We made a short stop at Al Kamil Wal Wafi. It has two main towns, which are Al Kamil and Al Wafi. Al Kamil is home to an extraordinary museum, which was unfortunately closed. This private castle houses the personal collection of Sheikh Khalfan Al Hashmi. His great-grandfather owned the...
We arrived at the coastal village of Al Ashkharah just before sunset. It is known for its mild climate and beaches with brutal tides inhabited by birds and turtles. Al Ashkharah is also an essential source of Omani fish, such as Al-Sharkha, shrimp, Al-Sahwa, Al-Shaari, and Al-Safi. It is...
The oasis of Al Mintarib, or Mintrib, lies on the edge of the spectacular sand sea of the Ramlat al Wahiba desert and is considered one of the entry gates to the desert. In the days before the housing of Al Mintirib encroached on its space, this solid-walled fort with its sunken door must...
Our next stop was one of the many forts built by the Hajiri tribe after they arrived in the area in 1008. It is a large fort with a mighty round tower and a unique, separate arched external staircase. Its massive walls dominate the city center, and the fort also serves as a good...
Ibra is one of the oldest cities in Oman, and it was a center of Al Harthy, Al Maskari, Al Mughairi, and Al Riyami tribes. The old part of town is a honeycomb of crumbling mud-built houses of two or three stories. We entered by a double archway and walked through some of the best parts of...
From Jebel Samhan Plateau, we drove around Baobab Grove to Mirbat. After a short visit, we drove east along Highway 49, passing rugged mountains on our left and the coastline of sandy beaches on our right. We slowly drove around fishing towns and windswept cliffs fringed by the cerulean...
We made a short stop in the fishing town of Mirbat to stroll around its harbor and merchant houses in the ruined old quarter. Some locals remain, but many are derelict as modern residents opt for concrete lodgings over the traditional mud and wattle. Some of the old buildings have kept...
We were surprised, same as botanists, to find a small stand of baobab trees gracing the thickets just above the Salalah Plain. These magnificent giants, their trunks sometimes ringed with snails, stand head and shoulders over the more typical Dhofari vegetation and are the only such trees...
We drove to the upper plateau of Jebel Samhan to stay overnight. It suddenly ends in a vertiginous drop of more than 1000 meters to the coastal plain below. Barely a ledge interrupts the vertical cliff, and it seems impossible that there should be any route down from here that...
We stopped next to the deep sinkhole (100 meters wide and 211 meters deep), known as the Well of Birds, discovered in 1997 by a team of Slovenian explorers. It gapes without warning in a corrugated landscape of rock covered in thicket. A small path leads from the car park to a viewing...