Trekking in Oman
We’ve just got back from a scuba diving, sea kayaking and mountain walking trip in Oman. This destination is still relatively new on tourist trail so information for planning trips can be difficult. Here is a synopsis of some of the useful information we found!
Roads
Driving in Oman is hairy to put it mildly. If you want an easy time - pay for a vehicle with a driver. A lot of tour operators offer this service and it is worthwhile. The road system around Muscat is being rebuilt and changing daily. This makes navigation almost impossible! There are hardly any maps as the roads keep changing so everyone navigates using the roundabouts. These all have symbols on them, e.g. book roundabout (near the university.) Also, google maps are used by everyone, so if you have this ability on your phone - use it.
A lot of the roads in the mountains are steep and unsealed. 4wheel drive is a must on some of these. The driving was scary, spectacular and awesome with steep drop offs, amazing views and unbelievable cambers!
Maps
Maps are really hard to come by either outside or inside the country. This makes planning difficult but we did find some! Big country maps are easy to come by. These are usually huge scale but useful for identifying general areas. For example, the Jebel Akhdar range of mountains is very obvious if you go for a topical map. We managed to get an arial map (designed for pilots) from Stanfords, the map shop in London. They do a mail order/internet service which is useful. However, they failed to obtain an admiralty map for us so planning for the sea kayaking was difficult. Google Earth is used by everyone in Dubai or Oman as the road systems change so frequently. We printed out our seakayaking route before we left the UK. In addition, we had 3G phones so we could google map & GPS when needed. This came in very handy when seakayaking as Jonathan’s rudder broke making paddling difficult. We used my iphone to locate our position on GPS, work out the nearest landing place using Google Maps and then telephone for a pick up! Oh, the wonders of technology!
The Explorer books proved very useful - see below.
Books
The Bradt travel guide was useful as a starting point for finding ideas. Some of the information was inaccurate (mainly prices) and some of the food ideas were not inspiring. In fairness, this is probably because the food was uninspiring!
The Adventure Trekking Guide was useful but with qualifications. The maps are incredibly difficult to understand as they are all hand drawn routes in the "Wordsworth" style. The routes are mostly one way with a design to carry your own camping kit. Oman is not a great place for this because the availability of water in the mountains is very scarce so you have to carry a lot of fluid. There was a sad lack of circular routes. Some of the routes are climbing routes - so be careful to pick appropriate levels!
The Oman Off Road book published by Explorer publishing was an accidental find in Dubai. This range of books is fantastic and would have helped greatly in our planning - if only we’d known that it existed! There are lots of driving routes with small and longer treks shown off these. The maps are all Google Earth with clear roads listed. The routes which require 4WD are clearly marked too.
The Trekking in Oman book published by Explorer is very hard to come by - but when we found it after our trekking - seemed really good. It is basically a pack of pamphlets showing the routes for each area. If you have been spoilt by Ordinance Survey maps like me you might be a bit disappointed, but they are still very usable.
Sea kayaking
This is really hard to arrange in advance because of the lack of maps. We ended up kayaking from Qantab (south of Muscat) to Quryat (further south.) We hired kayaks and paddles from Muscat Diving and Adventure centre. They only have big barges of kayaks which are quite heavy. They are pretty stable though which is useful as the swell and chop can be quite interesting (particularly in the afternoon when the wind picks up.)
Unfortunately, there was a very bad algal bloom for the 3 weeks we were there, including the 3 days of kayaking. This meant that the water stank, visibility was about 6 inches (no good for snorkelling or diving) and sadly there were a lot of dead fish. Otherwise the first day would have been really good for kayaking. The beaches are fine for camping and you can camp almost anywhere (it is not advisable to camp very near villages though.) There are several villages you can stock up on water at as well as provisions. The tidal range was nearly 3 metres when we were there so there was a lot of boat manoeuvering in the evenings!
Diving
We did a live-aboard around Mussandam leaving from Dibba. We had some good dives, but the algal bloom (red tide) made visibility very poor at times. Otherwise, the Al Marsa diving boat was a good set up with decent food, reasonable cabins and good sites. It is pricey though.