Man O’ Man, Oman’s All Good…!!

There is much to say about Oman…!!

It is far and away the best country I have visited in the Gulf…!! And for so many reasons…

Had it not been for the loud ticking of the “GBWT clock” in my head, I could have stayed a few weeks, rather than the five days that I spent there…!! And speaking about “spent” and “spending”, the only negative aspect, was the cost of decent accommodation…!! For a three star establishment, you are looking at about $100.00 per night…!! Not good on a tight budget…!!

When sand completely covered the first, the Sheikh prompty built another on the outskirts of Al Ain...!! Well that's my take on it, anyway...

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself… You want to know a little more about my time in this seldom visited country, I am assuming…!!

Into Oman...!! No 69 on the GBWT...!! A good number in any man's language...!!

Oman is a very different place to the rest of the countries in the gulf, and this immediately became apparent when I arrived at the Mezyad border post…

I was greeted and treated in such a friendly and respectful manner, as to engender a certain amount of  suspicion on my part…!!

There had to be a catch…!!

Where was the guy who was going to demand “baksheesh” for guiding me to all the counters…??

Which one of these guys was going to spring a “final surprise” on me, just when I thought I was through with all the red tape…??

How much was I going to have to pay for the map that was pressed into my hands with a “enjoy Oman, my friend, may Allah guide you…”…?

Turns out, none of them…!!

"All the better to see you with, my dear...!!"

The border post was quiet; the cavernous arrival area well laid out, and clean as a new pin…!!

The officials all softly spoken, and eager to assist…Was I still in the Middle East…??

Before I had taken my helmet off, a guard walked up to me and advised me where I should go and what I needed to do…

Within ten minutes, I had paid the R360 for a visa, R270 for Insurance for the Big Fella, and gate pass in hand, was ready to roll…!!

But before I could press the starter, there were pleasantries to take care of…!!

On exiting the Immigrations building, I saw a small crowd gathered around the bike, comprising guys in their dish-dashes, as well as a few in military uniform…

“Ah…!!” I thought, “Here it comes…!! They are probably going to make me unpack everything…!!”

I put on a big smile, walked up to them and threw my hands in the air and shouted “OMAN…!!”

This was the “ice-breaker” that I had used to good effect at many a border crossing, and it worked a charm here…!! Not that it was needed…!!

There were grins and much back-slapping all around; some of them repeating “Oman !!” to themselves as if they had just discovered for themselves where they were…!!

I told them a bit about myself, and that was when one of them ran off and came galloping back, dish-dash clutched at the waist in one hand, and a map of Oman in the other…

Friendly border officials... On the left is Mr. "Insurance", in the centre is Mr. "What to do in Oman" and on the right, Mr. "Advice on all other things..." ...

Getting a reception like this when you cross a border makes a huge difference to your state of mind…!!

I rode into Oman on a high, grinning from ear to ear, all concerns blown away on the cold wind, hardly looking where I was going, (that’s the Big Fella’s job, anyway…!!) taking in my surroundings and comparing them to the bleak desert landscape I had been riding through for the past few days…

Marjeb Castle stands just a few kilometres inside Oman, one of hundreds of forts and watchtowers that dot the landscape...

Which would make it about four foot deep by the time I got close enough to read the sign...!! Bloody sure I'll stop... a long way before the sign, too...!!

The first thing that struck me, was that Oman had trees…!!

Not lugged from some far off place and planted along a desert highways as was the case in the U.A.E., but natural “always been here” trees…!!

The flat gravel plains were dotted with Acacias of some kind…hundreds of them…!! Made me think of Tanzania, but without the grassland…!!

This is the south eastern edge of the “Empty Quarter” after all, and besides the trees and a few low shrubs here and there, there is nothing else but stony ground and gravel…

But it has that stark beauty about it…like the northern Karoo back home…!!

Every few kilometres, we would come upon a patch of “genuine desert”, sand dunes marching away into the distance… But these were much smaller than those in the Empty Quarter… It was if they had seen the mountains in the distance and figured they were too high to challenge…!!

These fort-like structures are water pumping stations...!!

It had rained the previous night (you could almost hear the desert gurgling with happiness…!!) and pools of water lay in the shallow depressions alongside the main road leading from the border down to Ibri…

The sun was blocked out by a massive bank of clouds, and as luck would have it, as I began skirting an area where the desert borders on the vast gravel plains, it began to rain…!!

At first I thought it might just be a little shower, but five minutes later, realised that I was in for a lot more of the “wet stuff”…!!

Through the mist I could see the edge of the Hajar Al Gharbi mountains, rearing up from the desert floor…

This range of mountains forms a ridge between the desert and the coastal plain, and runs in a great curve, south from the U.A.E. border and then east towards Muscat, almost 400 kms away from where I was riding…

I stopped in Ibri, the first major town en route, and while I chewed on a few doughnuts and slurped a hot Nescafe from a paper cup, a group of students from a nearby college arrived and struck up a conversation with me…

More friends on the road...!! By this time I had already made up my mind that Oman was a good place to be in...!!

They asked all the usual questions and I was once again struck by the friendliness and openness of the Omani people…!!

I showed them a few photos I had taken along the road, and they gave me a rundown on the things I should see and visit while in their country…

I had only been the Oman for a few hours, and was already loving it…!!

"Which one of you has jinxed me...?? This is the desert, dammit...!! Turn off the water...!!"

Hashim's secret revealed...!! He's an Omani...!!

I had hoped to ride all the way to the capital, but as the rain fell heavier, I looked for a service station to take refuge in, and found one 20 kms east of Ibri…

I had two cups of coffee with the Indian owner of a tiny coffee shop next to the Omani-oil depot, and watched while the rain drenched the desert around us…

“This is our first rains of the season,” he told me, “It has not rained here for more than a year… You have brought the rain with you…!!”

“Yeah, all the way from Nordkapp, my friend…!!”

Hope they didn't use DHL...!! Would have cost a fortune...!!

He frowned at this, but I didn’t bother to explain how often I had ridden in rain over the last few months…!! How wet weather seemed to have dogged my trail, and caught up with me in the most unlikely of places…!!

After an hour of idle chit-chat the rain calmed down to a drizzle, and I decided to ride on to Nizwa and perhaps look for a hotel there… I could have easily made it to Muscat as it turns out, but I was enjoying myself, and flicked the switch that reads “slow as you go, Ronno”…

I shouldn’t have bothered stopping, because minutes later, another heavy shower caught up with me, and while my rain jacket kept my upper body dry, my pants were soaked in minutes…

Water ran down off my duffel bag and onto my saddle, and despite the beaded seat that was meant to keep most of the water from making contact with my backside, it wasn’t long before I felt the desire to stop and wring the water out of my underpants…!!

A desire that remained unfulfilled until I reached Nizwa…!! Where I also used the hairdryer in my room to warm up and bring back to life a certain part of my anatomy that had been immersed in icy water for too long…!!

But despite the weather, I delighted in the scenery…

Cloud covered mountains on a wet road to Bahla...

The fact that I enjoy the desert is by now a given, but after a few weeks of it, I was looking forward to seeing a few mountains again…riding the heights if there were any to be found…!!

In Bahrain, the highest point above sea level is a mere 122 metres…!! In the U.A.E, it is Jebel Hafeet in Al Ain, at about 1200 metres, which does not amount to much in the grand scheme of things, but in this vast sea of sand, it is a big deal…!!

Today's forecast: Clear on the right with an excellent chance of showers coming in from the left...!!

In Oman, I was riding in sight of mountains all the time, and through the clouds I could see them ever present on my left, with the desert on my right, as I bored towards Bahla, squinting through the icy needles of rain that numbed my cheeks…

It never rains around here... It just comes pouring down...!!

I turned off the main road and took the longer loop that would take me to Nizwa, not because I wanted to spend more time in the rain, but because the sky seemed clearer closer to the mountains…!!

I briefly considered heading towards Al Hamra, where I had been told there were a few forts and many caves to explore, but although it was drier closer to the foot of the mountains, Al Hamra was shrouded in cloud…

Country Living... Omani style...!!

My route through northern Oman... There's weeks of riding you can do out there...!!

I rode on through a number of small villages, struck by the neatness and general lack of litter lying around…

This was in stark contrast to many other countries in the Middle East…

Oman has a relatively small population of about two and a half million people, and 50% of them live in and around the capital Muscat…

The country is a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and one road sign showing that it was 950 km to Oman’s second biggest city, Salalah, located close to it’s border with Yemen, confirmed this…!!

In the days of yore, Oman was even bigger, comprising of the present-day U.A.E. , and a goodly portion of Saudi Arabia as well…

You can see from the map on the left that Oman probably stretched right through to the Persian Gulf, east of modern day Qatar…

But all that changed when the British hauled out their maps, and with oil on their minds and cups of tea at their elbows, drew some lines on a map (probably provided by shifty-eyed Saudi’s…) that finally saw the present day boundaries of Oman marked out…

And speaking of hot drinks, by the time I reached Nizwa, I was in desperate need of a cup of coffee and some dry clothes…

I scouted around for a hotel, riding past the impressive Nizwa Fort in the city centre,  and settled on the Al Diyar on the eastern outskirts of the city…

After lengthy negotiations with the manager, we finally came to a price that was acceptable to both of us… The hotel was a lot better than many I had stayed in, and was close to a small supermarket, which made stocking up on snacks, a cinch…

It had stopped raining shortly before I reached the town and a weak sun was struggling to make it’s presence felt as I checked in and headed for a hot shower…

The sun comes out at day's end, highlighting the mountains...

Later, from my balcony on the second floor, I watched the sun set over the mountains a short distance away…

Sunset over the Hajar Gharbi Mountains...

I looked down over the dry water-course to my left, and wondered where all the water was… It had been raining like hell all afternoon, and yet the wide riverbed below the hotel was mostly dry, except for a narrow stream that ran down its centre…

The riverbed looked like this in the late afternoon...

Well, I didn’t have long to wait for the water to arrive… Shortly after dark, I heard a commotion from the road below and went to my balcony to see what the botheration was about…

Cars were backed up in the street, their headlights shining onto a mass of water that was flowing over the tarmac… I looked over to where the Big Fella was parked, and tried to judge whether or not the water would cover the parking area of the hotel…

...and like this a few hours later...!!

I stood watching the mayhem for an hour or more, saw one car swept over the roadside and out of sight around the corner…!!

I have read about flash floods, but never witnessed one happening right before my eyes…!!

Down in the lobby, the manager calmly advised me that I had nothing to worry about, and that my bike was safe…!!

“You sure…?” I asked doubtfully…

“Oh yes, I have seen this many times and it has never reached much higher than it is now…!!”

“Yes, but how often have you had the Gypsy Biker Rain-Magnet in town…??” I thought to myself….

For hours afterward I lay awake, listening to the cars making their way over the low water bridge, hooting at each other in impatience, or joy at having made it through, I wasn’t always certain which…!!

Oman had certainly given me an interesting welcome…!!

©GBWT 2011