After having completed a trekking trip in Jebel Akhdar Mountain and a road trip along Oman’s northeastern coast, I found myself back in Muscat with a few last days to spare before my visa expires. I decided to use these days up to undertake a short trip to Salalah and the west of the country.
I was at Burj Sahwa bus station a bit more than an hour before the scheduled departure of Mwasalat’s night bus for Salalah. To my great disappointment, however, I found out that the bus was already full.
I sat on the bench outside of the bus company’s office and got to ponder my possibilities… Should I book a ticket for the next day and either camp somewhere nearby or head back to my friend’s place in Seeb to spend the night? Or should I give up the plan for a trip to Salalah altogether?
And then I noted that the sign on the windshield of that other bus I’d been absentmindedly watching moving slowly towards the exit of the station in the meanwhile read Salalah.
I darted and managed to stop the bus at the last moment. They had a place for me. After a long night of sound sleep, I was dropped off in downtown Salalah City.
Darkness was still complete. I rubbed the rheum off my eyes, stretched my muscles, shouldered my luggage, and started striding towards Garden Mall, where I had a morning appointment with my friend Max who had already reached Salalah by hitchhiking a few days earlier.
I walked past Sultan Qaboos Mosque which, aided by artificial illumination, looked so magnificent against the murky sky. Then, other than dull building blocks and bleak land in between of them, and a few more mosques, there was nothing of particular interest to look at. The sun had risen by the time I made it to the mall and became the first customer of an Indian dude who had just opened his cafe.
I had just finished my coffee when Max showed up. We did some shopping in the mall and were ready to head out of the city. The question was… where to?
We checked up the map. We were at the western end of the city. Thus it would make sense to head west. Some 40 km away in that direction there was a long beach dubbed Mughsail Beach. According to the map, there also were a cave (Marneef Cave) and some blowholes adjacent to the beach. We judged that that was the exact place we ought to reach and spend this night.
The traffic by then had begun to thicken up. We spent quite some time by the side of the main road but didn’t have much luck with hitching a ride. Many drivers pulled over, but all of them either weren’t intent on leaving the city or were taxi drivers whose rate ranged from OMR 25 down to OMR 5 to drive us all the way to Mughsail. The lowest offer was a very decent one but we decided to stick to the plan and make it to the beach hitchhiking. Only that we’d have to locate a better spot out of the city.
We managed to get a bus (this isn’t generally a simple thing to manage in this country) from Garden Mall for OMR 0.200. Soon later we hopped off at a roundabout beside Hilton Hotel. This is where we intended to get our ride from. But, we found out, this wasn’t going to happen, as no cars could use the road due to maintenance works. We had to walk for about 4 km through the scorching heat and the nauseating smell of fresh asphalt to reach the next round-about.
From there on the rest was easy. The very first car that drove by stopped. It was a huge luxury jeep carrying two Arab businessmen with golden watches and stuff. As is usually the case in this country, they were very polite and friendly dudes. One of them could speak some rudimentary Greek as well (apparently after dealing with Greek folks of his business kind). They said they would gladly drive us all the way to Mughsail but they were late for an important meeting in a nearby factory, which was where they dropped us off.
The second ride was given by an Indian lorry driver from Chennai. The third and last one by three young Algerian travelers who toured around the area in a rented car. They were driving further west than us, so they would bring us all the way to Mughsail Beach. We found the bridge that used to span the estuary of that one river that flows into Mughsail Beach collapsed, so that we had to take a detour in order to reach the beach’s western end, where we were dropped off.
Before we settle on the beach, we made for the promontory where the cave and the blowholes were supposed to be situated. The thing was more of an elongated, negatively inclined cliff face than an actual cave. And the blowholes, we got to know, only blow during the monsoon season. Nevertheless, it is totally worth it to be there. We climbed up to the top of the bluff, whence the views to the broad Arabian Sea, the extended rocky shore to the west, and the white beach to the east were astounding.
Contrary to what we expected, we wouldn’t be the only people camping on the beach. We happened on a pretty large group of retired German campervaners (some ten vehicles altogether) who sojourned there for some days. They had driven through Europe and across the Caspian Sea to Central Asia; then via Iran across the Persian Gulf to Oman; and now they intended to drive back to Europe through Saudi Arabia but, as it was highly doubtful whether they’d manage to obtain a Saudi visa, they’d most probably have to head back across the Gulf again.
Other than the Germans, we also got to meet and talk with a few locals. One of them was Mohamed: an exceptionally benign and intelligent young man with whom we agreed to meet early the next morning and drive in his car to the nearby Al Fazayah Beach. The other was a fisherman from the local village who very kindly offered us a few of the fresh fish he had caught just a while ago.
All was set. We pitched the tents on a nice sheltered spot some way up the beach; we made a bonfire and prepared an exquisite fish dinner; and perched in the tents under the wide starry firmament, listening to the so soothing lullaby the ocean splashing makes for.
Accommodation and Activities in Oman
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