Day 1
Muscat to Wahiba Sands
Start point
Muscat
~1.5 to 2 hrs from Muscat
Ancient city of Nizwa
Nizwa FortLivestock marketNizwa Souq
~2 to 2.5 hrs from Nizwa
Thousand Nights Campsite, Wahiba Sands
To explore Oman beyond our stay in the capital Muscat, I planned a short road trip from Muscat to give our family an experience that we would never forget. This blog suggests some places to visit on a road trip which can easily be visited from Muscat, and also some practicalities to consider before setting out in your car.
This practical guide details a memorable short family road trip from Muscat, Oman, starting with a visit to the historic Nizwa Fort and souq (1.5 hours away), followed by driving into the Wahiba Sands desert for an overnight stay at the eco-friendly Thousand Nights Campsite in a traditional Bedouin tent, complete with camel riding, sandboarding, Omani dinner, and stargazing.
The itinerary continues on Day 2 with a stop at the beautiful oasis of Wadi Bani Khalid and culminates in an evening turtle egg-laying experience at Ras Al Jinz Turtle Reserve, before heading back via the traditional dhow boat-building town of Sur on Day 3, offering a perfect mix of history, desert adventure, wildlife, and culture while emphasising 4WD needs, safety prep, and road
A relaxed three day drive that takes in a desert camp, a turtle reserve and a few good stops along the way. Tap any day to jump to the full write-up below.
The first stop on our Oman road trip from Muscat was the ancient city of Nizwa (a 1.5-hour drive Southwest). Nizwa was once the capital of Oman between the 8th and 12th centuries and is therefore an important city in Oman. Along the way, we travelled on good roads through a rocky landscape.
We spotted camels in the back of pick-up trucks and enjoyed the stunning backdrop of the Al Hajar mountains. There is an impressive looking white mosque set back from the road on the outskirts of the Nizwa.
Our main activity in Nizwa was visiting the 17th Century Nizwa Fort, once an important stopping point on the old trading routes. Nizwa Fort is a sand-coloured square fort with a circular tower in the middle.
We entered Nizwa Fort through enormous, ornately carved Omani wooden doors which led into shady corridors around the edge of the fort. There was good signage around the Fort telling you about the history and structure of the fortification.
Once inside the circular tower at the centre of the fort, you can climb the stairs to enjoy the wonderful views for miles around across the valley, spotting the minarets of mosques and large expanses of date palms surrounding the city.
From the children’s perspective, they enjoyed the fort with its cannons and gory stories about the ‘murder hole’ through which boiling date syrup was poured onto any invaders – gruesome but inventive! There was a small area for refreshments at the end with a shady canopy.
If you are in Nizwa on a Friday, then don’t miss the weekly Nizwa livestock market and witness the bartering and trading of animals from farmers from all over Oman. However, you will need to get there early as the event is all over and done with by mid-morning.
Visiting the Nizwa Souq is a great opportunity to pick up items such as pottery, coffee, dates and spices including frankincense. The vendors are very welcoming and mainly Omanis. If you have visited the Muttrah Souq in Muscat then you might take a view on whether to visit the Nizwa Souq as well, however, the two markets do feel quite different and so it is good to be able to compare the experiences.
We didn’t stay in Nizwa, as we headed off to our next stop on our Oman road trip. However, if I were repeating the itinerary, I would definitely stay overnight in Nizwa and explore the city in more depth.
There are quite a few different hotels in Nizwa, including Antique Inn (3 star hotel), Old Town Hotel (4.5* on Booking.com), Golden Tulip Nizwa (4 star hotel).
In the afternoon, we drove to the town of Bidiya (2 hours 20 minutes from Nizwa). Bidiya is on the edge of Sharqiya Sands (formerly known as Wahiba Sands) and gateway to the desert. We took the opportunity to fill up with fuel and let some air out of our tyres at a garage before heading into the desert to find our accommodation for the night, the Thousand Nights Campsite.
The journey from Bidiya to the Thousand Nights Campsite is about 40km and the drive across the desert sands is one that I will never forget – the sun was starting to set, casting an orange glow on the sands and shadows which highlighted the patterns and grooves in the sand.
Unfortunately, we missed one of the signposts for the Thousand Nights Campsite and eventually, realising that we had gone too far, had to double-back to pick up the campsite signs which made our journey much longer than it needed to be.
The signposted route took us up the dunes on a large sandy track, which is where we promptly got stuck. After several attempts to get moving again we accepted that we stuck, but luckily help arrived in the form of a pick-up truck full of locals heading who knows where. They stopped and dug us out of the sand so that we could continue our journey before nightfall – thank you for the kindness of strangers. We concluded that we had not let enough air out of our tyres!
If our experience of getting stuck puts you off, you can leave your car in Bidiya and, for a fee, be collected by a driver from the Thousand Nights Campsite.
When we arrived at the Thousand Nights Campsite, we were shown to our hand-woven Bedouin tent for the night. It was large enough to sleep a family of 5 and covered in colourful Arabic carpets. The kids were particularly excited about the open-air shower cubicle attached to the side of the tent. There are different accommodation options on site, with some tents erected on more permanent structures than ours but we loved our authentic tent.
We then headed to the main restaurant for an Omani dinner followed by music and dancing from (and with) Bedouins in traditional costume. It was a memorable experience topped off by terrific star gazing outside our tent before bed.
Thousand Nights Campsite is committed to ‘preserving and celebrating Bedouin heritage’ and this really showed – from our home in a bedouin tent, to the activities we undertook, to the dinner with traditional music and dancing. We very much felt part of the Bedouin culture and community at the campsite.
Beyond that, the Thousand Nights Campsite practices responsible, eco-friendly tourism through the use of: natural materials on-site, water conservation systems, and follows wildlife protection guidelines.
The heat woke us up early the next morning in our tent and so we were up and about in good time. Before checkout time, we tried some desert activities, choosing sand boarding on the dunes next to the camp, followed camel riding around the campsite.
By the time we checked out, the sand was already too hot to walk on, so getting out early for activities was a good plan. Then we retraced our journey back across the desert sands to the town of Bidiya, before picking up the main road and heading onwards to our next destination on our Oman road trip from Muscat.
We stopped at Wadi Bani Khalid (Wadi meaning ‘dry riverbed’) and followed the water irrigation channels from the car park towards a series of lakes. It was beautiful seeing the turquoise waters surrounded by palm trees, essentially an oasis surrounded by a barren desert landscape.
Some of the locals were swimming in the lakes, but we decided just to have a walk and stretch our legs. This was a good pit-stop for toilets and a lunch at the café overlooking one of the lakes.
After our stop at Wadi Bani Khalid, we continued east towards the coast and then followed the coastal road south to Ras Al Jinz Turtle Reserve (1 hr 41 minutes’ drive from Wadi Bani Khalid).
Ras Al Jinz Turtle Reserve is a turtle research centre and hotel which looks futuristic, like something from a James Bond film rising out of the rocky terraine. We took the opportunity to explore the beaches in daylight and sat watching the waves and small crabs burying holes into the sand.
Booking a room at the Ras Al Jinz Turtle Reserve allows you to participate in watching turtle egg laying after dark, so after dinner we were escorted to the beaches with a guide hoping to see endangered green turtles laying eggs.
We were in luck as several huge turtles eventually heaved themselves onto the beach in the moonlight, dug huge holes and laid many eggs. We were allowed to sit quietly behind the turtle in a semi-circle to share this special experience. Then we watched as the exhausted turtle crawled slowly back to the sea.
Despite this being a magical experience, we did not feel that the crowd control was strict enough – there were some very young children in the group who were not quiet or still when watching the turtles. I felt as though the parents or the guide should have stepped in, but sadly they did not, so it slightly detracted from the experience. When we joined a similar experience in Costa Rica, it was much stricter
After breakfast at the Ras Al Jinz Turtle Reserve, we began our journey back to Muscat which is a 3-hour drive. After around 50 minutes, you can break your journey in the town of Sur on the Gulf of Oman.
Sur is important for being one of the main traditional boat-buildingcentres in Arabia, notably making wooden ships, known as Dhow. You can visit the Dhow Factory to learn more about the history and manufacture of these beautiful boats; allow around one hour for this stop.
Then grab a late seafood lunch in Sur before continuing your journey back to Muscat.
We found driving to be relatively straightforward in Oman. The country has invested heavily in its infrastructure, so most roads were surprisingly good (in fact, we encountered fewer potholes than in the UK!).
Muscat has moderate ‘city traffic’ but, once out of the city, the roads were all fairly empty which made for a great driving experience. However, it does help to be prepared…
First, make sure that you are driving a 4WD (four wheel drive vehicle) to ensure that your car can cope with the varied terrain that you might come across. If you are driving in the desert, before you set off, read up about how to adapt your car to driving on the sand and avoid getting stuck (as you will find out later, this is a real possibility!).
Make sure that your hire car has a good satellite navigation system. Connectivity was good for most of our journey, however, for any desert or mountain sections it is also a good idea to have physical maps or printed off directions which you can refer to if necessary.
Just in case of emergencies, make sure that you have a good supply of water and snacks in the car. Also take some blankets or warm clothes as the temperature can drop considerably at night in the desert or mountains. You are unlikely to need these, but better to be prepared than not.
Whilst this was only a short road trip from Muscat, we felt that it offered a varied itinerary including:
Forts and ancient cities.
A desert and coastline.
Wildlife experience.
Wadi oasis.
Traditional boat building.
Whilst there is plenty more to see, this was a great introduction to what Oman has to offer in a relatively short time.
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