Oman: Into the Heart of Arabia

By Contributor - October 16, 2012

Setting up lanterns at the beach camp near Mirbat.
Baobab trees in the Dhofar mountains.
Hud Hud’s tents come with embroidered bed linen.
A camel skull.
Sean Nelson plotting the next day’s journey.
Skiffs on the beach at Mirbat.
A seaside mosque seen from the ruins of an old fortress in Mirbat, some 70 kilometers east of Salalah.
Beach access in Salalah.
Sweet pomegranate is served fresh at camp breakfasts.
A cup of cold fresh water is among the simplest, but most valuable, luxuries in the desert.
Hud Hud camp staff prepping a spot for seaside sundowners.
A fisherman competes with a congress of gulls for the sardine harvest.
Rock pools up the coast from Mirbat.
Candle lanterns shed soft light on Hud Hud Travels’ desert camps.
An encounter with a local at the fish market in Salalah, Oman’s second-largest city and the birthplace of Sultan Qaboos bin Said.
Caves at a wadi picnic stop in the Dhofar Mountains.
A camp staffer.
A Dhofari boy.
The scenic route.
One of Hud Hud Travels’ younger guests having fun in the sun amid a dune field deep inside the Empty Quarter.
A majlis (meeting tent) at Hud Hud travels’ Empty Quarter camp.
Wind-sculpted sand dunes amid the trackless expanse of southern Oman’s Rub’ al Khali, or Empty Quarter.
Camels remain a common sight in fast-modernizing Oman.
A lone thorn tree provides a rare sign of life in the desert.
A Salalah merchant.
A fisherman’s haul.
Low tide on the Arabian sea coast near Mirbat.

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“You know how you always tell me it’s about the journey, not the destination?” he asks.

“Yes,” I reply, cringing at the clichés I’ve filled his head with.

“Well today, mum, they were both a bit shit.”

I cannot help but smile. For a seven-year-old child, the appeal of the Empty Quarter, though wondrous at first, clearly has its limits. But what I discover at the edge of a fetid spring in the heart of this Arabian nowhereland is that for me, the desert presents a source of wonder precisely because it is empty. And that, in our over-connected, over-stimulating world, sometimes a dose of emptiness is exactly what we need.

For more information about Hud Hud Travels’ camps and expeditions, visit hudhudtravels.com or call 968/9292-0670. Oman Air (omanair.com) has regular flights connecting Muscat with Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok; it also operates multiple daily services to Salalah.