Words + Photos By: Marina Bruce
After travelling to Salalah off-road as part of Mike Nott’s Eid expedition (Oman Odyssey 2013 in OutdoorUAE’s November edition) my husband Neil and I relaxed in Oman’s southernmost city for six lovely days before heading back to Al Ain – off-road of course.
We based our route on Mike’s “Route 16: Oman Empty Quarter” from his book Off-road Adventure Routes (UAE and Oman). The published trip takes you from just south of Jebel Hafeet down to the beach at Rakhult and is 1357km long, but it can be broken down into three or four sections to allow you to tackle this expedition over a series of weekends.
We had two cars and no passengers but would suggest that unless you are very experienced in both off-road and desert driving that three or four cars would be a safer convoy size. Both our Nissan Patrols can carry 133L of fuel onboard and we took an extra 80L each in jerrycans. We would also recommend carrying a sattelite phone for this trip due to the remoteness of the area.
Our journey started at the blowholes at Mugsail from where we took Road 47 towards Yemen, negotiating the brilliantly engineered switchbacks cut into the mountain at N16 51.823 E53 43.191. When we visited Salalah in 2012 we discovered an interesting road from here to Mudhai so we retraced those steps over the mainly graded gravel track which stays high over plateaus, dropping down to cross the occasional wadi.
From Mudhai we took a blacktop road northwards, allowing us to join Mike’s route at OE77 – Wadi Aydam which is a wide, beautiful wadi, with lots of wildlife – we saw a fox, eagles and locusts and the footprints of rabbits, cats and jerboas.
There are no hotel accommodation options on this route so thankfully the temperatures were fine for camping in Oman in October. Our first night under canvas was on an elevated area just 15km in, and next morning we had a most enjoyable drive following the wadi’s course which offered some diverse driving; soft sand, interspersed with rocky sections, areas of dried up mud and some gravel plain.
At waypoint OE75 we continued via track to the nearest gas station at Shisr, where we fuelled up, had a slow puncture repaired and sought advice on a leaking water pipe on my car. A detour to the nearest city, Thumrait, some 96km distant was required; we were lucky to find a garage open on Friday afternoon and soon resumed our journey heading towards Shisr once more. After fuelling up our cars again, we backtracked to OE75, staying on track to OE74 towards the Rub al Khali. Our second night’s camp was near OE72, just a few kilometres along a reasonable track into the dune area where we had a most comfortable and quiet night watching the stars with absolutely no light pollution whatsoever.
Next morning we continued on both faint and well established tracks, as well as some easy sand saddle crossings as we wove our way in and out of the beautiful red dunes crossing some extremely soft sabkhas.
Pausing at an oasis just after OE70, we picked up some long abandoned wood from a crate for that evening’s campfire, all the while wondering how an abundant water supply could be found in such a seemingly arid landscape.
Having made great time reaching OE51 and the end of the “dune pyramid” area by mid-afternoon, we reckoned on reaching OE36 before nightfall and possibly having time to return to the desert and set up camp.
The desert, however, had other ideas and we ended up ploughing through kilometre after kilometre of soft, technical dunes; many of the tracks which were faint when Mike prospected this route back in 2010 had now disappeared under white sand. In the new low dunes it proved impossible to gain enough height to look for a new track so our third night’s camping saw us near OE41 at “camp camel spider.” Never before have we seen so many of them in one place; attracted by the warmth of the fire they were everywhere, including one large specimen which enjoyed the shade of my camping chair!
Punctures galore were the order of the next day as we wove our way past trees and shrubs, snagging our tyres on small hidden splinters of wood which lurked just below the surface. Thankfully we had a puncture repair kit with us and tedious as they were, we dealt with these quickly and our progress wasn’t too badly affected.
We reached refuel 2, Shell Al Ghaftain at lunchtime and enjoyed a cheap and delicious meal in the adjoining restaurant before tackling part two of the route. Had we reached here the night before we could have had the comfort of a bed – and no camel spiders – in the reasonably priced resthouse on site.
We cut across some easy gravel plains to hook up with Mike’s route at OE35, and very soon we were in among beautiful high red dunes, so typical of the Empty Quarter. From here the route was all track and even although the occasional dune had encroached, the driving was very easy and fast.
Our last night in the Empty Quarter saw us pitching our tent near OE25 where we sat down to view the gorgeous red dunes in the fading light, followed by an amazing sunset.
Although we were deep into the desert we could still see the occasional water tanker and pickup as they made their way to the nearby oil and gas fields; next morning we were happy to have assistance from one of the tanker drivers when he helped us change a tyre – not another puncture but one of our previous day’s repairs which wasn’t holding.
Once “on the road” we drove at a fairly fast pace in the hope of completing our planned route to OE09 and then onwards to Ibri, a total of 425km, before nightfall.
We just had to make a stop at the nearest point to Saudi which according to our Google maps was only 800m from Mike’s track, in fact I went closer to get a photo of the dune in the distance which was definitely out of bounds to a lady driver! Please note there is no fence between Oman and Saudi so make sure you are aware where the border lies.
Shortly after this we had the only “mushkala kabira” (big problem) of the entire holiday and it was a significant one. I had the misfortune to lose a back wheel, 280km from the start of the route and approximately 300km from Ibri; thankfully the track had recently been graded and a pile of very soft sand at the side of the road cushioned my landing. I couldn’t get through to the Oman emergency services number of 9999 and it was difficult to make a decision on our best hope for recovery. We called Mike via satphone, gave him our coordinates and just a few minutes later he came back with his suggestions, one of which was to backtrack to the Abu Tabul army base, some 20km away to seek their assistance.
We took photos of the car and the wheel, just in case there were no English speakers there, but thankfully there were. Nevertheless they were somewhat confused as to why an expat and his wife would choose to drive separate vehicles through the Rub al Khali.
“Why you come this way, good road from Salalah to Ibri,” asked Tariq. “So we can see the beautiful landscape here,” replied Neil, to which Tariq came back with, “What’s to see? It’s only sand!”
The Commanding Officer let us join their pre-planned convoy to Ibri with the intention of arranging a recovery vehicle to come back with us and retrieve my car. However we were amazed when we stopped at my damaged car as the soldiers decided to try to fix it! We had all the necessary tools and a hi-lift jack and with their expertise and manpower, we were moving again in under three hours, albeit with a very noisy wheel hub. They insisted on convoying us out to the blacktop about 150km away where we bid our farewells and offered our profuse thanks.
You shouldn’t take photos of local military or police, so the camera had to be put away, even when we crossed the enigmatically named “Umm As Sameem” – the Mother of all Worries/Poisons. A huge salt flat mentioned by Thesiger in his book “Arabian Sands,” this vast expanse of nothingness allegedly has quicksand areas; thankfully today there are a number of good gatch tracks to ensure a safe crossing.
Limping slowly on to Ibri, we stayed at the comfortable Ibri Oasis Hotel, then onwards to Al Ain and our local garage first thing the next morning. Counting the journey to Salalah with Mike, we drove 2000km off-road and the total distance covered over 20 days was approximately 4000km.
We have the skills and experience to put a track together ourselves however there is something to be said for basing your travels on a tried and tested route prospected by an expert, even allowing for some geographical changes which could have taken place since publishing. Mike’s complete route will take five days but the two sections we tackled were OE77-OE36, then OE36 to OE Camp 1 and onwards to Ibri via blacktop, taking us just over two and a half days. Please remember, when planning any overland journey some contingency time for breakdowns and punctures should be added in.
