A Country You Haven’t Heard Of

Today, let’s go on a journey to a country you may not have heard of. Oman — officially the Sultanate of Oman — a country located to the south of Saudi Arabia, to the east of Yemen, bordering to the west and north the UAE. A country of old Islamic culture, incredibly welcoming people and a country of great wilderness, where you can have incredible experiences in the outdoors.

In Oman, it is legal, it is encouraged, to go wild camping. And by wild camping, I mean camping as the Omani people do. Packing a four by four, taking a barbecue and driving out into the middle of nowhere, into the middle of the desert, where the sand dunes rise in all directions. Onto the coast, where there is no one and nothing, anywhere around. Where you can set up camp next to the waves of the Arabian Sea and be hidden by sand dunes. Oman is where you can very quickly be out in this incredible silence, feeling the serenity of nature.

Sand Dunes And Turquoise Ocean

There are very few hotels in the country. Certainly very few hotels outside the main towns, but there is this incredible landscape of rolling sand dunes, turquoise ocean, then great mountain chains that are crumbling. You can see them visibly crumbling back into the earth. All these places are where you can take your four by four and go camp.

And what’s incredible about Oman is, they have oil wells, and they have built really, really good roads around the country. There was one road — I vividly remember this one road, driving along this road and it was going through the sand dunes. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere. There were no signs. It was a brand new tarmac road and it went 30 miles deep into the sand dunes. It was a paradox, really this connection into the wilderness. And then it stopped. There was no, it didn’t end anywhere, it wasn’t going anywhere. It just stopped. And then the rest was dirt and then sand. And for me, it really summed up how easy it was to travel around and camp in the wilderness.

Because other places you go to, if you want to go camp in the sand dunes, it’s really going to be a longer mission. It’s going to be tiring, hot, sweaty. It’s going to be a lot of effort for spending a night in your own camp.

Whereas Oman, you have this opportunity to travel quite a vast country very quickly, and set up camp very easily in places that are completely wild. And you can really be alone with the people you want to be with.

Mountains Rivers And Natural Pools

My favorite from the whole trip — I did that, so wild camping for 10 days — is a place called Wadi Bani Khalid.

Now, “wadi” in Oman are these rivers that come down from the mountain. And they kind of come down terraces, and they create these pools, these natural pools in the landscape, and there are very beautiful places where you can go swim. You can go swim in these turquoise waters. If you go swimming in them, you can find hidden caves. And during the day they’re quite popular places for the Omani people to go hang out. We decided we would camp there.

So  we drove there. We took our stuff and we camped at this wadi. And as sunset came, everybody left and we had the whole place to ourselves. It’s an actually fairly famous place in Oman, a fairly famous attraction. And we had the whole place to ourselves, wild camping, at Wadi Bani Khalid. Waking up in the morning, swimming completely alone in this deserted river in a canyon deep inside Oman.

One of my other favorites was camping on the coast in some sand dunes, about halfway down the country on the road to Salalah.

People Willing To Help You Out

I had not had much off-road driving experience, certainly not in sand dunes. I took the four by four into the dunes, parked, camped — beautiful, by the coast. Next morning, couldn’t move it, and had to walk six kilometers to the road. And I tried to gesticulate, look, we’re stuck. And this, this one guy in the village understood what I meant. He stood on the road. He flagged down the first vehicle that went past, told this guy, look, there’s someone stuck.

So we drove together out to where my vehicle was stuck, pulled it out, pulled it all the way back to the road. Incredibly friendly and helpful people, refused any payment, the guy after helping us and spending an hour of his time getting us out of the sand, all he wanted to do was give us food, some figs from his farm.

It was a wonderfully hospitable experience and goes to show that although it’s a country you’ve never heard of, and often people think in Islamic countries, it might be dangerous, the people might not be that friendly, it’s actually always the opposite. Incredibly friendly people willing to help you out.

An Omani Will Tell You Where The Best Spots Are

Now wild camping on your own, without a map, is maybe not for everyone. So what I’d recommend is using a travel designer, who can be your guide as well in the country. Because if you want to go really into the deep wilderness, you can’t go as one vehicle. You have to do as the Omanis do, always travel in pairs.

So you have two vehicles going — one with a guide, usually a guide and a driver, two people. And the other one, which you are driving yourself, so you still get that experience to drive in the sand dunes, to drive off road, if you want to, of course. And then when you go to set camp, you’ve got somebody making food, taking care of those small details. And then usually the guide or the driver will come away from you, so you still have this complete privacy, this complete feeling of being in nature without a guide’s tent next to you.

And the other great thing of doing it this way is that the guide knows where to go. So if you’re going to go and go camp in the wilderness, you can have a great time, you can go around, but you’re not going to know the best spot. You need an Omani to tell you and show you where the best spots are, depending on what you’re going to do. Wadi Bani Khalid was one that was recommended to me by a travel designer in Oman. It was definitely my favorite there. The one on the beach was also recommended, and the travel designers said, don’t go there alone. I did, I got stuck. And they came to the rescue.