Having seen the hall dedicated to the Jewel of Muscat recreated 9th Century Arab Dhow the previous day at the Bayt Al-Zubair Museum in Old Muscat we had the opportunity through a close contact of my cousins to see the boatyard on Qantab Beach near Muscat where the Jewel of Muscat was actually built.
A view of the ocean from the boatyard on Qantab Beach
The Boatyard on Qantab Beach where the Jewel of Muscat was built
The Jewel of Muscat is a 59 feet (18 metres) long and 21 feet (6.5 metres) wide fullsize reconstruction of a 9th Century Arab Dhow sailing back from China found shipwrecked in 1998 off Belitung Island in Indonesia. In 2010 the reconstructed Jewel of Muscat took 138 days (including 68 days at sea) to sail 3,580 nautical miles to Singapore stopping at Cochin (India), Galle (Sri Lanka), George Town (Penang Island), and Port Klang (Malaysia) along the way recreating the voyages of early Arab sailors.
The Jewel of Muscat was built without nails or screws and the planks were sewn together with coconut fibres. This is similar to the traditional shipbuilding method used in the 9th century.
Stitching a boat's planks together the traditional way
Stitching a boat's planks together the traditional way
Boat construction underway at the Qantab Beach Boatyard
Rudder on an Arab Dhow
On its arrival in Singapore on the 3rd July 2010 the Jewel of Muscat was presented as a gift to the people of Singapore from Oman and now sits in a Maritime Museum in Singapore. Since then the boatyard at Qantab has been commisioned to build several similar boats using traditional methods as well as several models for museums. Ironically these models are so intricate that they normally take as long to build as their full size counterparts!
Model of an Arab Dhow
Intricate craftsmanship on a model of an Arab Dhow
Intricate carving on the stern of a model of an Arab Dhow
A must do in Oman is to venture out and stay overnight in the desert and my chance to do it had arrived. I booked myself a personal driver/guide with a Toyota 4WD Landcruiser and booked a night at the 1000 Nights Camp about 20 odd miles into the desert (corny name but this is the land of Sinbad after all!).
A Map of the route to our overnight camp in the Arabian Desert
First of all there was the little matter of getting there, Wahiba Sands is about 150 miles (240 kilometres) from Muscat. We drove for about 3 hours south through Ibra before turning east into the mountains to stop at the famous Wadi Bani Khalid Pools for a couple of hours to have lunch.
These pools are basically a beautiful oasis in a very arid area and I went for a refreshing swim in a rock pool up near the waterfall. We then returned to the lowlands and headed towards the Desert.
Wadi Bani Khalid
The natural pool below the waterfall above Wadi Bani Khalid where I went for a swim
A quiet spot to phone home from and make the family jealous :-)
I could tell this was going to be in a different league to anything I had experienced before as I became aware of the enormous sand dunes in the distance and we stopped at a garage to have our tyres deflated to 18 psi.
Garage specialising in deflating/inflating tyres coming on and off the soft sands of the desert
As we started off my driver said we needed to change the mood of the music and as we turned onto the soft sand and headed at speed for our first large dune we had techno on full blast! Then ensued some serious dune bashing as we roared up higher and higher sand dunes; it was a serious adrenalin rush with our landcruiser floating like a boat on a river with a mind of its own as we tore up the soft sand; it often felt like we were going to turn over as we climbed higher and higher dunes the deeper we got into the desert.
My first view of the soft sands of the Arabian Desert
We encountered some fellow travellers as we made our way across the desert
This was a particularly large sand dune that eventually beat us and we had to give up trying to climb it in case we got stuck
My driver - Jekyll and Hyde character, steady on/off road but an evil maniac once let loose on soft sand!
After a while we reached a Bedouin House and stopped for coffee, obviously a tourist stop with the bedouin women selling a few small handmade trinkets but not over done. I have had it a few times now and have developed a taste for the local Kawah, a small coffee flavoured with cardamom and normally served with dates.
Arriving at the Bedouin House on the way to our overnight camp
Kawah (Coffee with cardamom) and Dates with the locals
There was another small group visiting the Bedouins with us
We then carried on and after a while reached our overnight camp. After unwinding for a bit I was determined to see a desert sunset and we drove up a large sand dune to see it. A few others joined us and the orange hues as we watched the sun set on the desert horizon were every bit as amazing as we had been told to watch out for.
My driver then decided I needed another adrenalin rush and instead of going back the way we came went straight over the top of the dune which felt like a near vertical drop! Initially we got grounded but with a bit of help we were soon floating down the front of the dune in the landcruiser. You would never dare drive down a slope that steep normally but soft sand is very forgiving.
Pesky Camel, get out of my way! We need to get to the top of the sand dune before sunset
Me on top of a sand dune waiting for the desert sunset
It got quite busy on our sand dune
Sunset in the Desert - it was worth the wait
My tent was right at the edge of camp which I thought was great as it meant I would have a more authentic feel of sleeping in the desert. My tent was pretty much just a woollen bedouin tent, a couple of beds and a open to the sky toilet/shower but anything more would have spoilt the experience.
My Sheik Tent in the Desert
Inside my tent
The view from my tent in the morning - that isn't a member of the vulture family is it?
For dinner the camp arranged a Bedouin special of lamb with spices cooked for 24 hours in a charcoal pit covered over with sand. While a big deal was made of digging it up, when I tried it I didn't think it was anything special and wish I had stuck with the chicken biryani and fresh hummus that appears to be the national dish. While we ate we were entertained by a small troupe of musicians playing Bedouin music.
After cooking for 24 hours in a hole in the ground, time to dig up dinner!
Dinner is ready and is taken in to be served
We had Bedouin music to accompany our meal
The generators at the camp were turned off at 10 o'clock and there was a lovely light pollution clear sky, one of the many attractions of the desert. A bit later after the moon had set I saw the stars more vividly than I have ever seen them before in my life; all the constellations were clear as if on a page of an astrology book - the Great Bear, the Lion, the Virgin, Orion - I have never before seen them as clearly as that.
In the morning we decided to have breakfast early and start back; I was tempted to try a ride on a camel first until I saw another tourist have a go and saw how uncomfortable they evidently were and decided for the time being to give camel riding a miss!
A couple of camels waiting for the tourists
A fellow tourist having a ride on a camel - it looked like torture!
As we made our way back across the desert I had a chance to take in the scale of the landscape around us, it was awesome with very large sand dunes as far as the eye can see.
The endless desert
The Sun beating down on the desert, lest we forgot how dangerous a place the desert can be
We also chanced upon a group of locals trying to race their Wrangler Jeeps up a particularly steep sand dune and stopped for a while to watch.
Wrangler Jeeps doing a spot of sand dune climbing
This Jeep looks like he is going to make it!
After a final swipe of a few sands dunes with the landcruiser before re-inflating the tyres for tarmac we headed to the coast for 1.5 hours to Sur, a major trading port before the Suez Canal and famous for the building of Arab Dhows. Unfortunately the tide was out when we got there so we didn't see Sur at its best but we passed the famous Al Ghanja Arab Dhow outside the Sur Maritime Museum and visited the famous Sur Boatyard where there were several Dhows under construction.
A view of Sur Harbour including the Al Ghanja Arab Dhow outside the Maritime Museum
An Arab Dhow under construction at the Sur Boatyard
We then headed north-west along the coast towards Muscat 93 miles (150 kilometres) with a few stops and lunch along the way. The first stop was Wadi Tiwi, a beautiful spot but with very narrow winding roads especially through the village. We then had lunch and stopped for a rest on White Beach (a popular beach in Oman but only accessible by 4x4) before moving on to Wadi Shab, a larger but equally beautiful wadi a bit further along the coast. Unfortunately my photos don't seem to do justice to what idyllic settings these Wadi were.
The road upto Wadi Tiwi
Wadi Tiwi
The White Beach between Quriyat and Tiwi
Wadi Shab
A Pickup Truck making its way across a ford in Wadi Shab
24 °C
