Oman, September 2016

For this journey I was accompanied by Nico.

I flew from Kuwait to Muscat, got a car at the airport and drove off to my hotel for the night. I really can't quite remember what I did that evening.. but the next morning I checked out and picked up Nico from the airport.

For the first three nights we stayed in Muscat and had three major plans: Explore the city, go diving and go canyoning.

The city of Muscat.

Well as I live in Kuwait being in an arabic city wasn't quite new to me. Compared to Kuwait Muscat was cleaner. And it seemed to be more openminded and friendly in general. We visited the grand mosque, checked out a mall or two.. and.. well that's about it. I believe there's not too much to do or see in Muscat. We didn't find anything anyway..

The diving.

We had booked a diving trip for our third day in Muscat which started a little east of the city. The diving school was nice and people were friendly. We were joined by two girls.. whose nationalities I forgot. For the first of our two dives we first did a little reminder, as all of our last dives were quite a while back.. and then checked out the reefs around a little island off the coast. There wasn't too much to see except for some lion fish, puffer fish and moray eels. Nothing we hadn't seen before. The water wasn't quite as clear either.

I mainly concentrated on being not in too much pain though at most times. The day before I injured my right ear somehow while cliff diving (I'll get to that..) and was in discomfort when being deeper than two or three meters. So after that first dive we had a break, chilled on the boat, had a snack and chatted for a bit with those girls and the diving instructors. For the second dive I decided not to join. As there was nothing much to see anyway (we were hoping for whale sharks but weren't lucky. Just 7 Months later we finally got to see them though.. I'll post about that some other time..) I decided it wasn't worth the pain. Nico on the other hand went for it and had his second dive.

By the way - I haven't been able to dive without being in pain ever since.. shoot. Might have to go to the doc and get that checked out some day..

The canyoning.

As many of you may know.. I love canyoning. Climbing, swimming, hiking, jumping. My love for that started off in Goa, India and I try not to miss out on any chance of going canyoning ever since. It's the connection to nature and the adrenaline that really makes me happy. So in Oman we went for two different canyons. The first one (Wadi Shaab) was pretty touristy. Lots of tourists, locals, families, elderly.. you get me. This was more of a walk with the option of having some fun. It started off with a short boat ride and a short hike. The canyon was nice but the view was a little destroyed by pipes and litter. After a while it looked more like a canyon, we followed a path on the right side of it, about 5-6m above the water. From the distance we saw that some people were jumping into the water and.. of course.. I wanted to do that too! So we reached the spot: A little platform with turquoise water below. People were jumping, watching, resting or having a picnic here. So we decided to have a break too and do some jumping. We put down some of our clothes and then started the fun. I wouldn't be me if I just did what everyone did. So I looked out for a possibility to get some higher jumps and spotted a ledge another 5m or so higher. So I climbed up and checked out the spot. It seemed fine if I jumped far enough (as I had to jump over the path below). The jump was amazing, I had some decent air time and Nico was a good lad and recorded me before he started jumping himself. We jumped a little, bathed and watched others fighting their fears standing on the ledge. Then we carried on and reached a point where the path disappeared. The rest of the canyon had to be swam through. So we put down our clothes again and swam. After a few hundred meters the canyon 'ended' in a narrow gap in the mountain - so we entered that gap. It was just about 20m long and at some parts just wide enough to fit our heads through. It was pretty dark, the water emitting the light from outside being the only light source. It was like swimming in turquoise light. After this narrow bit the walls opened up and we entered a small cave, just about 5 meters in diameter. A little waterfall inside made it look really cool. So we hang out there for a bit before deciding to climb up the waterfall to check out what was up there. The climb was a little slippy but we managed and were rewarded with the most idyllic place. No other human beings around, crystal clear turquoise waters surrounded by white boulders and beige steep walls. Awesome. From there we surrounded the little cave and ended up above it. One little jump brought us back to the center of the cave. It was time to head back as we (for some weird reasons) forgot to bring water and were pretty dehydrated. The way back was easy going (except for the thirst) and before crossing the little lake to get back to the car we found a restaurant where we bought lots of water and coke. After that we headed back to Muscat.

The second canyon was a bit more of a challenge. If I'm not mistaken it was called Wadi Bani Khalid. For this one we were advised to hire a guide - which we did. He picked us up at the hotel and drove us to said canyon, which took about 3 hours. We parked the car at one end of the canyon and then took a taxi to the other end where our hike started. We walked, climbed and swam for a bit and enjoyed the peacefulness. There were no other people around which made this even more awesome. At some points we were able to do some cliff diving again (Yay, my highest jump until now.. estimated 13-14m. To be topped some day..) or sled down natural slides.

Now on this trip through the canyon a few things went wrong. It started with me losing one of my piercings while jumping - shit happens. Then we ended up being covered in tiny leeches. So we spent some minutes plucking them off our bodies before having a lunch break.

Some hiking, swimming and climbing later we reached the spot that would be our doom. Well.. mainly Nicos doom. We were walking in line, the guide in front, Nico in the middle and myself in the back. All of a sudden I notice Nico turning around and running towards me, screaming, waving. I was confused. He dropped all of his belongings and ran past me. I yelled at him to be careful as there was a ledge he could have fallen off and the terrain was not very easy. Then I noticed what was going on.. he was chased by wasps. Or hornets. We noticed these beasts before, huge orange colored beasts from hell. If you're interested, see HERE how they look like. After noticing the wasps I decided to take cover myself and headed towards the guide, who was some way down the canyon as he hadn't noticed what was going on. I told him and then we whistled and screamed for Nico. No response. After a minute or so I told the guide to wait where he was and went to check up on Nico. The Canyon had some nasty drops and crevasses and I was pretty scared that Nico might have injured himself.

Being as smart as I am I decided to pick up his belongings on my way - great idea. The reason for the attack was that our path got too close to some of their nests - so when I picked up Nicos stuff I got too close again and now got chased by these bastards myself. I ran and managed to get rid of them, just being stung a four or five times on my torso. Then I found Nico, sitting on top of a rock, shaking, in shock. I got him down, told him to stay put and wait while I get the first aid kit from the guide (which I luckily brought..). I ran back to the guide (being smart I took a different path...), told him what happened in a few words and got the kit. I ran back to Nico, who was where I left him and started pouring some rubbing alcohol on the stings, which he was covered with. I believe we counted 21 stings, most of which on his legs, some on the head and torso. His condition was really not too good and I was seriously worried. He was dizzy and light headed and looked a little like a newborn calf when he got up after some rest. As we were in the middle of that canyon there was no other choice than continuing the hike. The rest of the way we didn't talk much and just concentrated on getting back to the car safely, being paranoid every time we saw another one of those wasps. We reached the car eventually and I believe Nico fell asleep as soon as his butt touched the car seat.

Well.. we asked for some adventure.. and we got it. Not quite what we expected but in the end everything went well, we're alive and have an interesting story to remember.

On our fifth day we left Muscat and started our little road trip to the other end of this Sultanate. There is not much to say about this. On the first day we drove about 750km from Muscat to Duqm, where we found a decent Hotel - we actually had a big villa to ourselves! For dinner we drove to a little town nearby and picked up some basic arabic food. Some rice and chicken, salads and hummous which we ate on our terrace. The next day we checked out and started driving again: about 700km from Duqm to Salalah. There isn't much to say about the drive, the only interesting part was that we involuntarily accepted to take a hitchhiker. We had stopped at a petrol station to fill up our tanks but the station was dry. I asked a guy where to find another one and he told me it was just 15km down the road. Okay, cool.. no problem. He continued to say something I didn't understand so I just answered 'yeah'. Then suddenly some guy entered our car and sat in the back seat. Okay.. seems like we agreed to take him somewhere. He didn't speak english and didn't smell too pleasant - that's all I remember. Oh and the look on his face when we hit 200km/h. Haha.. it seems he was really scared as he left without saying anything as soon as I stopped the car at the next petrol station (which was 50km away.. not 15km).

We did some serious speeding in Oman.. as we reached Salalah after 700km and 4,5 hours. But.. no cameras and good road conditions allowed it.

Oman is pretty much beige in beige. Sand and rocks. Some dried grass. Really all the same colors. But just before reaching Salalah this changed. We drove up a mountain and once we crossed the peak we were greeted by thick green forests. Within two minutes everything changed from brown and beige to dark green. Amazing!

In Salalah we just spent one day as there's not too much to do. We checked out some markets, a mall.. and I drove past my favorite coconut man (whom I still remembered from my last time in Oman, just about 1,5 years earlier) to enjoy some coconut water. Of course he didn't remember me. Traitor.

The next day we returned our car at the airport and flew to Qatar together, where our paths went in separate directions. I flew back to Kuwait and soon after Nico got his flight back to Frankfurt.

This was a very interesting week, lots happened and all in all we had a great time and enjoyed some memorable adventures.

Oh, and of course Nico and I played lots of PowPow / PauPau (still can't remember how it's called), the card game we invented the year before when we visited the Maldives. Still quite proud of that invention!

When being in the middle east, Oman is one of the nicer places to visit.