snake Gorge, Oman

The water, Rashid told us, was from rain which had fallen a couple of weeks earlier. So it was somewhat surprising to see small fish in the pools left after the bulk of the rainwater had cleared, and even toads, who were making the most of their time together.

It’s not clear how they got there – perhaps washed down from further up in the mountains? We also saw a rather striking red dragonfly

Red dragonfly on rock

whose pose also gave a chance for a close-up of the striated rock prevalent on our route.

The rest of the day was spent travelling towards our camp, which was near the top of a mountain called Jabal Shams (“Sun Mountain”). We stopped off for some opportunities to see the stunning views that can be found in the Omani mountains:

Balad Sayt Plantation, Oman

Al Hajir

(above is a view of a village called Al Hajir. I hereby apologise to the residents if I have the spelling wrong.)

Hajar Mountain Scenery

Hajar Mountain Road, Oman

In the photo above, if you look carefully you can see a tiny patch of green by the road going down the middle of the shot. This turns out to be a small but perfectly-formed artificial grass football pitch, called “Peter’s Pitch”.

"Peter's Pitch" - Audi Football Field

It was apparently set up there for a film shoot and was left there afterwards. Peter, Rashid told us, was an itinerant occidental who provided funds so that the pitch could be kept there for the locals to use.

The mountain scenery during our journey was remarkable. Here’s a typical panorama:

And even our lunch stop, at a place called Al Sharaf, had a pretty nifty view.

After lunch we stopped in a village called Al-Hamra. Yes, it’s the same derivation as that of the famous palace complex in Spain. Hamra means red, and that comes from the distinctive colour of the mud used in the original buildings, seen here from across the valley. It dries to the shade of brown you see here.

Al Hamra, Oman, seen from across its plantation

In the foreground is the town’s plantation of date palms. Date palms are incredibly important to the Omanis. Not only do they provide dates (duh!), but the trunks, sawn lengthwise, can be used for roof beams; the leaves can be used in buildings as shade for the upper floors. The leaves are fibrous and can be dried to provide all sorts of fencing and screening; leaf fibres woven into mats and baskets; and the central stalks of the leaves are strong enough to be used in roofing (see later for our short visit to a bedouin home).

The old village itself has plenty of original buildings

Al Hamra, Oman

and the town, in common with many in the area, has a watch tower

Al Hamra's Watch Tower. Oman

which in days gone by provided a vantage point to watch for invaders from nearby Nizwa, which was wont to send out raiding parties for food and females when they ran short themselves.

We also stopped to take a look at parts of a river called Wadi Ghul and the now-abandoned village on its banks

Wadi Ghul, Oman, abandoned village

You can see the sweep of the original from the ruins of the fort on the hill to the left, to the village buildings on the right. Notice that the date palm plantation and other irrigated plantations, are still intact, and maintained by the modern day village from which this photo was taken. Oman is a very dry country and considerable care and ingenuity goes into preserving what rain falls and using it for irrigation (desalination plants are also an important part of providing water to the Oman population).

Then, as we were heading towards sunset, we approached our camp. It was first visible from across the valley

It’s there, honest – towards the top of the hill on the right…

yes, there…

…ah, there it is. We bumped our way along a very rudimentary track and caught sight of it again.

Our tents are in the background; this side of them are the tents for the crew who would support us for our two-day stay. We were greeted by Patrick, the camp manager, who then showed us round our facilities: our bedroom tent

with its bathroom tent behind and to the left; and the majlis tent, where we could relax.

It was getting quite late by that stage, so there was nothing for it but to crack open the gin (bought at Oman Airport duty free) and make the most of what sunshine there was before the temperature dropped.

Which it did, like a stone, with the chill exacerbated by a pretty stiff breeze. This weather somewhat informed my initial assessment of the practice of camping (I have put my thoughts about camping on a separate medium as I try to keep the langage on this blog fairly moderate).

Before long we were eating a superb dinner lit by fire- and candlelight, sitting in front of the majlis.

but gradually becoming colder and colder, despite the fire. So we retired as soon as decently possible to a very comfortable bed, made even more welcoming by the presence of a hot water botttle for each of us. We did eventually get warm, but sleep was rendered elusive by (a) the wind, which was very noisy, both in itself and by making the tent creak and flap and (b) the knowledge that we had to get up at 5am to wring the most out of our experiences the next day. I thought this was supposed to be a bloody holiday!

Anyway, warmth and sleep eventually arrived and so we passed the night in reasonable comfort. To find out what happpened on day 2, you’ll have to read the next entry, won’t you? See you there!