First day in Oman

Two thoughts filled my mind as I was approaching the Omani border.

I had never been in a country ruled by a Sultan and, at that time, had no clue what a Sultan actually was. Wikipedia was quick to give me the answer. A sultan is "a ruler who claimed almost full sovereignty in practical terms – lack of dependence on any higher ruler – without claiming the overall caliphate". Always good to learn new things, I guess.

However, what worried me more was that I had read in a travel guide that the Omani road maps don't necessarily correspond to reality. They show the road network how they would like it to be, and not how it is. Well, that sounds promising for driving across a new country.

Exiting UAE was a very straightforward affair. We showed the car papers, got our passports stamped and headed eastward through no-man's land. After half a mile or so, we saw a booth with an Omani policeman. We stopped and tried to give him our passports. The policeman wasn't interested in them and just waved us through. We were a bit perplexed as there was no other border control post in sight and we knew that we needed visas and stamps to get in and, more importantly, to get out again.

We drove along for a little while until we came across a group of shabby looking buildings that hosted one of many car insurance companies dotted along the main road.  We decided to go in and ask where the border checkpoint was. They told us, in a mixture of broken English and Arabic, that it was some 20 kilometres further east. They might have misunderstood my question as they seemed quite amused by it. We were definitely already inside Oman but didn't have much choice so we continued on the only surfaced road deeper towards the mountains.

To our relief, after 20 km there really was a border checkpoint and we got the visa forms and there was even an ATM, so we thought we would be well organised and took out some local cash. However, when we tried to pay for our visas with our newly acquired cash the policeman told us they take credit cards only. Well, that cash would surely come handy later.

After a few minutes all the paperwork was done and we were ready to leave. There was a small tourist information office at the checkpoint so we got a couple of local maps. The maps looked very modern and the road network looked promising. I kept reminding myself and my fellow passengers that we shouldn't blindly believe the maps as they might be unreliable, similar to Jordan. Anyway, we had a GPS in the car so we were confident that we would be fine.

As we drove off, leaving the checkpoint behind us, the GPS got completely lost and showed our location off road in the desert. On my map there was only one road leaving from the border crossing so naturally we were convinced we were driving on it. Looking at the road map, I planned us a nice itinerary that would take us south of the mountains to the town of Nizwa for lunch and for some sightseeing before continuing to Muscat for the night.

After 2-3 hours driving and passing unfamiliar sounding villages which I could not find on the map and I started to have a strange feeling. The GPS was showing very bizarre coordinates and an impossible remaining distance to Nizwa. Most alarming was that instead of reducing the remaining distance, it just kept increasing. Even more worrying was the lack of mountains to our north. The map simply didn't make any sense. But we kept our faith in the map and drove on.

Eventually we had to stop for petrol and decided to ask the locals where we were. To my amazement we were hundreds of kilometres north from where I thought we were. Somehow we were north of the mountains, near the coast. As I could not believe this, I asked my sister who was driving, to turn left at the next possible crossing and head north. Indeed, after a kilometre or two, we hit the ocean. At least we now knew where we were.

Well, we got back on the main road and continued east towards Muscat but I could not understand how that could have happened. Having retraced our route from where we were back to the border I could only come to one conclusion; we had crossed the border at a different place than we had thought. Our UAE and Oman maps didn't really match. Now, suddenly, the GPS started to make sense as well.

We had to forget about Nizwa for that day but, having quickly looked at the Rough Guide and the map, I spotted a potential point of interest less than 100 km from where we were so, after quick consultation with my fellow travellers, we decided to head to the Nakhal Fort instead.

Nakhal Fort turned out to be a great old castle at the foot of the Jebel Akhdar Mountains. The fort is approximately 350 years old and was considered impregnable in its time. It used to be the headquarters of the Ya'aruba tribe, who founded the Ya'aruba dynasty of imams in the 17th-18th century.

After a thorough and very enjoyable exploration of the castle it was time to get back on the road as we still had over 100 km to drive to Muscat where we hoped to be before sunset.

Despite a somewhat eventful border crossing and some surprises on the roads, it turned out to be a great first day in the Sultanate of Oman.