I wake up at sunrise, and the staff at the castle let me inside before the set opening hours of 09-16. In Oman, there are a dozen or so castles and forts – usually carefully renovated, but sometimes to just a lesser extent. They are free or else really cheap to visit. In Jabrin, there is also a toilet, shower and a small shelter outside under which I could sleep – perfect. I spend the morning touring the castle – a delightful, confusing maze of winding pathways, asymmetric rooms, cellars and attics.

I then resume cycling – village Al Hamra is not far away, with three- and four-storey clay buildings and a calm village surrounding which makes it suitable for a nice morning break. Then todays detour to the country’s highest mountain, Jabal Shams at 3,000 meters altitude. The incline of the road, winding up along the mountain side, is so steep that I partly have to push the bike while walking. It’s tiresome and slow. I soon realize that I won’t reach the top before darkness, and am luckily offered a ride by a local with a pick-up.

Said – deaf, but not dumb, as his mother was quick to stress when we stopped by for a cup of tea at his family home on our way up – cuts the corners as narrowly as only someone who’s been brought up here could. Once at the peak, the hotels charge tourist prices – but I’m lucky to be invited by one of the staff: ”Cycle up to the view point and wait there until dusk. By then, our boss will drive down to town, and you can come and stay here for free”. I pedal up to the view point – eat a few sandwiches and watch the sun set over Wadi Ghul or ”Grand Canyon of Arabia” (that’s what it’s dubbed in brochures), and feel as the icy cold of dusk comes. Once dark, I see the hotel boss’ car drive off – its car lights winding down the road – and I hurry back to the hotel where my new friend is waiting.

I get to share his room. He is a work immigrant from Syria, and responsible for the operation of the hotel. In his room also stays the hotels chef from Bangladesh. He is one of many South Asians who’ve migrated to Oman for doing all the work that the Arabs are too rich to do – i.e. almost everything. I’m invited for a wonderful Syrian dinner, and then an in-sight into something that of course truly doesn’t exist here.

The only paying guests at the hotel is an elder British couple, and once they’ve gone to bed their Omani guide enters our room to swap porn movies with my Syrian friend. They are movies of cell phone quality from the region – those from Bahrain are superior, says my friend, but those from Turkey are also good. Most of them show teenage girls alone, showing off their more or less naked bodies – maybe unaware that others than the one who is filming is going to watch it, or maybe intentionally recording in a desperate attempt to be seen. The chef from Bangladesh instantly looks the other way – after only three months in the country, he is not ready to see something that of course doesn’t exist here.

I pack up and leave my camping spot beside the petrol station at sun rise, and reach main-town Nizwa in time for the local fort to open. Oman is dotted with these forts – many of them recently restored to its original splendor using the same traditional construction methods with which they were first built. Most of them seem to date from the 16th, 17th and18th centuries and were built by various Sultans, although sometimes on foundations much older than that. This one in Nizwa also hosts a great exhibition with explanatory movies and texts regarding not only the fort but also date palms, dressing, religion and falaj (irrigation systems), to name a few themes.

I continue my fort-tour – past the closed (for renovation) yet from the outside still impressive UNESCO World Heritage fort of Bahla – to the castle of Jabrin. The latter has already closed for the day, but there are great shelters to camp under, and the adjacent toilets and showers are free to use. The surrounding date palm plantations – I notice at dusk – attract a lot of mosquitoes though, so I still have to pitch my tent.

Continue past Adam to Firq, where I camp nearby a petrol station. I’ve finally left the desert behind me – the mountains ahead of me are a welcomed sight after over a week with a flat horizon all around.

The fact that there are so many Indians and Pakistanis here is evidenced by the only English daily newspaper I’ve bought so far. The two nationalities have their own sections.

Reach today’s only roadside settlement by 2 pm. A few sand dunes – as beautiful as ever – and quite some oil wells visible at a distance made today’s stretch a bit less boring than the past ones. With imagination – there is a lot of time to think around here – I could see the ocean of dunes that stretch from here all the way to mid-Saudi Arabia. A desert area known as the Empty Quarter, which occupies most of eastern Saudi. Absolutely amazing.

I break for lunch in one of the two restaurants. Beef curry with biryani rice. Juice (small paper packages with attached straw) and instant coffee in disposable paper mug. Through the window I see the wind gain force – sandblasting my bike outside; making it sway for the gusts. The restaurant’s TV must be from before the dish that feeds it was even invented. I doubt that it is color.

I eventually get going again with the sun setting behind me, and camp by the roadside after a few hours of night-cycling.

Repeating Martin Luther King’s quote – ‘Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars’ – gives it a new meaning when cycling the Omani desert at night. The oil rigs – lit up by burning gas flares – emerge more clearly than ever.

The roadside restaurant I reach after another day through the empty desert, lies a few hundred meters away from the road. Between them eight or so trucks, parked randomly on the flat gravel land. I meet two drivers from Punjab (India). Others are from Islamabad (Pakistan) and Dongola (Sudan). They ask me which countries have been good; which ones bad. Turkey, Sudan, Ethiopia and Yemen favorites so far. In Egypt, you need to keep an extra eye on your stuff, I say. ‘Aha – Ali Baba’, they reply. The name is still used in much of the Arab world as a synonym for thieves or dishonest people.

Sleep outside an the front porch, below a phone booth. Owner turns out to be quite friendly – gives me a few bananas (a luxury out here, like everything else that has to be brought fresh form elsewhere) and let me watch some Al Jazeera International before I go sleep.

Sleep at small roadside park with the essential conveniences of both a mosque and a toilet, ten or so kilometers after Hayma. Hotels in the latter – as well as in general in Oman – is too expensive at about 30 euro.

Al Ghaftuyn is the square opposite of the restaurant 20 kilometers before Qatbit. Clean and ordered, and with an attached guesthouse, it doesn’t invite for road sleep, really. With 100 kilometers to the next place, and time already 15, I’m stuck here until next morning though, and the owner eventually gives me permission to sleep outside on the parking lot.

Muqshin – the only actual village along the 400+ kilometers between Thumrait and Hayma – has recently been build from scratch. A grid of tar links a bunch of residential homes and an administrative complex with school, restaurant, laundry etc. I sleep in the barber shop and eat in the adjacent restaurant. Few Omanis to be seen – a mix of Pakistani and Indians take care of the place.

Sleep outside Adwab Maqshan Restaurant twenty kilometers before Qatbit. Great food, great Pakistani people (both the owners and the by-passing truck drivers).

Everything is in dire need of cleaning, but that’s one thing I don’t blame them for giving up when living in the middle of the desert; probably seeing a woman pass by once a month at best. Instead, the workers and the truck drivers – all form Pakistan – watch Indian TV, received with the all so important satellite dishes, lined up on the yard outside. First a talent show – one man shows how he can pull electric wires through his nose and mouth, with which he then lights a bulb. Then commercial for some coming gala style event: ‘Challenge for terrorism’. By that time the drivers have all gone back to their chapati with mutton and lentils stew. I go to sleep on a spare metal bed that stands outside on the sandy yard.

Hosted by Pakistani mechanic at Hantip – a village consisting of nothing more than a petrol pump and a restaurant. One worker from India tells me that they work in cycles of 2 years work; 6 months vacation back home in Kerala.

The question for Oman is not what they’ll do for a living when the oil reserves dry up – but rather who’ll cook their food and run their shops and restaurants, when the Indians and Pakistanis find places that pay better, or get decent pay back home.

The road from Salalah climbs the mountains to the North only to descend into the desert after some forty sweaty kilometers. 800 kilometers of gravel and sand desert lies ahead of me, punctuated only by the occasional roadside restaurants and/or petrol station every 50 to 150 kilometer. (much like in Western Sahara).

Stay the night with a Pakistani mechanic. His room – a plywood shell attached to other’s homes and structures around a scrap yard – contains a few floor mattresses and a TV with a VCD-player. Watch Hindi movies until we fall asleep.

I reach Salalah, greeted by host Per – friend of friend Pascal in Damascus. After dinner at an expats pub in the harbor, we drive back home to watch the inauguration of Obama. Through the Internet, we could only access BBC Radio – live video streams were as expected impossibly slow. Although without picture, we watched that radio player on the computer screen like I imagine people watched it in old times when something big was happening. As if you’d hear better, if you’d watch closely.

Tomorrow is off again. As Per goes for vacation in Australia, I continue towards Muscat and Dubai. 1,000 kilometers through the desert, or 1,500 along the more interesting coast – I’ll see what I can manage on the short 30-day visa I’ve been granted.

The names of shops says something about fashion here. ”Salalah automatic bakery” – in Sweden, ”baked by hand” would be much more attractive. Convenience stores usually have the peculiar title ”Food items and goods of luxury” – I’m not sure what the latter refers to, but for me it’d be the chocolate.

I’d heard beforehand that the road to Salalah would be hilly – but gosh it was steep! Not engineered for bicycles for sure – not even dated trucks would manage it. And the view of the ocean – visible even from the highest passes at 1,000 meters – was swindling. Climate was perfect though, with clouds closing in from Saudi – and the Omani people are just wonderful.
Sleep with some Bengali fishermen in Mughsayl. Kumenaso? Baloasi, donovad!*
*How are you? Fine, thank you!

Information on Visa to Oman
Visa, by the way, I got at the border for 6 Omani Riyal (about 12 euro). For those planning the same route: be sure to exchange your Yemeni cash before you cross the border, since the Omanis don’t want them. ‘They fluctuate too much (i.e. downwards)’, said one border official.

Jadib is by the border with Oman, or rather just below the high hilltop on which the border is located. A beautiful stretch of beaches line the road as the village stretches alongside it below the Qamar Mountains.

Police escort again – this time two day’s cycling past beautiful scenery and wild, desolate beaches. I’d love to return to Yemen with a few friends one day, cycling from beach to beach, camping out.