Frontier Coast

The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree/ Are of equal duration. A people without history/ Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern/ Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails/ On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel/ History is now and England
T S Eliot, Little Gidding, Four Quartets

May 2005

Hands over headcloths, we’re ducking fish. It’s utter, glorious pandemonium in one of the most far flung outer reaches of Oman. Under midday sun, little fish are being flung off nets, thrown ten feet into the air and falling down on Toyota pickups, Bedouin fishermen and an unknown coast. Above, thousands of sea birds carpet the desert beach and layered rocks over which crabs scuttle for cover.

It’s an explosion of colour and life, all the more fantastic because we’re in the middle of nowhere, almost 600km from Muscat. Turn away from this unmarked beach and you’re facing sand dunes – an endless flow of some of the greatest deserts known to man. That landscape of nothingness starts at the Arabian Sea, sweeping through the middle of Oman and disappearing into the depths of Saudi Arabia. There are no roads here – indeed, even the suggestion seems like a bit of a joke.

Caught between the sea and sand, human existence seems to hang by a thread, a desperate fishing line that runs down the east coast. We drifted through isolated settlements of fishermen on our forays into the unknown, nothing more than reeds and the occasional whale jawbone held together by fishing net. They were so basic they couldn’t even qualify as villages – just sticks in the sand, occupied when needed, bare and empty when we passed through.

Only the Bedu could pull off the sheer audacity of living in this blankness, this place without roads, sometimes even names. In a land where time and space seem to stand still, the Bedu are the only constant, earning praise, sometimes even literature, from Thesiger to Lawrence of Arabia. They might not look as poetic today – instead of camels you’ll probably find them in Toyota 4WDs, like the one we were bouncing about in. We were with Mohammed Wahaibi, in the hardiest type of Land Cruiser the Bedu call abu shenab, or ‘father of the moustache’. At the last outpost before the tarred road seemed to buckle under the weight of the desert and disappear into sand, Mohammed offered us a lift to Ras ar Ruways, the spot raining fish. There is no road, and we charged northward on the little sliver of beach, tires deflated for the sand. You can safely put your map away – this is all blank space on paper. As we skimmed the beach for about half an hour, Mohammed talked of the two things he took most pride in – being a Bedu and driving the abu shenab. We didn’t speak each other’s language, but mutual enthusiasm and love of the land seemed enough to sustain us till we reached Ruways.

And then suddenly, popping out of the blue, we came across up to ten pickups, as many fishing boats, a crowd of fishermen and more sea birds than we’ve ever seen in our lives. There were enough birds to turn the sky black, and they almost did. In the emptiness that stretches thousands of kilometres, this was practically a metropolis. Hundreds of birds would rise up at a time, descending to fight over scraps. Usually the fish were too big, and would be dropped and picked up by as many as four successive birds, until one managed to swallow the piece whole, midair.

As the boats came in with their catch, the men would gather, unfurling the nets out of the boats in stages. About five men to a net, they’d flap it up and down wildly, sending the fish flying about in a dazzling silver frenzy. After that the catch would be loaded onto containers at the backs of the pickups, packed with ice and driven across the sands. And while the entire exercise was orchestrated by the Bedu, most of the fishermen were from distant shores: Kerala, Madras, even Bangladesh. As the fish slapped down onto sand, you could hear Arabic, Hindi, Malayalam, Telegu and Bengali above the pitter-patter. Surreal but true.

What are even more surreal are the great salt flats of Bar al Hikman that we passed. We seemed to drive past a cross between the world famous pink lagoons and sabkha plains – absolutely flat from horizon to horizon, devoid of life, blazing in the sun as we blinked in the glare. Your jaw will drop at the sight of something so removed from reality, like an artist’s painted dream – just shades of pastel pink and white and blue. That smooth surface is infinitely delicate, crushed underfoot as you take your first few steps in. You will leave behind footsteps inches deep, filling with a reddish-pink saline concentrate. That thin crust also means you won’t get very far, and certainly nowhere with a vehicle. That infamously fickle surface will trap a car that might take hours to dig out, if you manage at all. The tar road is built on a raised foundation, a few feet above the crust on either side. The only sign of anything alive were, again, the Bedu, this time a couple raking the salt into gunny sacks. We stopped to offer them food and water, leaving with their appreciation and a bag of slightly pinkish salt, fresh from one of the great natural wonders of the world.

We had made base camp at a little hotel in Mahoot town, a few hours behind Ras ar Ruways and the salt flats. It was nothing more than a few basic rooms, with no food or extras, but it was luxury after hours across desert. Mahoot (also known as Al Hij) has got a very frontier feel to it, the last town before the road tapers off after a while. As the evening progressed, what seemed a deserted corner of Oman begins to stir, and the air is cool with breeze blowing through the main street, kicking up sand. To the south, half an hour away by dirt track, is the little village of Flim. We were headed to a little island just off the beach, also called Mahoot, though not to be confused with the town with the same name. We sat on the beach at Flim one evening, sharing fruit with a Bedu, waiting for the tide to trickle in. That hard beach is riddled with the holes of a million crustaceans, and as the sea moves in air starts bubbling out, going ‘pop-pop-pop’ and frothing. We squelched through, and sat in a fisherman’s boat as it began to bob in increasingly deep water.

About 15 minutes by boat is the island, little more than a sliver of land barely above water. Its beach is all white sand, littered with the ruins of dhows and the bones of whales, till mangroves take over. The centre of activity is a little fishing village, where we met a Zanzibari businessman from Muscat who exported sea slugs to China. He invited us into his reed enclosure, and we watched in morbid fascination as bucket-loads of the creatures were emptied into a pot over fire. Two men on either end stirred the seething mass with long poles, as they boiled in pre-export madness. Later, we stumbled onto a group of colourful fishermen on the beach. One seemed particularly taken with us, insisting we not just sit down but sprawl ourselves out like him, propped up on one elbow. We lay there like that while the sun set, talking in the dying light. Our initial plan was to camp out on the island, but the tide would have receded by the next morning, stranding us out till late afternoon.

As we made our way back the sea seemed to literally burst with life, full of little fish jumping out of the blue, while water a little ahead broke against larger creatures, very near the surface. That profusion of sea life was evident off Shannah too, the spot where the ferry for Masirah Island leaves. You can hop on with your vehicle for RO10, but we chose a little fishing boat instead and explored a small island nearby, empty except for two fishermen and a few huts.

Days ago, we had driven out of Muscat down the Samail Gap, turning off the six-lane highway at Bid Bid, heading south through Samad, Mudhaibi and Sinaw. After that, it is 200km of desert expanse on either side. That ride will take you through the foothills of the Hajar range that slowly recede into the occasional mound. Towards the end it is just gravel, until pebbles give way to sand, stretching from horizon to horizon. It might get monotonous after a while, but the moment when that great expanse hits you is an incredible experience. It is in that unending unapologetic vastness that you will discover the Bedu and their ways, the pink lagoons and the secret settlements. In that blank space on the map you will discover things most people in Oman have never seen, experiences in the middle of nowhere.

Road less travelled

I set my odometer to zero at Wattayah – here are the readings:

36km on the Samail road, take the turnoff to Sur.
103km: Turn right to Mudhaibi and Mahoot, at the Shell.
115km: Turnoff to Samad (2km away). Don’t take it – instead, carry straight on.
146km: Mudhaibi
163km: Shell roundabout at Sinaw. Fuel up, turn left to Mahoot.
288km: Shell and Omanoil filling stations.
356km: Al Maha T-junction. Turn left and tank up on fuel. If you go on straight instead, you’ll hit Douqm 162km away.
374km: Mahoot roundabout. Just before, you’ll find the Mahoot Hotel on your right, just after the mosque. Turn right to Flim (half an hour on dirt track), or head straight to Ras ar Ruways and Shannah.
Zero the odometer at the Mahoot roundabout, and head straight.
40km: T-junction, with Shannah on the right (13km). Head there for the ferry to Masirah. Just after turning right, you will find the fantastic pink and white salt flats on your right. Alternately, drive straight on for Ras ar Ruways (25km). Soon, the road starts deteriorating, until the sand on either side starts to take over. You’ll reach the construction work at Ras al Nagdah, and the last outpost before the desert, a little wood cabin of a Pakistani mechanic. The Bedu refill their tires here after driving back from the desert. From here it’s all sand: either desert or beach. Drive down the beach at low tide, north till Ras ar Ruways, about half an hour north. We left our vehicle at the mechanic’s cabin, and hitched a ride with a Bedu. Venture in your own vehicle with extreme caution from here on.

I didn’t retrace our steps on our return journey. Instead, I got out of Mahoot, turned left and south to Douqm, turned right towards Hayma and then north all the way through Adam and then Nizwa. From there it’s right and straight to Muscat. By the time I got back – three days later – I’d done 1600km.



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