My final week of cycling in Oman would see me summit one final insanely steep mountain pass, meet up with my ‘virtual’ route guide, attempt to buy a goat, and cycle with a fellow tour cyclist towards the border with the United Arab Emirates.

I had been in Oman for nearly a month and it was now time to leave the mountains and complete my cycle through the desert before my visa ran out.

The evening before I had descended off Jebel Shams, Oman’s tallest mountain, and camped in a wadi just outside  the village of Minthar. (can you spot my tent?)

It had been nearly dark by the time that I had set up camp the night before and so I hadn’t managed to get water for a shower.  In the morning I left my tent and cycled into Minthar in search of a mosque.

I then cycled back to the wadi to have a shower and make breakfast. Now, another reason why I normally shower at night is that you can strip off and nobody sees you.  In bright daylight without anything to ‘hide’ behind is a bit more tricky in a Muslim country so I constructed my very own ‘shower’ screen using the waterproof base liner from my tent.

It also made a fantastic shady place to eat breakfast.  Even though it was still early the temperate was already well above 30C degrees.

After a leisurely breakfast it was time to get on with climbing my final mountain pass in Oman. This pass was not as steep as some of the parts of the climb up Jebel Shams, but as the whole climb was on a dirt track it was probably harder.

To give you an idea of just how steep this pass was here is a picture of me pushing the bike.

The issue with the steepness of this dirt track was that once I lost traction and the back wheel span out there was noway that I could start cycling again.  The only thing I could do was to push the bike to the next flat section where I could get back on the bike.

An hour or so after setting off I had reached the top of the pass.

My only ‘witnesses’ were a herd of goats that wandered past

That was it, I had climbed my last mountain in Oman and if that didn’t deserve a short video celebration I don’t know what did.

It was now time to enjoy the descent into the next valley

Just over the top of the summit there was a small village and date plantation.  When one of the villagers saw me coming down the track he ran out and invited me to his house for coffee.  As time was ticking on I had to say no; I always feel bad when I turn down locals hospitality but if I accepted every offer then I really would only be cycling about 20km per day. 

At the bottom of the descent was the tiny village of Subaykhah. There was a government building at the junction where I was able to fill my water bottle from a tap on the outside of the wall.

The dirt track ended and I was back on a sealed road. It was now payback time for the earlier climb as I raced down the mountain.

Catherine, a warmshowers host who lived in Ibri, had been my ‘virtual’ route guide for the last couple of weeks and she had recommended that I should camp the night at Wadi Damm which lay at the bottom of the descent.

I think that the village is called Damm but I’m not sure if this was just the name of the wadi.  However, if you want to find it then just head for the green topped minarets that can easily be seen on the descent.

Just past the mosque there was a coffee shop so I pulled over to get something to eat before cycling up the wadi. 

The guy who worked in the coffee shop spoke no English but via ‘sign language’ he understood that I wanted something to eat. He shook his head and pointed to the fridge to show that he only had drinks.

I said ‘daal’ and rubbed my tummy.  He then opened the cupboard under the sink and pulled out a pot with some daal in it.  I have no idea if it had been his breakfast, or even how long it had been there, but it tasted good once he had heated it up for me.

It was then time to get on with cycling up the wadi to find somewhere to camp

I cycled up the gravel track for a couple of kilometres through a date plantation.  The track then entered a steep sided canyon where there were large boulders which made it impossible to cycle.
Wadi Damm has water in it year round and on the left hand side of the canyon there was an irrigation channel.  This was wide enough for me to cycle up and made an ideal ‘road’ to take me past the boulders.

The next obstacle was a bit larger – a man made concrete dam

I left the bike at the base of the dam and from there it was time to hike. There was a set of stairs on the right of the dam and once over the top of it the canyon narrowed and the pools were deep enough to swim.

Having a picnic in the wadi were 4 guys from India who were visiting the wadi on their day off. 

They invited me to I eat with them and as my daal lunch at the coffee shop hadn’t been the biggest portion I tucked in.  After a very enjoyable hour sat talking it was time for a swim.

Catherine had told me that if I hiked up past the first few pools I would come to a gap in the rocks where there was a rope hanging down.  Once I had climbed up the rope and through the gap the water in the pools would be much clearer.

It was a beautiful place for a swim and as the sun was beginning to set I headed back down the canyon to where I had left my bike.

There was a great spot to camp just above the dam so I did a few runs up the steps of the dam to get my kit and bike up it, and set up camp (my tent is the tiny red dot at the base of the cliff)

The most beautiful wadi that I had visited in Oman was without doubt Wadi Shab on the east coast.  However, I had to share the wadi with about 100 other tourists.  That night when I camped in Wadi Damm I had it to myself.  A perfect piece of paradise.

The next morning I was up with the sun and headed to the pools for a swim. 

As I dived in I saw that I had company – a couple of snakes who were also out for an early morning swim.  Thankfully, when I jumped in the snakes decided to get out and sit on the side to dry off on the warm rocks by the side of the pool.

Later on I asked Catherine what type of snakes they were and she said they were Wadi Racers.  I’m not sure what they lived off but that morning there were a fair few frogs hopping around that would make an ideal meal.

After a quick swim I headed back to the tent for a leisurely breakfast.

It was then time to get on the road and cycle to Ibri where I would be staying for a couple of days with my virtual tour guide.  I was also hoping to meet up with Ignacio, another tour cyclist, who I had met whilst cycling Jebel Shams.

As I left the village of Damm on my right was a mountain called Jebel Misht

The 900 metre south face of the limestone mountain is, among climbers, the most famous cliff in Oman.  There are apparently 7 main routes up the face which takes professional free climbers between 7 and 9 hours to ascend.

The back side of Jebel Misht is more of a hill and once at the top climbers can walk down the backside and return to where they set off.  However, the hike back is around 25km as compared to the 900 metre climb up !!!

From Wadi Damm back to the main highway was 35km, but as I was cycling on sealed roads it was a fast ride.

As I passed through the village of Al Ayn perched on the hillside were a series of ‘beehives’.

Historians think that the ‘beehives’ (named after their shape) were tombs and nearly every hill in the area is topped with these structures. These ones were only a short hike from the road, but as it was nearly midday the sun was baking.  

After my hike what was needed was a cup of tea, and just past the road to the tombs was the perfect place to stop.  

This was probably the hottest day that I had cycled in Oman and it was easily 45C degrees and I was sweating buckets from the hike.  At least on the bike I was travelling fast enough to generate a bit of a breeze !!!

Even my bottle of water that I had on the bike was too hot to enjoy and I was stopping at every mosque that I passed to empty out the hot water and refill it.  

As I passed through the village of Amla I stopped at the mosque to refill my bottle with ice cold water.  The only problem was that the water machine was not working. 

One of the locals told me to go to the village school where they would give me water.  I did so and when I cycled through the gates I was an instant distraction to the lessons that were going on in the school.

In Oman, boys and girls attend separate schools and I had cycled into the boys school.  Once one of them saw me within seconds there were kids hanging out of all of the windows on that side of the building.

Even the teachers left their classrooms to come and say hello.  They asked where I was going and when I told them one of them said that I should go to his house to get out of the sun. Then after school he would arrange a football match before driving me to Ibri later that night.

I explained that I was cycling around the world and wanted to cycle to Ibri.  He thought I was mad, but told one of the security guards to fill my water bottle.  I cycled off into the desert feeling a bit like royalty as out of all of the windows were pupils and teachers waving me off.

Once I got to the highway I still had 40km to ride and with a crazy headwind it took me nearly 3 hours to reach the outskirts of Ibri.

On the highway I had passed nowhere to stop to get a sugary drink and was so happy when I saw a coffee shop in the distance.

One of the other things that I had not seen in any country so far on this trip except for in Oman is what I call ‘lazy drivers’. 

What I mean by ‘lazy drivers’ is that cars pull up and sit honking their horns until somebody comes out to the car to take their order.  The staff then deliver the drinks and food to the car.  I have even seen this outside supermarkets where the driver honks his horn and gives a member of staff a shopping list, and then waits for the shopping to be delivered to the car !!!

Once I had enjoyed an ice cold banana shake it was time to finish my ride and find Catherine’s house who I would be staying with for a couple of nights.  Catherine is a warmshowers host (think couch surfing for cyclists) and Ignacio, the Spanish cyclist that I had met on Jebel Shams, was also staying with her.  

It turned out that Ignacio and I were both cycling the same bike – Surly Longhaul Trucker’s.

That night Catherine had prepared food, and as she is vegetarian the food was fresh and delicious.  We had great fun chatting about our adventures in Oman and further afield.

The next morning Catherine had to go to work which left Ignacio and I to cycle into old town Ibri.  First stop was the livestock market.  The market is normally finished by 9am, and as we had a late start to the day then there were not many farmers left there when we arrived.

However, from talking with them it turned out that there was a hierarchy when it came to goats – an Omani goat costs around 100 USD while a Somalian or Ethiopian goat is about a third of the price.  At the livestock market in the centre of old town only Omani goats can be sold.

I have seen hundreds of goats roaming around the mountains and desert.  Who would have thought that they were worth so much!!!

We toyed with the idea of buying Catherine a goat as a present for having us to stay, or cycling into the desert and catching one,  but it turns out that they can be high maintenance – females need to be milked and males tend to get sexually frustrated and aggresive if not around other female goats !!!!

Instead, we went for a leisurely breakfast before going for a haircut and shave.

We then cycled back to Catherines to do our washing and to catch up with family and friends using her wifi. It is always great staying at a fellow cyclists’ house for a couple of nights as they tend to be on the same wavelength, and we could totally relax as there were no expectations.

That evening instead of Catherine getting a goat we took her out for dinner to say thank you for letting us stay as the next morning Ignacio and I would be cycling together towards the border with The United Arab Emirates.

It would  take us a couple of days to reach the border, and although we had planned on getting on the road early it was gone 11am by the time we left.

It was another hot day and once again the wind was blowing hard so I cycled without front panniers to try and improve my aerodynamics.  

Between Ibri and the border there was absolutely nothing to see on the way apart from lots of sand.

We passed not a single town that day, and as we were cycling into one hell of a horrendous headwind it was slow going.  To take our mind off the wind that was killing us we stopped to play with a group of camels that we saw by the side of the road.


The border was around 130km from Ibri and we had hoped to cover around 90km of the distance the day we left.  Our late start and the crazy headwind put paid to that and by the time it went dark we had only covered 70km.

We had reached As Sunaynah, our first village of the day though, and as there was a restaurant it meant that we wouldn’t need to cook that night. 

All we needed to do now was find somewhere to sleep so before eating we went in search of a place to set up camp.

The wind was still blowing at a rate of knots which ruled out sleeping in the sand dunes as we would just get sand blasted. The other issue was that there were signs near the village warning us that the dunes may swallow us up.

As there were lots of date trees behind the restaurant we cycled there to take a look as in Oman they have become my ‘staple’ place to sleep. 

As we got closer to the trees we could see they were in a walled compound. 

This suited us fine as the walls would block the wind.  The only problem was that the entry gate was locked so I knocked on the door of a building that was nearby.

A Bengali guy answered the door and as he spoke no English it was hard to explain that we wanted to camp in the trees.  He went away and came back a couple of minutes later.  I thought that he had gone to find somebody who spoke English but he returned alone and just opened the door and invited us in.

He was a worker in the date plantation and the building was where the workers slept. He showed us a storage room and through hand signals explained that we could use it to sleep the night. 

Now that we had somewhere to sleep out of the wind and sand we cycled back to the restaurant to get something to eat.  When we got there it seemed that we could have anything on the menu as long as it was barbecued kebab.

To get the coals glowing they used an electric fan to blow air over the charcoal. 

The sparks that it produced went everywhere.

Once we had eaten we headed back to the store room where we enjoyed a very comfortable night.

In the morning the Bengali workers invited us to share their breakfast with them

As we still had 60km to the border, and then at least another 30km to the first town on the other side I also had a bowl of porridge to get the energy levels up.

It was then time to say goodbye to our new friends

They had invited us into their ‘home’, fed us and gave us somewhere to sleep.  It didn’t matter that we never spoke one word of the same language !!!

Like the day before we never passed any towns as we covered the remaining distance to the border.  In fact, there was nothing that day but sand

The wind though had been a little kinder and by mid afternoon we reached the border.  

Even though the signs said no photos 

It was too good an opportunity to miss.

The last 4 weeks of cycling through Oman had been amazing. Everyday had brought something new – amazing history, beautiful beaches, insanely steep mountains, the biggest dunes I had ever seen – the list is endless.  

However, the highlight for me was without doubt the Muslim people who every day opened their lives and hearts to me without the expectation of any financial reward in return. An experience that is becoming alien in many parts of the ‘western’ world !!!!

The Border Run, Oman
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