Oman: Dune Cruising
Published in Gulf Life, June 2008
My other car is a Nissan – a rather dull, elderly Nissan Almera 1.4, dented, scraped and blessed with an A/C system that hasn’t worked since the summer before last.
For today, though, roaming free amidst Oman’s Sharqiya Sands, I’m at the wheel of a sparkling 4WD Toyota Land Cruiser, with a 4.5 litre engine, electronic fuel injection and 220 horsepower. I’m no petrolhead and have no clear idea what “220 horsepower” means exactly, but I do know this is a big car, those are big dunes, and I’m having big fun launching one at the other to see who wins.
It’s been an epic day of sand, starting with a unique claim to fame: just over 24 hours ago, I was the first person in the entire Middle East to see the sun rise.
My guide, Masoud, and I had driven out at dawn between rolling hills down to Oman’s easternmost point, the Ras al-Jinz headland. Both this and nearby Ras al-Hadd – the point where the Arabian Sea meets the Gulf of Oman – are fringed by sweeping bays of white sand, used as nesting grounds by thousands of giant green turtles. We came to see if any reptilian visitors happened to be around.
Oman plays host to five of the seven species of sea turtle: the leatherback is an offshore visitor, while the loggerhead, the Olive Ridley, the endangered green and the critically endangered hawksbill all nest on Omani beaches. Each night, the heavy-shelled beasts haul themselves out of the shallows at Ras al-Jinz to laboriously dig a hole in the sand with their flippers, lay a clutch of eggs, cover them over and return to the sea. Some 55 days later, the hatchlings emerge for the most dangerous journey of their lives, dodging foxes, crabs and hungry gulls on a dash down the beach into the safety of the surf.
Night excursions to watch the turtles are a popular tourist treat hereabouts – perhaps too popular: Masoud told me he’d known nights when more than 120 people had packed the beach. He related horror stories of tour leaders shining torches directly at the turtles while they were laying, of tourists lifting up the turtles’ flippers to get better photos of the eggs – even of turtles being so disoriented by noise, jostling and bright lights that they’d abandoned their nests and returned to the sea.
Despite the allure of a guaranteed sighting after dark, I decided I wanted no part of such a circus, and opted instead to take my chances at sunrise, when I was much less likely to see egg-laying but would at least cause no harm – and might even have the beach to myself.
It was a bit after 6am when we arrived on the beach – a beautiful, sinuous expanse of tumbling waves, the powder-fine sand pocked by mini-craters marking where turtles had buried their eggs the previous night. There were none around now, but that didn’t matter at all: the setting was serenely beautiful. From here, at the easternmost extremity of Oman (and thus of the entire Arabian Peninsula), I watched a golden sun climb out of the sea – then Masoud called me over. He’d found one single turtle, a tiny hatchling that was struggling from its sandy nest. We looked on at a distance: it was like a little clockwork toy, small enough to fit on the palm of my hand, all four legs scrabbling for open water. A gull flapped over, eager for a turtle breakfast, but I shooed it off and stood guard as the hatchling made his way down the beach. In truth, his chances were slim – scientists estimate that only two or three out of every ten thousand survive into adulthood – but even so, as he was taken out by the ebb tide into the vastness of the sunlit Indian Ocean, my heart went with him.
Oman’s Sharqiya (‘Eastern’) Region spans a swathe of territory from the fertile coastal plain, with its sandy beaches, to craggy, impenetrable peaks cresting 2,000 metres; it includes some of Arabia’s most beautiful desert landscapes. On our journey inland from Ras al-Jinz, Masoud diverted for a spectacular drive on hairpin roads over a ridge and down into Wadi Bani Khalid, a valley framed by titanic mountain cliffs. Seismically distorted folds and steeply angled promontories jutted into the sky. My eyes skidded over the rocky surfaces, struggling for a sense of scale, while Masoud showed off, pushing the Land Cruiser onto narrow, stony tracks coiling above the wadi floor.
We ended up at a razor-edge vantage point, perhaps a thousand dizzying metres above the pools and date palms, then ventured down again and walked into the wadi. Quiet, shady and flowing with cool water, it was like an Arabian Shangri-La. Kids splashed, families picnicked and the ribbon of fertility climbed up the valley, losing itself as the arid cliffs narrowed to a V.
Further on, at the dusty frontier village of Mintirib, we bumped into Hamdan, an excitable buddy of Masoud’s from the Desert Thunder tour company. Mintirib is where the road ends, ahead of the shifting dunes of the Sharqiya Sands – formerly known as the Wahiba Sands, until the local Bedouin complained that the Wahibi were only one of many tribes living here, whereupon the government changed the name. This is where the big 4WDs really come into their own – but before heading into the sands, tyres have to be partially deflated to give extra traction, so everyone stops at Mintirib to let out some air and take in some gossip. I’m not sure what passed between Masoud and Hamdan while they worked, but I think it was a challenge: as we set off, both lads cranked up their stereos (Masoud had Bob Marley; Hamdan preferred the Emirati Bedouin singer Abu Rogha) and put pedal to metal, their Land Cruisers flying together over the moguls at speeds topping 100kph.
Our destination lay 50km into the roadless dunes – the remote ‘1000 Nights’ tourist camp, an impressive operation sleeping over fifty people in goat-hair tents equipped with framed beds, along with showers, flushing toilets and lavish hotel-style buffet meals. Hamdan joined me for a blissful sunset, atop a rippled dune of warm ochre above the camp. “Nature is stronger than us,” he declared, then slapped the sand contemplatively and pointed to the east. “In twenty years, this dune will be over there.” We sat in the twilight as a cool breeze blew.
Next morning, he was grinning.
“Here, take the keys,” he said. “Masoud has gone ahead, but we have to get his car to Mintirib. Keep the revs up, only use 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear and go where I go.”
And that is how, 24 hours after the white sands of Ras al-Jinz, I come to find myself in sole charge of a very big, very expensive Land Cruiser amidst the golden sands of the Sharqiya.
Who said Nissan owners don’t know how to have fun?