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Gulf States: Southern Oman: of green hills and dust bowls - Ubar Luxury Travel

Southern Oman: of green hills and dust bowls

I came to Salalah, the second largest town in Oman, 1,000km south of Muscat, in the hope of taking some photographs of a landscape unique in the Gulf. I quickly realised that this is something very hard to capture on film.

The region gets the tail winds of the Indian monsoon from June to August. During this season, known locally as the Khareef, the Salalah plain and the mountains behind are shrouded in fog and receive plentiful rain which transforms the ubiquitous brown hills and plains into healthy looking meadows and forests. Travelling away from the sea, across the plain and up into the mountains, I was reminded more of Kerala and East Africa than Arabia. Coconut and banana palms grow abundantly and street sellers display piles of papaya fresh from the trees. It was genuine flora that contrasts strongly with the attempts at beautification elsewhere in the Gulf in the form of roads lined with palms that survive on grey water piped from sewage works.

But this scene in itself is not unique. It is only when one compares it with north Oman or, for that matter, almost anywhere else in the Gulf, that one understands why it is such a popular destination for Gulf nationals.

My trip was a reconnaissance mission for my travel company so it was more executive tourism than a relaxing few days away. We covered some good ground travelling from Mirbat in the east to Mughasayl in the west and over the Qara mountain range to the Empty Quarter (the Rub al Khali in Arabic) in the north. And it was on this trip that the real contrast became apparent. Moving a few hundred metres across the watershed, the terrain turned from benevolent Welsh-looking hills to hazy desert. Looking south from this point, everything was green. Looking north, everything was dust.

Expeditions

It was into this dust that famous explorers such as Bertram Thomas, St John Philby and Wilfred Thesiger embarked on their momentous expeditions to the north coast of the Gulf. While a lot of things have changed in the last seventy years, the view from the hills into the barren bowls must have been very similar. Standing on the edge, I confess I did not understand the compulsion that must have been in each of these explorers to saddle their camels, knowing that it would be months before they would taste sweet water again if, indeed, they survived at all.

In the comfort of a Toyota Land Cruiser and copious air conditioning, we headed north, down into the beginnings of the Empty Quarter which stretches west into Saudi Arabia and up to UAE, Bahrain and Qatar. We reached Al Hashman, about 80km from Yemen and 90km from Saudi Arabia. As we stepped out of the car to search for geodes, I was hit by the full force of the desert heat. The car thermometer read 43 degrees Centigrade, about 20 degrees warmer than the mountains a few hours’ drive away.

Geodes are spherically shaped rocks that often have hollow insides coated with beautiful crystal formations. My driver said that there used to be hundreds scattered over the otherwise blank desert floor but that many people had taken them away as souvenirs. We still managed to find a few, ranging in size from ping pong to foot ball. One had been broken and milky-white crystals shone brightly in the midday sun.

Al Hashman, apparently in the middle of nowhere, is actually next to a well, around which a small oasis of trees has formed. In an attempt to settle the scattering of Bedouin that call this part of the desert their home, the government has provided accommodation in Al Hashman. This is without a doubt the oddest location for council housing I have ever seen.

While this was in stark contrast to a past dominated by the frankincense trade which relied on the camels and their Bedouin masters as the main supply route to the markets of Mecca, Jerusalem and Rome, the tribes maintain much of their heritage and traditions. A great example is the exodus of the Bedouin and mountain tribes, their camels and other livestock for the duration of the Khareef. Any flat, open area near Salalah becomes transformed by a sea of blue tarpaulin tents and roads are once again dominated by stubborn, slow moving camels perpetually on the lookout for the next clump of grass.

Ubar Luxury Travel

Eric is based in Oman and is currently setting up a luxury travel business. Contact him at eric@ubarluxurytravel.co.uk

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