Tag: Oman
-
The Kit You Need to Cross a Desert (without breaking the bank)
I looked down at my smart phone then ahead at the dirt track illuminated by the headlights of our Mazda. ‘It should be on our left any time now’, I reported to Laura at the steering wheel. It was late Wednesday night in Oman and we were driving through a tiny village in the dark,…
-
Cycling across Arabia: a photo diary
We cycled from Sharjah in the UAE, via Dubai, to Muscat in Oman. Although cycling is very popular with expats, few cycle tourists make it to this part of the world and it’s a shame. With wonderfully smooth roads (oil money put to good use), frequent cafes to rest at and plentiful opportunities for wild…
-
Our video about cycling through Persia and Arabia
Our last two months’ cycling has been through some wonderfully historic areas of the world, principally Persia (now Iran) and Arabia (in our case, the United Arab Emirates and Oman), and we have made a short video of our time there. Personally, my favourite so far. In the space of a week, we experienced a…
-
The Wonderful Wahiba
One of my favourite ever adventures was conducted over a Bank Holiday weekend whilst living in Oman. I was enraptured by the Wahiba Sands (also called Sharqiya) the first time we visited – a beautiful, archetypal sand sea some 60 miles wide and 100 or so high. On the recommendation of a friend, we decided…
-
1000 Miles Across the Empty Quarter Desert
Today, two friends of mine will be flying to Oman to undertake an almighty expedition. Starting in Salalah and finishing in the UAE, Leon McCarron and Alastair Humphreys will drag a huge cart laden with a couple of hundred litres of water, 1000 miles across the Empty Quarter desert. I remember Al telling me about…
-
These Boots Are Made For Walking
The above image depicts my recently retired running shoes. I had been using them regularly since the summer of 2007. They were kindly donated by Decathlon Surrey Quays for my “real world” triathlon from London to the Isle of Wight and, after almost four years of use and abuse, they finally came to an end…
-
Wild Swimming in Oman
I lived in Muscat for five months with my girlfriend Laura, an even keener outdoor swimmer than me. Oman has many beautiful places to swim wild and we sought them out whenever we could. Below are a list of swimming destinations that we either visited or wished we had. We make no claims to its…
-
Expedition Report: Dhofar Mountains Oman
In November 2010, I spent a week exploring the Dhofar Mountains of Oman with my girlfriend Laura. We were primarily based in the al Qamar region, close to the Yemen border. We travelled by two-wheel-drive and walked carrying all of our food and water. Basics Location: Al Qamar range, Dhofar Mountains, Southern Oman People: Laura Tomlinson…
-
Tourists and Terrorists
A masked man appears in my rear mirror. He’s at the wheel of jeep with a large machine gun pointed in my general direction. The plume of dust in his wake comes directly from the Yemen border. Terrorists. We’d joked about them. Teasing each other that we were in Al-Qaeda heartland. Certainly the dusty…