I recently returned home from a week long road trip to explore climbing and surfing opportunities in the very southernmost coast of Oman, where Africa meets Arabia.

 

The last time I was here in these mountains it was 2010. We had passed a military checkpoint on the southbound road, about 150km from Yemen and pulled into the village of Shaat. A brown sign, denoting tourist attractions, beckoned us to the Shaat sinkhole and view point so, keen to explore each and every nook in this interesting region, we followed the single lane to it’s end. Disembarking from the car mist swirled around us in an eerie damp wind. We stepped over to the railing and could hear the wild exposure of our situation in the billowing cold mist, but could not see the exposure, nor our hands in front of our faces for that matter.

 

At first one camel, then a dozen, appeared silently out of the grey, swishing past the frankincense trees, and ambled across the road, disappearing into grey beyond. Behind the camels a lone herder, dressed in traditional tunic and head wrap, but not much else limped past. In my best Arabic I greeted the man and he informed us that the view was spectacular beyond us, with a drop hundreds of meters below! He grinned his toothless grin. We could hear it, but nothing more, and the man limped along, to catch up to his camels.

 

The Khareef offers a mystical experience of the area and, with my father, we explored some wild mountains and beaches. The only drawback was that we often couldn’t see beyond a few hundred meters due to the constant fog. I have been to Dhofar a few times since 2010, yet these were to explore surfing potential just north of Salalah, southern Oman’s largest city. The south coast of Oman receives unhindered swell from the south indian ocean and there are some great surf breaks to be found in its turquoise waters. Those trips were mono-focused, though, with the sole intention of surfing. Eat, sleep, repeat. So I was excited to return and explore the mountains and sea cliffs that were obscured by fog on my first trip.

 

Tara and I set off to drive the 1,000km from Muscat, Oman’s capital, and spent 5 days in Dhofar, reaching as far south as the Yemen border, much further south than 2010. At the final military check-point before the actual border one, the soldier asked me in Arabic, “Are you French?”, clearly not able to read our english passports signifying that we are, in fact, not French. “No”, I replied. “OK”, he said, “French people are not supposed to be allowed past this point. Have a nice day.” I was aware of some western embassy warnings for extreme southern Dhofar earlier this year so it was at this point Tara and I decided we should let someone know where we are; just in case. Ultimately, we met only polite, interested people, mainly youth and were enchanted by the vast beauty of the unexplored mountains, humbled by its scale and excited about the prospects for more adventure down there. I can’t wait to get back next fall with a climbing partner and more time.