Long time no write….what have we been doing in the last 2 weeks?

After figuring out we would not go very far with public transportation here we rented a car. We went to Carrefour and bought camping gear and food, packed the 4×4 for 2 weeks of driving everywhere around Oman: 4700 km of highway, dirt roads, mountain tracks and sand dunes.

(Here I would love to insert pics to avoid the 1000 words, but this will have to wait a day or two, so be patient and come back on the site soon).

After 3 days exploring around Nizwa (200 km west of Muscat, inland) we headed to the Wahiba sands. No way was I going to come to Oman and not go to the desert for at least one night. End of June is way off season here (too hot, too hot, too hot) but we still tried our luck with calling a desert camp, asking if they could take us….tonight. They had no other guests but still organised to welcome us, and an hour or so later our guide Rashid met us at an agreed point with his brother Abdallah. After a hello and a hand shake Rashid gets behind the wheel of our 4×4 while his brother goes back to the camp. He drives on the tar road for a few hundred meters before abruptly turning off towards, euh, nothing, just a desert field. There is no road, no signs, but he still finds his way to his cousin’s where the race camels are kept (yup, camel races). Just in time to see how they feed them: alfalfa which is weighed on a scale to make sure they all get the same portion, milk and raw dates. The camels are a bit bigger then they looked from the car earlier on…. Since they are eating they are not overly friendly but still let us socialise a bit.

Afterwards we set out to drive to the desert camp….what an ride! Rashid is a modern beduin….he’s a professionnal at driving the 4×4 through the sand dunes, going up and down huge piles of sand, places you think it’s 100% impossible we’ll get out of. Every time we think he’s going to get us stuck in sand he revs up the engine, twirls the car around and leads us further into the desert. We make a stop on top of a high dune to watch the sunset; the view is magnificient….golden dunes of fine sand as far as the eye can see, the warm wind blowing across your face, no sign of human life in sight. (breathe in the karma).

After a while we go to the camp where we are showed to our hut made of palm leaves which let the wind through. Rashid asks us if we’d like to sleep outside (of course we accept) and organises that some beds are set up next to the hut. We are then invited to tea, sitting down on persian rugs with cushions and discussing about life with Rashid. Dinner follows, then Abdullah lights a campfire and we have dates and arabian coffee aromatised with cardamom while watching the fire. We smoke shisha and talk into the night with our hosts under the stars. When we are tired we retire to our beds but still have trouble finding sleep under the sky so full of stars right above our heads. Flying stars wave down at us while a cool breeze rocks us to sleep.

The next morning we get up to meet our beduin guide for breakast and talk some more, then he drives us back to town, making a stop for us to see how a family is preparing dates to be conserved for a season by cooking and drying them under the sun. It’s now time to inflate the tires, leave the sand dunes behind us and head back to the coast to watch giant green turtles laying eggs.