Words by: Mike Nott
Photos by: Ian Huggins, Ricardo Perez Albores and Marina Bruce
This was my fourth, annual, week-long, Eid al Adha off-road driving pilgrimage to Oman. Uniquely, this time I was not alone. Over the course of sending out my plans to friends, hoping that at least one of them could come, I ended up with five cars tagging along for the week: Marina and Neil Bruce in two cars, Ian Huggins, Ricardo Perez Albores and Mike Galvin in a car each. After the necessary pre-trip flurry of emails, detailing spares, timings, routes, etc, we crossed the border at Mezyad before the Eid rush on Thursday 10th October.
At this point it is worth describing the “plan.” Last year, I was thwarted in proving an off-road route starting from the coast, near Haytum then paralleling the Al Huqf escarpment and finishing across the wadi and gravel plains at a point about 20km East of Adam. I had been intercepted in the oryx reserve and asked, very politely, to leave. This year, I was more determined to make sure that any chance of being intercepted was minimised and that we could traverse that particular area unimpeded. Planning the route involved several hours staring at Google Earth and plotting the positions of fence gaps, wadi lines, possible tracks and guessing suitable waypoints on the general line of the route. I had received a great track for a part of the route from David and Theresa Wernery of Bling My Truck, with a key point identified for getting off the Al Huqf escarpment. With the route now plotted, I aimed to do it from North to South.
We drove from Mezyad straight to the start point, arriving in the dark at about 10:00 p.m. We were all carrying 80L of fuel because there were no petrol garages en-route, the “guestimated” distance was at least 450km and the driving conditions were not known; in soft sand our fuel consumption could drop to half what it is on the road. Having arrived in the dark we didn’t know what our surroundings looked like. The next morning we found ourselves on a flat gravel plain with some distant hills lying on our intended route. We set off across the plain and followed the line of sand and gravel wadis. The scenery was stark with only the lines of vegetation breaking up the flatness. We picked up a good line only to find ourselves staring at warning signs telling us we were about to enter a military training area and not to pick up anything we might find; we steered away and paralleled this area at a safer distance. We were making good progress and so we diverted to a nearby feature that I’d noticed from Google Earth. It turned out to be a small lake with camels and other wildlife drinking, and fish swimming in its waters; a true oasis.
We now approached the main line of the major wadi I’d chosen, heading South, and started to encounter more and more areas of soft sand and gravel, a graveyard and the first hint that we were heading to the Al Huqf escarpment; a wall of friable limestone under which we took some shade. Soon after that we started to hit thin but long dune tongues, through which we crossed and then we descended from the low escarpment into the heart of this route. The huge sand plains in the shadow of the Al Huqf escarpment lay before us. We stopped at the well known “Duck Rock” and set off across the plains with the Al Huqf escarpment on our right exposing all of its striking beauty. This area must be a geologist’s dream. By 4:00 p.m. we started to look for a campsite and found a strange tuning fork shape amongst the hills and hid ourselves within it. We’d driven 230km and, with only a flat tyre to deal with along the way, we thought we’d done reasonably well. The meat of the “route proving” was to be encountered the next day.
More sand plains followed but which were interspersed with frequent, low lying rocky hills through which we had to weave our way. When I say “plain” I really do mean a totally flat surface with no hint of a bump. This stretched to our left and to beyond the horizon, while the escarpment kept us company on our right. The going through the plains was good; helped by previous tracks, but where no tracks existed, we had to plough our own lines though soft sand and shockingly bumpy vegetated terrain. The rocky outcrops were something of a relief, provided the surface was smooth. Eventually, after following the escarpment for about 70km, we climbed up through a maze of limestone outcrops to gain the plateau above. The contrast was stark. The plateau was, in parts, billiard table flat, occasionally broken up by smooth rolling ridges and the going was very good. My secret fear was that too much soft sand and soft gravel driving would deplete our fuel supplies to the point where we may need to divert to one of several petrol garages. This would have been a miserable alternative to have to cope with.
The key now was to hit the oil drum marker that David Wernery had said was a vital waypoint from where to descend from the escarpment. We made rapid progress and hit the oil drum dead on, helped by the trail of tracks that necessarily lead to it. We descended along this track and then broke off right to again follow the line of the Al Huqf escarpment southwards. The scenery continued to be stunning and the going varied from soft sand to compact gravel tracks to stints of rock climbing. My shared fear was that we would soon be entering the area of the oryx reserve and may find our way barred. Where tracks existed, we would follow them, and picked up one that led us into the reserve, but there was no fence and no indication that we were inside. We spotted a huge, precariously balancing boulder and stopped for a good break and a welcome lunch in its shade.
Continuing on, we found our way through this amazing landscape, visiting Wadi Baw and the huge graveyard site on the high ground at its entrance. Our next potential obstacle was the existing oryx reserve fence line to our South, through which we needed to pass. Google Earth had indicated a possible breach and we headed to it and were relieved to find the gap open and evidently much used by local camel and goat herders. We made it though before dark and now needed to find a campsite in a less controversial area. We did, and perched ourselves on a small flat plateau where we were visited by several Omanis keen to know where we’d come from, where we were going and when, and if our Arabic had been good enough. We’d done just over 180km and I knew we’d be able to knock off the route the following day.
The third and last day of the route is to traverse the gravel plains South of Al Ajaiz, which was easily done before ending up at the petrol garage at the small community of Haytum. This was my intended end of the route, but the consensus amongst the group was that the near beach was a better finish point and they were right! After refilling, we drove the short distance to the beach, parked up and enjoyed a cooling and cleansing swim. This classic, expeditionary, off-road route turned out to be just over 530km.
We were now only three days into the week-long break, which meant that we had the chance to redo some of the routes and areas I’d driven the previous year (published in OutodoorUAE December 2012). We headed to Ash Shuwaymiyah, restocked on essentials and headed to a campsite, just off the new road that has one of the most spectacular views in the region. I was surprised to find billiards there and we played several times. I am a huge fan and even bought a pool table for my home game room at https://www.nashvillebilliard.com/. The following four days saw us explore the wadi and mountains around Jebel Samhan (discovering a plethora of frankincense trees and more stunning views), driving through the herds of nodding-donkeys around Marmul before heading to near Barbazum to repeat a route from last year. This route heads South, through serpentine and glorious wadis before traversing the mountain tops to the edge of the Dhofar escarpment overlooking Mirbat and, in my view, the best campsite view in the region. The last day included a visit to the largest Baobab tree I’ve ever seen, a pilgrimage to the fort at Mirbat and then we took the rough, off-road coastal route from there that hugs the shoreline and wadis to Sadh, to find a beachside camping site for our last night together.
We’d driven together for a week, had had no vehicle problems, we’d driven through some rough and very remote terrain and had, despite only one encounter with military personnel, who proved to be very amenable, achieved everything we’d set out to do unhindered. It had been a remarkable trip with about 900km of hugely enjoyable off-road driving. It is a truism that the worst part of finishing in southern Oman is the drive home. We left Marina and Neil on the beach and headed home on the 1,400km road journey back to Dubai, envious that they had another fortnight of more of the same.
