Oman | General | Travel | Visas | Locations | Maps, books | Geology | Snapshots
Bandar Khayran | Jabal Akhdar | Masirah | Mountains | Musandam | Salalah | Seifa |  Wadi Mistal | Wahibah

Getting away from it all
Muscat can get you down - really!  And when you feel it's time to get back in touch with Nature without slumming it that badly, why not do what Muscat expats do, and take off on the one and a half hour drive to Seifa!

En route to Seifa.  Rugged terrain but electricity lines march over the hills to the few villages in the area.		Fishing shelters at Yanqut, at the end of one of the inlets of Bandar Khayran

Only maybe 30 km by boat round the coast, the land route to Seifa takes you up and down some hair-raising dirt roads with unspeakable gradients.  The thing is, once you get used to it, it's just one of those things.

A four-wheel drive is essential to navigate the beach sand but I once did the trip in a Ford Tempo following some drunken hashers who missed the turn to Bandar Khayran. 

Difficult to grow date palms when the groundwater is too salty		Seifa beach, just after dawn

At the end of the journey, which was probably well-nigh impossible before the road was carved through the mountains, you take a sharp turn to the left at the bottom of the last steep hill and arrive shortly at the end of the narrow wadi behind Seifa town.  Some date palms survive, but many have died, maybe because the groundwater has become too salty.

You can turn left or right once you reach the mosque and find yourself among low sand dunes, where you can pitch camp wherever you like.  If you're within 100 m of another camping party, it's a busy weekend.

George and I waking up after sleeping under the stars on the beach		Hani was trying to cook the evening meal on the camp fire

We're not such tough campers since it's so mild or even hot most of the time that you can camp out under clear skies.  But it's best to take your camp fuel as there is little drift wood.  Larger parties of people usually delegate wood carrying to one member of the group who takes a car-full of off-cuts for the camp fire.

And don't forget your cool box full of liquid refreshment.

Just after sunrise on Seifa bay		A breaking wave

And this is the reason we go really, it is fabulously beautiful to watch the sea and the sky.  The bay is several kilometres long and waves thunder in one long line along the beach.  In Spring and Summer, red tides of plankton are accompanied by phosphorescence in the water.  You can sit and watch the waves shine fluorescent blue throughout the night.

I don't know why it is, but camping on the beach anywhere in Oman makes you feel as if you've come to the end of the world.  There's nowhere else to go.

In 2004, there were rumours that a hard-top road may be built to the village, with thoughts of tourist 'development'.

Highly foliated and deformed micaceous gneisses at Seifa		George shows the scale against the Seifa gneisses and calcareous pods

You didn't think you'd get away without a discussion of the rocks now, did you?  Seifa bay is encircled by highly metamorphosed iron-rich micaceous schists, gneisses and garnetiferous eclogites. 

These are considered to be Permian sediments which were buried deep within a subduction zone undergoing metamorphism at extremely high temperatures and pressures.  The age of the metamorphism is thought to be Cretaceous, preceding, or at about the same time as the emplacement of the ophiolites of the northern Oman mountains.

See El-Shazly A.K. and Coleman, R.G. 1990, Metamorphism in the Oman Mountains in relation to the Semail ophiolite emplacement; From Robertson, A.H.F., Searle, M.P. and Ries, A.C. (eds), 1990, The Geology and Tectonics of the Oman Region.

There are later studies.  Please see my synopsis of the Geology of Oman

Seifa town		GSM tower at Seifa

Seifa town itself is not particularly notable, consisting of several one-storey dwellings shared with goats.  There is electricity, water, a school and a clinic, and the government is installing a GSM tower to improve telecommunications.  Once upon a time, you could go to Seifa and know that you couldn't phone anyone and they couldn't phone you.

The inhabitants let the campers get on with their leisure and pretty much go about their business as they've always done.

Back to Oman for more Off-road pages.

Contact me