Ode to Oman by Michelle Jana Chan

This is the Arabia of Lawrence. A desert nation where I first began to understand why Omanis whisper the word water with reverence. But the first day on the road, it all seemed rather extreme.

We drove hundreds of kilometres to reach Wadi Shab, a generally dry riverbed occasionally thrown into flummoxed ecstasy by a flash flood. The day I was there, it was a pitiful trickle between pebbles – and it was packed with wadi-worshippers. Children were getting the soles of their feet wet, shrieking as they tried to splash each other around the small area they had dammed. Parents spread picnics nearby, men on one side, women on the other. Grandparents crouched down on haunches, wetting their forearms, moistening their cracked lips.

This was a special day out for these families, who had made the journey from the capital Muscat. After several hours’ drive, they had parked their air-conditioned 4-wheel-drive cars and walked up the valley in 35-degree heat to reach this wadi. Thalib, my Omani driver-guide, pointed between the rocks, looked up at me and smiled, ‘Water.’

This was tough to get my head around, after a few weeks of non-stop rain back home in England. Oman was hot and dry, no doubt, but I wasn’t quite ready to get overwhelmed by a puddle. One of the men at the wadi said, ‘In summer months, we all go south with the hope we might be able to stand in the rain’. Way down in Salalah, on the Yemeni border, monsoon rains sometimes get lost on their way to India and clip the Arabian Peninsula, provoking a seasonal migration of city-dwellers. In light of that, perhaps this pilgrimage to Wadi Shab wasn’t quite so bizarre.

As the trip went on, I began to understand the Omani respect for water. I learnt to mimic Thalib and gently sip drinks, rather than slug. In between reaching for my water bottle, I learnt to stay thirsty for longer. When we were in the desert filling the camels’ water troughs, I was paranoid about spilling any.

It was the Bedouins in the Wahiba, the 10,000 square kilometres of the Northern Region Sands, who gave me the most intensive lesson in the value of water. For them, the desert is year-round home. They still live the nomadic life here, albeit with a 4-wheel-drive alongside their two-dozen camels. Thalib took me to spend a night with the Al Bedri family, based 60km inside the Wahiba.

‘Nearly there’ Thalib said, as I pored over the map trying to find landmarks to locate us. There was still no sand in sight but we should have been close. ‘It will get hotter now. Drink some more.’

The desert rose up sharply. As the dirt track petered out, the scrubland very suddenly morphed into 50m-high burnished-orange dunes. When Thalib put his foot down and heard me gasp, he said he needed to drive at 100km/h so the tyres wouldn’t sink. Watching his maniacal grin as he powered up and down the dunes, I wasn’t sure that was the whole truth.

The Al Bedri family’s camp was a tangle of temporary wooden structures and home to a husband, first wife and eleven children from 3-years to 32-years old. A hundred metres away was a cage of chickens; another kept three-dozen rabbits. Half a kilometre south, 200 longhaired goats were all named and separated by size into different pens. North were a hundred bleating sheep, split in a similar way. Ranging loose around the camp were twenty camels with their enigmatic smiles.

Just before sunset, the eldest son and I headed off to feed the camels, carrying sacks of grain and squashing together dates to nourish expectant mothers. Calling them by name, Salman came first, cantering over to us unwieldy. This strong rough man curved his arm around the back of the camel’s head, tugged the ear, pulling its face towards him. He kissed its cheek, muttering soft Arabic as he threw a rope bridle around its neck and blankets on its back.

In Bedouin culture, camels are an integrated part of the family. This isn’t about trade or herd size representing status. This is about the love between a nomadic people and the animals that support them across the dunes, in the fermenting heat and whipping wind. I leapt on the back of Salman and padded off into the sunset, a scene straight out of David Lean.

That evening, Thalib and I set up camp: a thick blanket over a woven carpet on the sand. For supper, we joined the family and gorged on roast chicken legs and stacks of unleavened bread. I tried, in broken Arabic, to discuss polygamy and local politics. When that failed, out came the drums.

We spent hours dancing wildly to bongo beats. Play-wrestling with the smallest children, balloons tied to ankles (who could pop the balloon first?). We traded songs. Their beautiful high-pitch chanting. My warbling of a Kenny Rogers’ track with inappropriate lyrics about gambling, whiskey and women.

One night in the desert did me more good than ten spa weekends. It wasn’t just gazing out at the shifting horizons, as the sand slithered like spirits across the landscape. Or the soul-searching underneath a sky that made me re-consider heaven. Or the noisy silence of a sandblasting wind that shuts you up and forces you to think. More than that, it was the Bedouins’ sense of timelessness and their seemingly uncomplicated lives. But while I envied their unfettered freedom, I was also desperate to fling myself into the sea and wash away the insidious grains of sand that got everywhere. I mean everywhere.

We left the Al Bedri camp just after sunrise bound for the exquisite white beach of Fins, unmarked and unserviced but lapped by the bluest sea. The Omani coastline is wild and rugged, like a melange of building site rubble, lava flow and moonscape, but there are intermittent moments of pure tropical beach indolence and Fins is one of those. I changed in the back of the car, ran to the sea, hurled myself into the surf and spent an hour digging sand out of my ear holes.

Back in Muscat, I returned to The Chedi, the current favourite destination hotel in the Gulf and quickly showered off the salt, in-and-out fast. I was finally appreciating the value of water in Oman and realizing the extravagant luxury of reflecting pools and swimming pools in the hotel’s grounds.

I still hadn’t gotten enough of the sea. The next day, I booked a last-minute fishing trip through a local tour company and spoke to the sea captain by phone. He entertained me with tales of seriously massive marlin, mahi mahi and sailfish. ‘We might see dolphin too, or whales. In sha allah.’ Of course, the next line was a caveat: ‘But other days you might catch nothing. It has happened before.’

I met Sahim Al Baatashy in central Muscat, just past the fish market and just before the bay hosting the Palace of Sheikh Qaboos, Oman’s well-respected ruler. After staying with the Bedouins, all dusted in sand, Sahim was almost sparkling with a sheen of dried rock salt on his forearms and temples. He wore bloodstained shorts and a wraparound turban that kept untying itself throughout the day. I boarded his boat, something like a Boston whaler with a tarp stretched overhead, and the powerful twin 120-horsepower engines throttled up.

Sahim is one of the only fishermen in Oman geared up for taking tourists. He has a couple game-fishing rods on board although like other local fishermen, he himself only uses a hand-line. He showed me a detailed map of the area, a laminated display of the fish in these waters as well as the logbook detailing previous catches. It was an impressive record with descriptions of tussles with fighting bluefin tuna weighing up to 200 pounds. Some records included photos as proof. Things were looking up.