Wildest dreams: a family camping trip in Oman
This article is more than 6 years oldWild camping in the Omani deserts with a seven-year-old sounds daunting but, with a tour guide in tow, it’s the best and most affordable way to enjoy the country’s staggering scenery
Camped out in the wilds of Oman’s Al Jabal Al Akhdar mountain range, we were full of self-congratulation on finding the perfect spot. Yet while we were marvelling at the sunrise from atop a nearby peak, our campsite was being raided. Once we got back down we caught the culprits, a herd of mountain goats, red-handed: replete with the honey, halwa and fruit we had been saving for breakfast, they were reluctant to budge – even to the tune of us banging picnic plates.
However, as perils of camping off the beaten track go, a hircine invasion is fairly benign. Wild camping is legal in Oman: you can pitch your tent on any public land. From dramatic mountains to shimmering beaches, and miles and miles of golden dunes, Oman’s natural beauty is a force to be reckoned with. Getting the tent pegs stuck in is the most rewarding way to see this Middle Eastern country.
Camping also offers a completely different view of the country from the one peddled by the tourist board and most tour operators. Tourism is on the rise in Oman, with the government pumping billions into luxury developments including a superyacht marina, five-star hotels and a replica of London’s Westfield shopping mall, complete with English-style landscaping. The country hopes to attract 11.7 million visitors a year by 2040.
Desert camping could hardly be further from this opulence. With little crime, and no natural predators, is also a safe option, so my partner and I had no qualms about taking our seven-year-old son. Inexhaustible energy levels in an only child means catching up on adult poolside reading is out. Our best family holidays are spent filling every moment with activity, so the busyness of camping is ideal. It’s also the most affordable way to see this country, where holiday accommodation is often exorbitant.
With a good selection of local companies hiring out camping equipment very cheaply, there was no need to bring our own. I’d done a search and plumped for Nomad Travel, drawn by the naive simplicity of its website. If we were going to go wild camping in the desert, I didn’t want the oasitic luxury offered by the high-end operators. Nomad Travel is run by Chris, an ex-pat oilman who has been in Oman for decades, his wife Lorna and their son Josh.
They provided everything we needed: a pop-up family tent, sleeping bags and mats, a cool box and a crate of essentials which included cooking equipment, rechargeable light and solar shower. Nomad also organised our vehicle rental, and a map.
Our plan was to take in three locations over a week. I wanted to experience the breathtaking solitude of the desert, my partner wanted mountain trekking, and our son yearned to play on a beach. Chris was going to lead the first part of the expedition. Usually he left the tours to one of the expert Omani guides he works with, but the beach location was a favourite, discovered by him in his early days in Oman, and the nostalgia trip was too much for him to pass up.
First stop was the Wahiba Sands, about two hours south of capital city Muscat. Desert covers much of Oman (about 82% including the gravelly wadi valleys) and ranges from treacherous salt flats to stony planes, as well as the sweeping Arabian sands of cinematic legend. The heat and scale can be brutal and disorientating and the tourist board advice is don’t go it alone, but travel in a convoy of at least two 4WD cars – we were glad to have Chris with us.
There’s an eerie beauty to the dunes. It’s impossible to gaze across the knife-sharp edges of the empty peaks, sculpted by the collision of winds from the east and southern coast, and not have a sense of your own mortality. Some dunes tower nearly 100 metres high. In the heat, you could perish within hours without resources. Luckily, we’d made a comfortable camp in the lee of the dune on which I stood musing and, as the sun sunk low, we ate barbecued lamb kebabs preparedin advance for us by Lorna. Our son found a bleached goat skull when he was off gathering firewood, and we took turns setting up apocalyptic Instagram shots.
In my mind’s eye, the desert sky jewelled with stars was going to be the trip’s highlight but a glorious full moon put paid to that. It did bathe the dunes in a ghostly splendour, though, and we spotted a scarab beetle rolling its dung ball past the edge of the camp.
We’d planned to drive across the desert but the early onset of Oman’s summer and a mid-April temperature of 41C made that goal imprudent. Instead, we broke camp the next day and backtracked to the coast via the woodlands – sandy areas peppered with spiky acacia trees that border the desert. Without a local guide, it proved impenetrable, even to an expert like Chris. Lost, we had to be chaperoned to the tarmac road by a group of helpful Bedu farmers. Fewer Bedu choose a nomadic lifestyle in the 21st century, living instead in self-build breezeblock woodland houses with small compounds for the camels they rear for meat.
Remote beaches don’t come more inaccessible than Bar al Hikman, on the edge of a peninsula on the country’s east coast. We stocked up on supplies, last-chance-saloon style, as we passed inland through Muhut and filled our cool box with ice at an ice factory, a shed with a mechanical ice cruncher, that serves local fishermen.
When Chris had arrived in Oman the country was still largely desert and mountains sparsely populated by Bedu. In the 1970s, Qaboos Bin Said Al Said, Oman’s current sultan (he is also prime minister and foreign minister) seized power from his father in a bloodless coup. Schooled at Sandhurst, and egged on by the British, he sent his dad to live out his days in a suite at the Dorchester Hotel and set about using the country’s new-found oil wealth to develop the country’s infrastructure.
Chris didn’t think the country benefited from the expanses of tarmac that were making it so easy for us to race to our destination. While the irony of an oilman bemoaning the fruit of his labours was not lost on us, it was true that Oman traffic accidents are the country’s biggest killer.
That said, we could have done with a bit more solid road on the next stage of our journey.
Bar al Hikman is accessible only through the salt flats – swathes of glinting mineral desert far more inimical than sand dunes. In some areas, the rock-salt crust covers a stable base, while mere metres away what lies beneath becomes treacherous tyre-trapping mud. Meanwhile, the sea gleaming on the horizon was as deceptive as an Arabian Nights genie. Not sea at all, it turned out, but a mirage that lured us off-course and into a quagmire.
In the end, it was worth the two hours in the beating sun it took to dig the cars out. Not least because the car wheels spinning and spraying great gouts of mud, combined with the drama of finally breaking free, were a gift to a boy bent on adventure. As a parent, it was my one anxious moment. We set up sunshades in the car and kept him cool with endless drinks and by dousing his sun hat in melted ice. That evening we pitched our tent on a spit of white sand between the sea and a lagoon complete with a flamboyance of flamingoes. It’s easy to spend a few days here, swimming in the warm sea, bird watching and even turtle spotting.
The trip highlight was arriving in the mountains. Austere and untamed, the Al Hajar range spans the country from east to west. With vertiginous canyons, rugged granite peaks largely naked of vegetation, and hidden wadis, the mountains are endlessly beguiling and explorable. We camped at Sharaf Al Alamayn in the Al Jabal Al Akhdar area. Terrain largely akin to a gravel car park looked initially daunting but it was surprisingly easy to pitch a tent, and the plateau was wide enough to feel safe from the 3,000-metre or so drop.
The next morning, the whole family woke early and, in the pale blue pre-dawn light, climbed to the nearby summit. As the sky over the escarpment filled with pink and yellow tendrils, we watched a pair of eagles soar through the canyon and a herd of goats saunter down the hill below. Then, with the most mesmerising sunrise of Oman over, we headed back to camp, hungry for our breakfast.
Camping equipment was provided by Nomad Tours. Equipment and car for seven days costs around £426. British Airways flies to Muscat from Heathrow from £329 return
Five best Oman camping spots
Remote
Bar al Hikman
Worth the trek through the salt flats, this remote white sand beach backed by a lagoon is a haven for birds including flamingos, great egrets, Eurasian spoonbill and several types of sandpiper.
Low mountain
Sharaf Al Alamayn
It would be possible to spend your entire holiday trekking and camping in these peaks. Sharaf Al Alamayn has, arguably, the best view over the entire range, and is easy to reach in a car.
High mountain
Jabal Shams
Jabal Shams, the highest peak at 3,009 metres, has stomach-dropping views into a vertiginous canyon. A 4WD is essential to get to this point.
Desert
Wahiba Sands
There are several permanent Bedu tourist camps, dotted throughout this picture-perfect desert, to pitch close to, or head off into the dunes and pick a solo spot for complete solitude.
Near Muscat
Al Sifah beach
An hour’s drive from Muscat, this golden-sand beach is ideal for an overnight trip from the capital. A small dune backs the beach, giving shelter from the winds.
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