When my family and I went to Masirah, you had to be a little more adventurous than most. There was one hotel in Hilf with just six bedrooms so you either stayed with someone you knew on the base or camped on the beach like we did. It took us seven hours to motor south from Muscat to the island of Masirah.  The road is good skirting the western edge of the Wahibah Sands.  Turn right from the BidBid to Sur road and travel through Al Mudaybi and Sanaw, the last two towns before turning east through Al Hij, a sleepy place in Ramadan surrounded by bare desert.

We saw nobody in Al Hij apart from the garage attendant and this camel waiting at one of the cafes to break the fast at Iftar, just after sunset.

A four-wheel drive vehicle is useful to tackle the loose sand on the road.  Extensive sabkha (salt flats) lie on either side.  A narrow causeway strikes east to the ferry landing point.

Sunset over Khawr al Masirah marked the beginning of a night of visiting and celebration following a day of fasting. We reached the beach from where the ferry leaves, after dark.  There was still enough time to enjoy fresh fried fish and rice before embarking.

In the morning, we could see the ferry we had made the 15 km crossing on - really not much more than a landing craft and which probably wouldn't pass safety standards in U.K.  Three other vehicles made the crossing with us.  Some may be pleased to learn that there are larger craft! More seasoned boatmen might tell you about the currents in the strait.  Perhaps it was just as well that we didn't know anything about all this.  There was a slight swell but the night was magnificently clear revealing the Milky Way.

On the way over, we made friends with Ali, who was learning to play Arabic musical instruments in Muscat but who liked to go back to the island regularly to see his family and friends.  Ali took us on the grand tour of the island beginning early next day.   

When we went, the perimeter road was an acceptable graded track. It has subsequently been tarred, so you don't really need 4-wheel drive any more - I believe.

The morning was very still over Khawr Masirah, which lies between Masirah and the mainland. We stopped to look at this dhow, saw herons, heard curlew and were amazed at the community of crab hills.

Fishing is the principal economic activity on the island other than the airbase.  Large fishing dhows moored off the southern beaches take in large catches which are shipped on to the mainland in large refrigerated chests and driven to the more densely populated north of Oman.

The fishing village of Hiql on the west of Masirah is little more than a collection of shelters in a bay fringed by white sands.

This is the settlement of Sur Masirah, a Bedu village on the southeast coast of the island.  Housing is adequate, but primitive.  Goats are kept in stockades.  The village is probably here because there is drinkable groundwater, which is abstracted from this well.

Masirah and the adjacent mainland are very arid.  Ali's father told us that temperatures in the summer are ameliorated by the on-shore monsoon winds, but the rainfall is very low.  Sur Masirah probably enjoys a reasonably reliable groundwater supply because of a major geological structure which dissects the higher ground in the middle of the island.  The fault acts as a line of weakness which enables the groundwater to "flow" along it to the coast.

Here, Ali lifts water in a bucket from a shallow well on the southern end of the island.  It tasted very good.  We left the water for roaming camels.

The highest point on the island is just 275 m.  A small oasis with a few date palms lies in the middle of this picture, very near the shore.  The high, dark rocks are ultramafic, mantle ophiolites.

Most of the rocks on Masirah belong to an oceanic ophiolite sequence ranging from pillow lavas to very dark ultramafic mantle rocks.  There is no well-defined sheet dyke complex.  The northern end of Jabal al Khuwayrat .

The ophiolites were thrust on to the surface of the earth along with deep ocean sediments of the Hawasinah group, visible here as a lighter coloured capping on rocks in the distance.

Masirah's ophiolite sequence is thought to be earlier than that exposed on the mainland in the Hajar mountain range.  The age of the thrusting is reckoned to be late Jurassic to early Cretaceous.  At any rate, the ophiolite sequence has been displaced from the exposures on the mainland by an old transform fault which trends parallel to the eastern coast.  Also see the Geology of Oman.

Fabulous white-sand beaches stretch along the northwest shore bordering the Indian Ocean.  People are so scarce that the gulls don't even seem to take notice.  You can find all sorts of birds and seashells here.

Masirah is only 65 km long and 15 km wide.  It took us four hours to finish our tour.  Still, it was great to check out this beach just 15 minutes from Hilf, where Len and George set up our tent.  Loggerhead turtles nest here in the summer but we had it to ourselves at New Year.

Military base
Masirah has housed a defence base since the Second World War.  The island is sufficiently near and also far from the scene of action for it to have been used by the British first as a staging post to former colonial possessions in the Gulf and Aden, and then the Americans in their attempt to rescue hostages in Iran in 1980, in both Gulf Wars and in Afghanistan.

British aircraft also supported action against insurrections in mainland Oman in the early 1970s.

Squadron no. 1 of the Royal Air Force of Oman has been stationed on Masirah since 1977.

Read more about the US military base and activities on Masirah.

Colin Richardson, a former RAF pilot, was stationed on Masirah in the 1950s and again in the late 1970s.  He has written a book about the island and the history of the airbase there, entitled, Masirah: tales from a desert island.  The book has been reprinted and is available from

Colin Richardson
Five Acres
Fulbeck Lowfields
Grantham
Lincs NG32 3JD.

information at March 2008.