BY Justus Tacke
Morning on Mars
It’s 5am. I wake up in the trunk of a Mitsubishi just before sunrise, either from the emerging light or the squishy sound of my bright pink air mattress—an improvised sleep setup that squeaks with every move. One minute later I’m fully awake. I lift my head to check the waves. They’re small. No surprise there. But at least the wind’s not there yet and getting out of bed I can appreciate how perfect the temperature feels. Not too cold and not too warm. A pleasure that won’t last long. In a couple of hours, the temperature will rise to staggering 40-50 degrees Celsius. The wind will pick up and the day-to-day fight against sun, sand and flies will begin. I haven’t moved the car in two days, and the little beasts have claimed it—in what seems to have become our shared wind-sheltered haven they are living, dying and endlessly reproducing in. Me, that is Justus, a 25-year-old German student whom the Baltic Sea has taught to be happy with literally anything that you can make a takeoff on. So, I call it on and catch a couple of small pointbreak peelers that make it around the headland. I spent the last couple of days surfing, reading, eating and sleeping. It’s been two days since I’ve seen another human being, and my food and water supplies are coming to an end. I decide to break camp in order to reinflate the tires, charge my cellphone and reconnect to the outside world once again. I’m starting to become sick of wraps and couscous, so I treat myself to some paratha bread at a roadside restaurant. I check one spot, then another one. I surf. I continue looking for new waves because there might always be a better one around the next corner. Contrary to the saying “never leave waves for waves” there actually is better surf further north. I stumble upon one of the best breaks of my entire trip, the wind dies off and the beauty of the sunset makes my eyes water. A kind reminder of why I am out here, against the strong advice of my credit card limit and the intuition of the experienced forecast reader.
A straight line
Why Oman? I had spent the last 8 months doing an internship at the hospital in Sri Lanka. I had some time to spare before going back to Germany and the south coast surf season had come to an end. Oman and Lebanon popped up when I looked at Google earth and drew a straight line from Sri Lanka to Europe. I wanted to go somewhere I hadn’t been to before. As I had had good waves for half a year straight, adventure was the priority over swell consistency. Stopping in Oman and Lebanon turned out to be only a little more expensive than a direct flight to Germany. And that straight-line path to Europe instead of a detour was a nod to my ecological conscience and the judgment of my eco-conscious friends. I figured, the may-june window between flat spells and trade winds might be a good bet. There was some money left on my bank account which I hoped would be enough for food and a rental car, if I slept in the trunk and didn’t spend on housing.
Couscous and Credit Limits
The calculations proved to be fundamentally wrong. When I arrived in Muscat and rented a 4×4 all my leftover savings were swallowed in the blink of a second. From now on, I would be travelling on a budget equivalent to the overlimit allowance of my credit card, potential hospital bills or car repairs not included. Also, buying equipment was not an option anymore. I had to improvise with my baggage packed for Sri Lanka, severely compromised by a last-minute elimination of excess luggage upon realizing, that I exceeded the allowance by 20kg.
My first impression of Oman was the heat. Starting off in Muscat the car thermometer showed a sweltering 47 degrees Celsius. My second realization when hitting the road was that this was certainly the country with the most speed cameras that I have ever been to. The highway was lined with one every kilometer. When driving down the coast, my next insight was how incredibly diverse desert landscapes can be. Sure, it’s all desert. But every 10 minutes I had the feeling of passing through a completely new landscape which reminded me of some deserted alien planet. Sand dunes, savanna, mountains, hills, Wadi and everything that lies between.
I started off from Muscat with my friend Sara who had spontaneously decided to join me for a week on her way back to Germany. The plan was to drive together for one week and then continue on my own. Until her departure, we drove south as far as we got, which was Duqm, making a stop on Masirah island for the most promising days on the forecast. It was fair to say that “promising” did not include swell heights above 3ft during our window of opportunity. Sara then took the bus back to Muscat while I slowly drove back up the coast.
The trip confirmed: Swell can be all that matters. A lesson one surely learns more quickly surfing the Baltic and North Sea coasts than in perfectly consistent Indonesia. You can adapt to wind, tide, period and geographical setup. But when there’s no swell there’s not much you can do. We had time on our sides and gas is cheap in Oman. This allowed us to fight the odds and make the best out of the window of swell during our stay, exploring the setups that we considered promising on satellite images. I ended up surfing 22 times in two weeks. Which isn’t that bad considering that I had lowered my expectations to “I’m happy if I get to surf once and see a bit of the country” before getting on the plane. The challenge was to find consistent spots sheltered from the afternoon wind. Many sessions called for a longboard, but the best my travel quiver had to offer was a 5’10 with 34l, almost no rocker and a voluminous nose. So waxing was extended to the very tip of the board and improvisation made up for the lack of gear. The first night on the air mattress in the back of the car was hell. From the second one onwards it felt like this was the way we had been sleeping all our lives.
Buried to the Axles
Our first human encounter in the desert wasn’t how we imagined it to be. Our painfully expensive 4×4 got stuck in the sand on the first 10m we took if off-road. A chain of bad decisions and lack of experience had us stuck in the sand in the middle of nowhere a couple of hours after sundown. Being just a small hike away from the potential pointbreak we had aimed for, and lacking alternative options for the first night in the car, we slept where we had gotten stuck. Before sunrise, fishermen going to work kindly offered their help. However, despite the language barrier, we came to realize that nobody was going to help us unless we paid. Our car had been taken hostage by the sand and the ransom exceeded our financial resources by far. Thus, we politely declined and decided that this was a “later us” problem. We went for our first surf of the trip before the wind picked up. Later, we found someone willing to help us for much less after extensive haggling, taking our first lesson in “how to free your car from the sand”.
After the first setback, we experienced the openness and generosity of Omani culture throughout the trip. We were welcomed as warmly by the locals as by the countless expats from Pakistan, Irak, Iran and Lebanon that we met on our rare stops in civilization. Our highlight was encountering Bassem on Masirah island, who owns a surf house there. He treated us to coffee, dates and the only shower of our trip, sharing stories from the Middle Eastern and Arab water sports community.
Masirah Mirage
Supposedly, the highlight of any surf trip is stumbling upon a perfectly breaking wave in the middle of nowhere, after following nothing but instinct and a promising satellite image. The best surf we had was right at the beginning of the trip, on Masirah island. It was a day without an incredibly promising forecast, with the wind holding up longer than expected allowing for four sessions a day. Lefts and rights breaking at a size, where shortboarding no longer felt like a compromise. With a breathtaking lunar landscape and a mountain range in the backdrop we cherished the feeling of complete isolation. The only encounter of the day was a group of grazing camels, living oblivious to the waves they pass by every day.
But the highs would not feel as good without the lows. We both fell sick the next day, hardly able to eat and unsure whether to complain about the diarrhea, the clogged nose, the headache or the cough that shook us as soon as we opened our mouths. The setting could have been better than being stuck in 40-degree heat, unable to make tea, with sand literally everywhere. But then again, when is being sick ideal? Bassem, our local friend, told us that salt water was the best cure for the flu, so I tried going for a surf around noon while hardly being able to stand on my legs. Three waves later my surf confidence was shattered, and I gave into a nap under the blanket we had suspended to escape the sun.
The second half of the trip involved more sightseeing and a lot more driving. Distances between surf spots increased compared to Masirah Island, and swell consistency became more of a challenge along the mainland coast. Even with high-resolution satellite imagery, arriving at a new potential break often placed us in a landscape very different from what we had imagined based on bird’s-eye photos. One evening near Duqm, we reached a promising stretch of coast, only to discover a steep cliff dropping hundreds of feet, something that had completely escaped our notice on the satellite view. A descent was impossible with our gear and the fading light. We drove around frantically in search of an alternative access point but had to accept that the sunset session we’d been looking forward to all day wasn’t going to happen.
Surprise swells and off grid therapy
If perfect waves are your priority, Oman might not be for you. But if you are willing to exchange waves for stunning desert landscapes when it’s flat, and you want to go to a place where you can still feel “the search”, the country is a great pick. I believe we got lucky with the waves we surfed, and I think we did a good job being in the right place at the right time. Leaving the country, I am sure to come back one day. After all, from Duqm to Salalah there is still around half of the country left to explore. The solitude of my last days in Oman had a therapeutic effect, I was forced to switch off my phone and to spend days with no distraction whatsoever. With the worst forecast so far, I had abandoned the Idea of surfing and planned to visit the Wadi before finishing my trip in Nizwa. Nevertheless, I wanted to sleep by the sea and was blessed with a surprising wind swell from the Gulf of Oman, turning glassy around sunrise on one of my last mornings. This is how I will remember this country. Surprise sessions with miniature waves, in solitude, surrounded by breathtaking nature.
