‘OH-Man’ what an ordeal it was

After three days and 1,680 kilometers through desert, mountains, rugged coastlines and two countries, our photographer Andrew Morton and I coaxed our groaning hire car back to Sharjah airport … just in time to miss our flight back to Bahrain.

It was a fitting end to a trip that didn’t go according to plan.  
In the spirit of Jack Kerouac we had set off from Bahrain for a weekend road trip to Oman – without a map.
“See you next year,” read the text message from a colleague as we boarded a budget Air Arabia flight to Sharjah. 
I had just explained to her that we were relying on our photographer’s boy-scouting abilities – he claimed he could use his watch as a compass – to get us from the UAE to Oman’s capital, Muscat.
Our plan was to embark upon a frugal road trip and reward ourselves with five-star luxury at the Shangri-La Barr Al Jissah Resort and Spa that clings to the mountains above the city.
But as with all ill-conceived plans, things tend to go awry.
Budget rent-a-car at Sharjah airport, while being the cheapest isn’t exactly budget. To rent a car for four days with an insurance policy that covered Oman cost an eye-watering BD173.
After a couple of hours idling in the airport we finally zoomed off in the rental company’s only remaining car – a white Chevrolet Lumina.
We headed for the Emirates Road with a hazy plan to stop off for lunch in the pretty Dubai border town of Hatta.
In our freewheeling haste we had forgotten to bring any music but it didn’t take long for us to both sit in awed silence as the terrain morphed from ugly construction sites to the endless red dunes of Dubai’s desert interior.
The road to Hatta is littered with small roadside shops selling pottery and carpets but determined to make it to Oman by sunset we soldiered on without stopping for souvenirs.
Hatta, according to the tourism websites is the most ancient settlement in Dubai. It has a Heritage Village – a fortified hamlet of 30 houses restored to their old style.
We arrived in the 45-degree heat of the mid-afternoon, and the eerily deserted village felt like a ghost town. We dutifully looked around and palm leaf and mud house and clambered up a hill lookout point, but were defeated by the heat and gratefully headed back to our air-conditioned rental car.
From Hatta it takes just 15 minutes to reach the UAE-Oman border which is among the most breathtaking in the world.
Huge craggy mountains jut into the sky and line either side of the road, and ubiquitous lookout forts – Oman’s most striking cultural landmarks – begin here. There are over 500 forts, castles and towers in Oman that were used to protect the country from invaders.  
Unlike most borders, entry into Oman took a painless 20 minutes and visas are free for GCC citizens.
We drove through rugged, beautiful mountains to Oman’s Highway 1. It’s inhospitable terrain dotted with splashes of green oases and small houses perched on rocky outcrops. There are numerous ‘wadi’ signs lining the road that warn of vast swells of water which flood the valleys during times of heavy rain. We were later told about a group of English teachers who set off to watch a wadi fill and were suddenly swept away, never to be seen again. 
By the time we reached Highway 1 the landscape had become persistently flat and dull. We passed through the industrial port city of Sohar and a series of uninteresting small towns. But the roads and road signs are excellent and by the evening, Andrew had, without a map, successfully got us to Muscat.
Muscat is unlike any other city in the Middle East. It’s a sleepy metropolis built into ancient hills that rear up from the Gulf of Oman in the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Everything, literally everything, is spotless. There is no chintz, little gaudiness or razzmatazz. Although we were exhausted after almost 12 hours of travelling, arriving at night in Muscat was magical.
Andrew, to his credit negotiated his way through the city to the road that the Shangri-La Hotel famously blasted through the mountain range. It’s the kind of road that car advertisers dream of. To one side the Arabian Sea glistens below and on the other dramatic peaks rise up behind the serpentine road.
As we curved around the final bend, the impressive Shangri-La Hotel – made up of three resorts – sparkled below. Tired, hungry and cramped we arrived at the concierge’s desk to find our booking hadn’t been processed on one of the busiest weekends of the summer. So we sat and waited. And waited.
Eventually, two hours later an apologetic porter found us accommodation in the furthest reach of the Al Bandar Resort. After what felt like a three-mile walk through endless corridors we finally reached our rooms.
The next day we explored the resort. In total there are a staggering 19 restaurants and bars, three private beaches and a CHI spa, giving you little reason to venture out from the resort. For a vast hotel with 640 rooms, it does an excellent job at feeling intimate. Children are relegated to Al Waha – the family resort – leaving adults to enjoy the facilities. The swimming pools are beautiful, the beaches are pristine surrounded by a mountainous cove, and a lazy river runs through the resort.  
Luckily Cyclone Gonu, which ripped through Oman in June causing $4 billion worth of damage, left the Shangri-La virtually untouched.
That evening we explored Muttrah souk, the oldest in Oman. For antiques, garments, spices and khanjar daggers, this is the place to go.
The following day our road trip started again. We left early for Nizwa, a town 165km north of Muscat that is dominated by a 17th century fort. The town’s immense palm oasis stretches for eight kilometres over the course of two wadis.
Unfortunately, our timing was far from impeccable. We arrived at midday on Friday when the souk, fort, goat market and shops were closed.
So instead we decided to look for the mystical Al Hotta caves deep in the foothills of the central Hajar Mountains. For almost an hour we circled through valley villages trying to find the illusive caves until we saw a sign explaining that they were closed until further notice.
Feeling parched and finding nothing else open we headed to the only international hotel in the area.
The Golden Tulip Nizwa is also perhaps the oddest hotel in the world. At two o’clock in the afternoon, eastern European girls snaked around a makeshift stage performing a loud and tuneless karaoke routine for two customers in the hotel’s dingy ‘sports’ bar.
In the empty café we were served coffee by the spitting image of Lurch and soggy sandwiches by a dejected Nepali and a miserable-looking Indonesian.
“It’s the Hotel California,” said Andrew as we downed our drinks and escaped.
Our next misadventure was our plan to drive through Jebel Shams – a beautiful mountainous area, 3,000 metres above sea level – to Oman’s Grand Canyon, through the other side and back to the main highway to Muscat. 
We followed the signs to the village of Hatt, which took us through valleys surrounded by misty peaks sprinkled with turreted towers.
Oman is a great country for a road trip. Just a few years ago it had only 10 miles of tarmac road. Now it has a road network displaying impressive feats of engineering but for the more remote areas you need a four-by-four.
And by this point we were racing against the clock, trying to make it through the mountain range by sundown.
The roads meander snake-like against sheer drops and even driving at 35km an hour can be stomach turning.
Parts of the road were devastated by Cyclone Gonu and our Chevrolet spluttered unhappily across narrow rocky passes.       
As the sun began to set we joined a group of locals at a lookout point and watched birds of prey circling the mountain tops.
Beyond the lookout point the well-paved road turned into a gravel ridge carved into the side of the mountain. Our choice was to risk the pass at night and get back to Muscat at a reasonable hour, or to come back the way we came.
We decided on the latter and finally got back to the luxurious comfort of the Shangri-La at 10pm. By the time we had showered most of the restaurants were getting ready to close and we were too tired to dance the night away to techno in the resort’s nightclub. A tapas bar came to the rescue and we devoured five-star snacks by the sea. 
The next day we were on the road again. Instead of taking the Hatta road back to the UAE, we tried our luck on the road that passes through Al Ain. It was an expensive mistake. Traffic in Muscat, a few wrong turns, the border crossing and the famously bad Dubai traffic meant that we arrived at Sharjah airport exactly two minutes before our flight was scheduled to depart.
Seven hours, a taxi ride to Dubai and BD272 later, a delayed Gulf Air flight whisked us back to Bahrain in time for work on Sunday.
Our frugal road-trip had turned into a very expensive weekend.
An extra couple of days and a 4x4 would have made a world of difference. But Oman by road is definitely a worthwhile trip. Just remember to pack a map, a credit card and book a few extra days off work.

Special Report
By -RdS-
editor@gulfweekly.com