Forgive me reader for I have sinned. It’s been 9 months since my last confession.
It’s been a busy 9 months. A lot has changed. My dad died in May 2025. It was sudden, and we were all crushed; still are. The ensuing months were chaotic, balancing grief with very busy jobs. Funerals, wills, property clearances (and trying to sell a lifetime collection of thousands of books) took centre stage. We’re getting there but it’s been emotionally, physically and mentally difficult.
There have also been fun things. Sporting events and adventures with friends, including running the Mont Blanc Marathon in June, and trail-running and hiking with mates in Washington/Mt Rainer National Park in August. There were holidays with Shona to Lazarote (fitness), Mexico (Day of the Dead and Cenote diving), and recently La Rosière in France (skiing) too.
The biggliest change (nobody would have believed it) is that, after 20+ years of chasing the corporate rabbit, we have decided that now is the time to let it go. Work will no longer book-end our travels, adventures, expeditions and explorations. Late last year, and with a mixture of excitement, sadness, trepidation, and abject terror, we both quit our jobs, deciding that it was time to do something other than work when we grow up. And so starts the third act… in which Ben & Shona sell their worldly possessions and go off to find themselves.
And it begins with a week in Oman.
Oman is the only country beginning with O. Fact. Oman smells nice, Frankenscence is burned everywhere. Oman’s roads are lovely, until they aren’t (lots of 4×4’s). The people are friendly and unguarded. Oman is safe, clean, welcoming and easy to explore.
Oman borders UAE, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. We’ve not spent a lot of time in the Middle East. We spent a few days in Dubai at the end of previous travels (hated it) and have visited Egypt and Morocco fairly recently. Each are Islamic countries, and bear some surface similarities to Oman, but Oman is a very different place.
Shona planned this trip, basing our itinerary on various organised tours that you can take through Oman. For freedom, flexibility and adventure, we elected to travel under our own steam and after spending a day in London and overnighting at Heathrow, arrived in Muscat on Monday evening. We hopped a taxi a short ride to our fancy hotel, the Kempinski in Al Mouj, a waterfront enclave about 10-15mins from the airport. Outside of central Muscat, it was a relaxing base in the capital. We enjoyed an exceptional Indian meal at one of the hotel’s restaurants before an early night (for us – Oman is 4 hours ahead).
Tuesday. The next morning, we had a fabulous breakfast – I mean really outstanding quality and options – and met a tour guide, Yasir and his fancy Jeep, for a guided tour of Muscat. We started with the Late Sultan Quaboo’s legacy, the Grand Mosque. It has an intricacy of design, scale and grandeur on a par with the Taj Mahal – the same “Wow!” from both of us on entering the main hall. Inside, the prayer carpet is a single piece of woven fabric, produced over 4 years by hundreds of Iranian weavers. It measures over 43,000 sq ft (using old money for effect). The vast, cavernous structure was only finished in 2001 – it’s amazing to see these monuments to religion still being built today.
Images – Yasir & Mosque
We next visited the port. Here we sadly witnessed the local police carrying bodies recovered from what transpired to have been a boat capsizing on the way to the local Daymaniyat Islands due to rough seas. It later transpired that three french tourists had died. A hugely unusual event and Yasir said there was lots of discussion with the guide network all day. Not lingering, we explored the small Souk which was a tame affair compared with Egypt or Morocco, before driving over a small pass to the old town and the ceremonial palace. After a brief lunch of a local flat bread and cheese, we stopped at the recently built Opera house for a very short, quite comical tour (it was basically shut – we queued for 20 minutes to be walked around the entrance hall). Yasir was a great guide and we really enjoyed our few hours with him. Back at the hotel, I went for a run, exploring Al Mouj, before we took a wander around the rather gentrified waterfront.
Wednesday. The next morning, with some concerns about the wind conditions and yesterday’s incident, we headed down to the waterfront to the MolaMola Dive Centre, to take us to the Daymaniyat Islands. Fortunately, conditions were smooth in the hour’s ride out to the islands. Descending for our first dive, we drifted pretty fast over lovely corals and plentiful coral fish. After 30 minutes, we turned into a strong current and were kicking hard, being pushed up off the reef, requiring the surface marker buoy to be deployed and cutting short the dive. The second dive was without incident and we returned to Muscat for a leisurely afternoon.
Thursday. After gyms and swims and another amazing breakfast, I met a chap to collect our hire car. After a brief argument over the car (I was wrong), I picked up our shiny Nissan X-Terra 4×4 7 seater gas guzzling unnecessarily enormous (but near-zero luggage space) monster of a vehicle. I picked up Shona and we drove to Nizwa, visiting an ancient fort complex.
Then we headed on to our accommodation for the night, The View Hotel – up a steep, and deteriorating road in the mountains. Deteriorating is perhaps an understatement – it was a very steep sand track, only accessible by 4×4 requiring low-gearing and outstanding driving skills. Well, the first bit anyway. Safely arriving, we settled into our cliff-top cabin on stilts, overlooking the valley 1500m below.
Friday. Rising early, and after an adequate breakfast (I weep for Kempinski), we drove back down the steep path, along a bit, then back up a much longer, much steeper and altogether nerve-jangling path up to Al Khitaym village to do the Jebel Shams Balcony Walk along Oman’s version of the Grand Canyon. It was a fairly spectacular place and a rugged and fairly exposed walk. The sobering sight of a car that had ploughed over the edge from several hundred metres above didn’t do much to help (later confirmed parking brake left off – no people inside!). It was a good hike though and back at the car, we hurtled (safely) down, stopping for a very good, very cheap (£2.30) lunch at a roadside restaurant before getting back to The View to shower, dine and sleep.
Saturday. After a brief morning run and a leisurely breakfast, we loaded up the car and drove towards the desert. Stopping in Nizwa to explore the Souks, buying some local dates and some emergency antihistamines & bite cream for a bitten Shona, we arrived at the head of a sand road into the desert. We paid 2 Riels (£4) to a local tyre shop to deflate our tyres, and drove a hairy 10km or so along sand to the Desert Nights Resort – a Bedouin-Style* camp in the desert.
*If Bedouins had aircon, a lovely shower and a comfy bed with crisp sheets.
We got driven up to the top of the adjacent sand dune to watch the sun set, before emptying all our clothing of fine, soft sand, having a pre-dinner drink, followed by a delicious buffet. The musical accompaniment was traditional and challenging, and required a couple of beers and some wine to see through (some hotels serve alcohol, but not all and you can’t buy it elsewhere).
Sunday. I think I had a bad glass of wine as I awoke with a headache, having been woken a lot through the night by noisy aircon. Oh for the Bedouin life. We left the camp at 9ish, and drove a couple of hours east towards the ocean, reinflating tyres en route and getting the car cleaned at a local roadside carwash (these litter the highways as it’s illegal to drive around with a dirty car). We stopped in the seaside town of Sur to see the hill forts, lighthouse and traditional Dwal boats that are built there. We were pretty well the only tourists. After a lunch at a beautiful roadside cafe (Crepe Cafe – recommended), we headed out to our accommodation for the night – the Sama Ras Al Jinz Ecolodge. Looking for the hotel, we passed a road-side resort and Shona commented “God, that looks grim” before it dawned that this was our hotel. Fortunately, low expectations were beaten and our room was rustic but spacious, clean and cool.
We had intended to visit turtle nesting grounds in the evening, and paid at the hotel for our tickets. Later, we were checking online how long the experience might take and were bombarded by “don’t do this” reviews – people consistently saying it’s either a) Fake, b) Out of season, or most commonly c) unethical in the treatment of the turtles. We managed to get our money back and after dinner, settled in for our last sleep in Oman.
Monday. We had an early start and swift breakfast before a three hour drive along the coast back to the airport. We arrived with very little fuss, dropped the car and our bags off, and breezed through security into the Oman Air airport lounge (a legacy of lots of travel with work last year is airport lounge access!). Highly recommended – it’s beautiful. As is the whole airport. It’s huge, brand new, and almost empty. Lovely.
Summary
So, what to say of Oman. Well, firstly, we loved it. Oman has a great balance of comfort, luxury, adventure, peril, scenery and intriguing culture. We are so glad we self-drove; the main roads are a pleasure and navigation very simple, although I recommend being alert for goats or camels on the motorways, after a couple of emergency braking incidents. There isn’t much traffic, but fuel is dirt cheap and Oman has a superb road network. Many of the vehicles are however 4×4 because as soon as you’re off the main roads, it gets rocky/sandy/steep fast, and you need to be confident driving off-road.
The scenery is very barren but dramatic, with most of the 1000km+ we drove being desert. Yasir mentioned that temperatures hit 47ºC in the summer months. Everyone lives in walled compounds, 600m2 – land bequeathed by the Sultan. These are small fortresses, built for privacy more than security. As you drive past, they look like plush oases in the rocky landscape, but what’s odd is that there is no landscaping around them; piles of rock/rubble litter the surrounds.
The food is good, blending many cultures, with a large Indian, Pakistani and Yemeni influence. Lots of breads, cheeses, houmus, etc mixed with curries and rice dishes. Also plentiful date-based foods and deserts, where date trees are seen everywhere. We both had minor stomach issues, but it’s hard to determine what caused this.
Culturally, Oman has been strongly influenced by the UK through long-standing partnership. You can see this influence on various facets of life (including a UK three-pronged plug!). However the intersect with the Islamic practices carries friction. 5x daily calls to prayer, women are rarely seen and mostly covered, both seem to jar with the open, always-on customs of the west. Unlike other Muslim countries we’ve visited however, there is a more relaxed feel to it, and while we were cautious not to flout conventions, we had no issues with how we dressed, or conducted ourselves.
The country clearly has [oil] wealth and apparently low unemployment (<3%). It doesn’t have the commercialisation and gaudiness of Dubai, but equally, we saw few Omanis doing any blue-collar jobs, with lots of Indian and Pakistani immigrants building houses, laying roads and serving in restaurants. It’s a country building itself into something, but what is yet to be seen as we felt that the juxtaposition between tradition, religion and increasing globalisation and capitalism isn’t an easy one.
Overall, a strong recommend as a place to visit, we loved it.
Travels with Sklaroffs 