Blogs from Musandam Peninsula, Oman, Middle East

Monday was the day from hell. We left the hotel at 7.20am for the 10 minute drive to the airport, ludicrously early for a 9.25 flight but tour companies like to get you there early. We were eventually allowed to check in and were led up to a first floor waiting room. After an hour an official came to tell us the plane was delayed. ‘Inshallah maybe one hour, maybe two, but maybe cancelled’. An oil rig engineer on the same flight was in touch with friends who were supposed to be flying to Khasab from Muscat on the plane we would then take. They had taken off then landed again after the pilot was told the wind was too strong to land in Khasab. It’s a small airport, mostly military, surrounded by mountains, with a ... read more

The Musandam peninsula is strategically important as it dominates the Straits of Hormuz, which at the narrowest point means that Oman and Iran are 21 nautical miles apart. The Musandam peninsula is almost all mountains, and we certainly experienced that today with a 4WD trip up to 1600m at the very north of the peninsula. The day started more pedestrianly, with a visit to Khasab castle. This was built as a fort by the Portuguese in the 17th century, and was subsequently taken over by the British, but it has been completely rebuilt and turned into a museum. It’s small, but interesting enough – or at least, it would have been if we hadn’t experienced a second day of long power outages. It’s hard to see the exhibits in a museum with no windows and no ... read more

Squint hard at a map of the Arabian Peninsula and you’ll see, towards its eastern end, a triangular spike of land that appears to be trying to prod Iran. A good political map of the area will show that the very tip of this spike, guarding the Straits of Hormuz, is a different colour from the rest. This is the Omani exclave of the Musandam Peninsula, entirely surrounded on the land side by the United Arab Emirates. Here the Hajar Mountains, the spectacular backdrop to Muscat and the cities of the Batinah plain along Oman’s northeastern coast, finally win the day, crashing dramatically into the ocean, allowing man only the occasional narrow valley for his habitation. Flying over the Peninsula, I was staggered that anyone has even bothered trying to fashion a living here in these ... read more

When I was researching my trip to Dubai, I was looking at the different day trips on offer and the ones to Oman caught my eye. So after a few minutes deliberation I booked one. Not that we would be spending much time on land in Oman, but we would be sailing along the coastline. The trip also sounded nice and relaxing, which suited me down to the ground. I was picked up very early in the morning and we drove for a couple of hours. I was surprised as I was the only one in the minivan, but was told we were picking some others up. I enjoyed the drive as the landscape was like nothing I am used to. Once we left the city, it was all desert. I saw the camps where you ... read more

Geo: 26.171, 56.2406After a poor nights sleep I am awoken by a clarion call of different alarms at 06.15. So paranoid that we would oversleep and miss our excursion we set alarms on both our phones and the in-room telephone. They all went off simultaneously. Today we are in Khasab. Khasab is a city in an enclave of Oman bordering the United Arab Emirates called Musandam.The Musandam Peninsula has an abundance of sheltered fjords, created by fragmented rock they stretch claw-like into the sea and massive overshadowing cliffs tower above. The coast juts into the Strait of Hormuz and extends some 600 kilometres. These spectacular fjords have given the area a second name "The Norway of Arabia".We shower and grab a quick breakfast before heading down to the aft bar to collect our tour stickers (No ... read more