| My travel route from Dubai(UAE) to Muscat, via Sohar (Oman) |
As soon as I had found a couchsurfer host in Dubai(who unfortunately couldn’t host me that night), I left all my heavy things and valuables at his place, and took only my tent, camera, a small backpack with passport and 200 UAE Dirhams (ca 300NOK) for a camping trip to Muscat in Oman. The reason for not taking more with me was that I had earlier been talking to a Spanish guy who had gotten all his things stolen while sleeping on a bus in Oman.
The driving itself took only about 6 hours, but because of the border control it took 7 hours to go to Muscat and almost10 hours to go the same way back to Dubai.
It was a beautiful ride through desert and some beautiful mountains dividing Oman and the United Arab Emirates. The only problem for me was that it was Ramadan at that time, so the only time it was possible to get food and water was between 2 and 4 at night, which was called “Iftar” (the eating time during Ramadan). At my hostel they only served breakfast those couple of hours, which I managed to miss the night before I went there, so I did not have any food for the whole trip to Oman. Luckily I had brought a big bottle of water for my trip, so I managed to keep my consciousness in the 45 degrees celsius during daytime, and the 38 degrees we had at night time.
As the time went by I felt my body get more and more weak, and at the end I felt so tired that I only managed to sit and wait for the bus and sleep the whole trip back to Dubai.
After practically wriggling and sweating a whole night in my tent in the desert, I went back to the bus station area in Muscat to search for food and water. After walking around for almost two hours in Muscat, I realized that absolutely every place where it was possible to get food and water was closed, and I started to become afraid since I had been eating nothing the last 35 hours, and been drinking only about a liter of water that I brought from Dubai and half a liter of water I got from a fellow French traveller that I met at the bus station (which was not nearly enough for walking and sleeping in the heat).
At the time I felt really stupid doing this trip just to get some more stamps in my passport and to save some money by not sleeping in Dubai (where accommodation is really expensive), but afterwards I feel like it was an experience I would not want to have been without.
