Salalah - One of the Strangest Places I've Ever Visited
It might be hard to believe, but the two photos above were taken within 20 miles of one another. So were these two images…
And two more contrasting scenes…
The country is Oman. Southern Oman, just inland of the port city of Salalah way down near the Yemeni border - and the words below were part of an travel article I wrote after touring the area a couple of years ago.
Real travel - the kind of travel that smacks of adventure - is about intrigue. If the promise of whatever it is that lies over the hill or around the corner doesn’t intrigue you, then you may as well stay at home. But it’s a big wide world, so the amount of intrigue you feel concerning a certain place will depend on some hook, promise or hint that’s come your way.
And so it was with me a long time ago when someone said: “There’s a place in Southern Oman that looks like Exmoor or Dartmoor. It is full of bracken covered slopes, big trees and fast flowing rivers - and yet it’s only a few miles from the desert.”
Over the years more hints and clues about Salalah came my way culminating in a visit to Oman 18 months ago ashen local guides in the Akhdar Mountains told me that it was where they went on holiday whenever the chance came their way.
“You must go to Salalah,” they said. “If you like Oman and think it’s beautiful, then the Dhofar region will please you very much.”
Back then I wrote in these pages that the wild and wonderful sultanate was all and more that a traveller could ever imagine the Arabic Middle East to be. Much if it is stunningly beautiful. The scenery can be awesome and dramatic. And the people are fantastically friendly.
A recent visit to Salalah and a tour around the Dhofar region did not disappoint. And it really does have green, waterfall-filled valleys that will remind West Country folk of Exmoor or Dartmoor.
Me - Hesp - about to go on a surprising boating trip in a valley near a desert
Which is strange, Really, really, strange. Because to reach them you must drive up into the mountains from a fairly arid coastal plain. After 20 minutes you begin to think the whole promise of verdant landscapes must be some kind of illusion like a desert oasis. And then you turn the corner into a valley called Wadi Darbat and you know it’s no illusion.
There was so much cool clear fast flowing water in one stream in that valley when I was there at the end of September, people were plying up and down under the tall green trees in small electric-powered boats. And yet I was to learn that just 20 miles away there was real empty sandy desert.
That’s kind of shocking. So shocking that visitors pour here from all over the Gulf region. People think nothing of driving 2000 miles, just to come and see the greenery.
I learned this when I asked our guide - the wonderful Mussalam whose services you must ask for if you ever go to this land of illusions - why the dead-end road leading into Wadi Darbat was so massive and wide.
“If you’d been here three weeks ago, you wouldn’t have been able to move,” he replied. “People drive here from as far away as Iraq and Kuwait, just to see the greenery. If you spend you life living in a desert country, it is something special.”
Indeed it is. But then, the entire Salalah area is something special. And that is because it has a unique microclimate which has something to do with those coastal mountains and vast tall cliffs - sometimes called “cloud cliffs” which lock the ocean moisture in down on the coastal plain. I took a long long trip up to the top of these cloud cliffs as you can see below - there were moments when you felt you cold just step out onto the tops of the cloud, so thick were they - but you’d have fallen a straight and terribly vertical 2000 feet if you had…
The strange seasonal weather system really has more to do with the moody monsoons of the Indian Ocean than cliffs. The locals even have a word - and a festival - to celebrate this season which hits the coastal zone between the end of June and the beginning of September: it is called the Khareef.
During that time the area is often blanketed in thick fogs - it even rains - which for anyone living in the Gulf area is an meteorological enigma of almost mythical proportions. And so they flock to Salalah from all over the place to soak up the fog and feel the sensation of rain - to the extent that the handful of top-quality hotels are booked years in advance.
I’m not for a minute suggesting that anyone from the foggy wet UK travels 1000s of miles east to witness and bit of precipitation - that would be the ultimate in the travel industry selling-coals-to-Newcastle. But go there in September or October when the Arab crowds have gone, and you will not only see extraordinary landscapes but you will also have the place more-or-less to yourselves.
Which is worth mentioning because I do not think Salalah will be like that for long. Apart from in the Khareef season, mass tours of the kind known and enjoyed by Europeans is just about unknown. I say “just about” because the Germans have just begun catching on to the fact that this is a special place - and at the moment there’s one direct charter flight a week flying in from Frankfurt. But there will soon be more, that is certain - because Salalah’s tiny regional airport is about to be superseded by a massive terminal larger than our Stansted.
My bet is that within half a dozen years this little known area will become yet another winter sunshine destination printed in the fat brochures of the massive package holiday giants. Outside of the Khareef months you are guaranteed wall-to-wall sundays and heat - and there are already a handful of very good hotels dotted along the miles and miles of empty ocean front, and due to be more.
I’ll add some more articles about Salalah and its environs over the next few days…
