Our first sunrise! Haven’t camped in a while…

Waking up with the first light of dawn can feel so natural. Especially when you went to bed at 8 pm the night before. 🙂 Although this was the first time in a long while, all our hard-earned camping reflexes were still working. I got our breakfast ready while Nina started packing inside the tent. It all worked out nicely to give us a lovely sunrise just as the kettle was boiled, so to speak. Our spot had been great, too. No disturbance or other nuisances to report.

By 8 am, we had covered the few short kilometres to Sur, ready to explore. If the Lonely Planet was anything to go by, forts would be the things to see. So we started with one right away. This one, Bilad Sur Castle, was a bit inland. It was built to protect the town from raids coming from the country’s interior. Nowadays, it has been completely absorbed by a suburb – which makes it look slightly out of place coming round a row of restaurants and shops.

The other tourist and his guide looking over the battlement

Next up, still bright and early, we were keen to go inside one of these fortifications for once. Sunaysilah Castle was supposed to be our ticket. Freshly renovated, we rounded it once in our now customary fashion and found it barred. It took the arrival of the only other lone tourist and his guide to realise that the ticket guy with the keys was actually out where we had parked our bike. Nonetheless, we got our first view inside one of these. I must admit, it was different from what I had imagined. Fuller, somehow. Maybe because all the inner buildings were fashioned from stone as well – whereas in Europe, most buildings were wood and long gone by now.

I swear that tower looks surprised =P

One quick look at the last fort Al-Ayjah with its shady goats and we were pretty fort’ed out. We moved back to the other side of the channel to pay a visit to the boatbuilders in the lagoon. This turned out to be a colourful encounter in many ways. More impressive to us than the dhows were the three old towers guiding the way into the lagoon. Can you spot their smile?

After half a day of sightseeing, it was time for lunch and to get back on the road. Initially we had planned to stay at the beach at Raz Al-Hadd, near the turtle beach of Raz Al-Jinz. Given that it was only another 50 km from Sur, we arrived way too early to think of setting up camp already. We might have been convinced if there were any shade around, but in the end, we rather hit the road again.

Arcadia forest on the way to Raz Al-Hadd

Along the way lay many more marvels for us. Our first camel in the wild was spotted. The arcadia forest was also pretty impressive. Its inviting shady trees almost changed our mind about stopping and staying. Then we had a lesson about right of way rules from master roundabout camel, only to find the cool and inviting siesta spot a while further down. All the while, the landscape kept changing around us. Mountains came and went, so did vegetation of different kinds. The ground changed as well, constantly changing colour and composition: Ochre stone, red gravel, white sand, yellow gravel and so on.

…then we saw this and thought “Might be perfect”.

We thought we would go on for another 100 km to Al-Ashkarah, but once again, the designated camp spots did not click with us, so we moved on. We saw our first sand dunes then, and a little while later came upon a magnificent wide floodplain with sandy dunes on both sides. Exploring further, I found that fishermen had gravelled a track all the way to the beach, solid enough to ride on.

There, we found a beautiful camp spot between the dunes just 20 m off the gravel tracks. Getting the bike there was easy enough. Soon I realised though that the whole camping at the beach is way nicer on paper than practice. Fine sand everywhere, pushed on by the constant sea breeze. It almost messed up a lock on the panniers and just got worse from there. Trying to get the empty bike back to the gravel I, of course, buried it in the sand. After fighting for 15 minutes to get it out, one fatal miscommunication led to a full head to toe sand bath for Nina. We got the bike out in the end. I had to swear never to take the bike into sand ever again …