Jaylah and around
Some 4km south of the turn-off for Fins, brown signs point inland to the ancient tombs of Jaylah (or Gaylah) and the village of Quran. This is one of the most memorable drives in Sharqiya, a spectacular off-road traverse of the barren uplands at the top of the Eastern Hajar with a cluster of wonderfully atmospheric Bronze Age beehive tombs en route. The track also offers a convenient short cut from the coast to Ibra, although it’s probably no quicker than taking the main road through Sur. The route comprises about 50km of generally good graded track, but there are some pretty rough, and sometimes extremely steep, sections here and there – 4WD is essential, as are strong nerves if you’re driving yourself.
The route begins by switchbacking vertiginously up the flanks of the Eastern Hajar, a breathless thirty-minute drive with increasingly spectacular views down to the coast below. At the top, you reach the sere Salma Plateau at the summit of the Eastern Hajar: a rolling expanse of gravel plain, dotted with only the sparsest of vegetation. There’s virtually no sign of human habitation until you reach tiny Quran, one of the loneliest villages in Oman – little more than a haphazard cluster of houses tucked away in the lee of cliff, and feeling an awfully long way from anywhere.
Qalhat
The ancient city of QALHAT was, up until the sixteenth century, one of the most important on the Omani coast – “A sort of medieval Dubai” as travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith described it in his Travels with a Tangerine. Qalhat’s importance derived from its status as the second city of the Kingdom of Hormuz, serving as a major commercial hub in the Indian Ocean trade routes. The fame of the city attracted visitors including both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta. Despite its prosperity, the city suffered from certain strategic weaknesses. A falaj system provided a reliable source of water, but there was almost no agricultural land available and all food had to be imported by land or sea. Qalhat’s already tenuous foothold on the Omani coast was futher undermined by a serious earthquake at the end of the fourteenth century, while just over a hundred years later, in 1508, the newly arrived Portuguese delivered the coup de grace, sacking the city, massacring its inhabitants and setting its buildings and large fleet of boats on fire, an event from which Qalhat never recovered.
The ruins of the city, originally triangular in plan, cover an area of over sixty acres, although it’s difficult to make much sense of the confusing wreckage of assorted walls and towers scattered over a rocky headland and along the adjacent wadi (look out for shards of antique Persian pottery and Chinese procelain which litter the site). The only notable surviving structure is the Mausoleum of Bibi Maryam, a quaint little cuboid building enshrining the remains of the saintly Bibi Maryam who, according to Ibn Battuta, had ruled the city until a few years before his visit in 1330. The colourful tiles which covered the walls right up until the nineteenth century have now vanished, and the dome has also collapsed, though the remains of the delicately moulded arches and doorways have somehow survived the years.
The site was officially closed at the time of writing, although there’s nothing to stop you walking up for a look anyway.
Quriyat
The first town of any significance south of Muscat, QURIYAT lies some 80km from the capital, a 45-minute drive from Ruwi along a fast and relatively empty new stretch of dual carriageway which weaves between the craggy foothills of the Eastern Hajar. Quriyat had the dubious honour of being one of the first towns in Oman to experience the destructive attentions of the Portuguese fleet under Afonso de Albuquerque. Albuquerque’s soldiers attacked the town in August 1508, setting it ablaze and massacring its inhabitants – captives, it is said, had their noses and ears cut off, a popular Portuguese way of discouraging further resistance to their rapacious rule.
The town centre – a modest huddle of buildings and a low-key souk – lies around 7km off the coastal highway. The principal attraction is Quriyat’s fort, which sits right in the middle of town, on your left as you drive in. Unfortunately, like so many other forts in Oman, it was closed at the time of writing for renovation – long overdue, judging by the crumbling exterior plasterwork and general air of dilapidation. In the meantime, you can still admire the fine old wooden entrance door flanked by two rusty cannon and the shuttered ground-floor windows which ring the building on three sides, suggesting that domesticity, rather than defence, was formerly the principal concern.
Continue along the road past the fort and a large mangrove swamp to reach the town’s pretty seafront corniche, at the end of which is the harbour, with boats drawn up on surrounding sands overlooked by a round watchtower sitting proudly on the headland above.
Ras al Jinz
Some 35km from Sur at the easternmost point of the Arabian peninsula, RAS AL JINZ is home to Oman’s most important turtle-nesting beach, visited by thousands of magnificent green turtles every year, who haul themselves up out of the sea to lay their eggs in the sand. This is perhaps the finest natural spectacle anywhere in Oman (even if, ironically, you can’t actually see very much after dark) – a magical glimpse into a natural cycle which has been in existence for the best part of two hundred million years.
Visits begin with a walk across the sands in the darkness to the edge of the waves, from where you’ll see the ghostly silhouettes of perhaps a dozen or more green turtles emerging slowly from the surf and then heaving themselves laboriously up the beach – a Herculean trial of strength for these enormously heavy creatures. Half an hour later, having found a suitably sheltered location, the turtles begin digging themselves carefully into the beach, scooping out clouds of sand with their flippers to create a sizeable hole in which they then proceed to lay their eggs.
The whole scene is particularly magical at daybreak, as the sun rises, revealing the beautiful, cliff-fringed beach dotted with the great humped outlines of departing turtles, leaving great plough-tracks in their wake as they make their way slowly back down the beach before disappearing, exhausted, into the waves.