Kirun Kapur
Left to right: beach west of Hasik, the Empty Quarter and a camel near Mirbat.
Just out of reach of the Arabian Sea's hammering surf, we built a campfire on a deserted beach below the Queen of Sheba's ruined palace. Then, exhausted after a day of driving, we unrolled our sleeping bags, and talked until late beneath an ocean of stars.
Every three years my friend the poet Kirun Kapur and I take a long and joyful spin down the loneliest road we can find. Mostly we've road-tripped in the American West. Oman, however, had long called to us. An expanse of desert about the size of New Mexico at the southeastern corner of the Arabian Peninsula, Oman, population three million, is safe and friendly, its roads beautiful and empty. Best known for centuries-old forts, frankincense and the careful stewardship of its heritage, Oman holds two aces for aficionados of the open road: sizable portions of the Empty Quarter (the 250,000-square-mile region that is the world's largest sand desert) and a braid of highway that traces the country's desolate southern coast all the way to Yemen.
With a week to spare, our plan was to fly to Muscat, Oman's capital, and then trace a long clockwise loop around the country, hugging the sinewy coast of the Arabian Sea down at least as far as Salalah, Oman's second city. We'd camp on the beaches and cook on a disposable hibachi. From Salalah, a local expert would guide us into the wilderness of the Empty Quarter.
In Muscat we rented a Land Cruiser. Then, on a sweltering day in November, after a stop at a grocery store to pick up road snacks — Sultan Flakes cereal and Chips Oman — we headed southeast toward Sur, near the Arabian Peninsula's easternmost point, just a few hundred miles across the water from Pakistan.
THE EARLY MILES of that first day's drive were an odd mix of the familiar — convenience stores, sprawling housing developments and multilane highways filled with S.U.V.'s — and the utterly foreign. Minarets towered above every neighborhood, and vast swaths of the mountainous landscape were devoid of any vegetation.
Soon the road descended from the jagged ribs of mountains that ring Muscat to the sea. We passed verdant wadis crowded with European tourists. In midafternoon we reached Sur, population 55,000. Near Sur are wide beaches where each night sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs.
Eager to find our first campsite before dusk, we pressed on past Sur, and started in earnest down Oman's lonely coastal road. Known by various numbers (41; 42; 47; 49), the road hugs the edge of vast gravel deserts, vertiginous mountainscapes and isolated villages. On this route infrastructure is lacking, hotels are few, signage is either mystifying or nonexistent. In other words, the perfect road.
A friend, a car, an empty road unfurling to the horizon between the navy sheet of the sea and the enormous sandbox of the Arabian interior — there's little more to ask of a day. But as dusk drew on, we faced a tough question: where to camp? On our previous road trips, camping wasn't a component. We have generally stopped at a Motel 6 or the like. But in Oman, camping is a particularly easy exercise: no fees or permits, no need to seek out official campsites. Fatma Alsaleh of the Ministry of Tourism described Oman's camping rules: "Camping is allowed everywhere, whether it is on public beaches, in the desert, or the countryside." The only exceptions: near military installations and national monuments.
We eventually chose a silky white beach sheltered by high rocks. Dinner: lamb kebabs barbecued on the beach and potatoes baked in the coals and seasoned with ground-up Pringles. We'd raced to pitch our tents before dusk. But the night was so perfect — warm, dry, bug-free, fabulously star-spangled — that we slept in the open air beside the fire. I woke early, jet-lagged and happy, to the Milky Way wheeling between the ocean and headland. As dawn broke we warmed strawberry Pop Tarts over the dying embers.
DRIVING IN OMAN is rarely as simple as camping. The next day, spying some particularly photogenic dunes, we pulled off the paved road to take pictures. Despite our four-wheel-drive vehicle, though, we found ourselves in a situation for which American driver's ed classes had not prepared us. Only six feet from the paved road, we were stuck in sand.
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