Jewel of the GCC – Jebel Shams

It was a long weekend. Eid vacations started in Dubai. I and my husband wanted to go off-roading, more so because our new Jeep wrangler had arrived a day before! After living in Dubai for year and a half (without a car though), I was left with an impression that the scorching sun at this time of the year doesn’t leave us with any option for refreshing long drives. To my surprise, a quick google search popped up multiple options for summer getaways, all of them in Oman.

We picked Jebel Shams as the weather forecast (and other travel blogs) suggested that at an elevation of ~2000 m, the temperature remains in 20s in summer! . A sense of freshness started lingering in my mind. Those who have lived through a summer in the Gulf would empathize with my longing for a rainy day.

We planned for a day trip as it was too late for us to make any reservations for overnight stay as the resorts were fully booked or were pricey, 200$ per night. To avoid any traffic at the border, we decided to leave as early as possible (my optimistic self set the alarm to leave at 3 AM but managed to leave not before 5AM). We set our GPS (it is advisable to use coordinates – 23.208062N, 57.197577E). We drove through Al Ain, which reminded us of the toy town of Mexico,Valladolid (little did we realize that this so-called quiet town becomes a frenzied maze of cars in the night!).

Once we entered Oman, we saw a change in landscape. The high rise buildings of Dubai were replaced with mountains and sometimes our eyes gazed through uninterrupted views through the horizon (makes one wonder what made us believe for so long that earth was flat). It was an easy, smooth drive at sea level for almost 4 hours. My eyes kept rolling back on the car’s thermometer as I was hoping to see some relief from the heat, but to my disappointment the temperature kept soaring up to 44 degC and we were already driving through Bahla (the closest town to Jebel Shams). In my mind, I kept thinking that it may be possible that weather.com was inaccurate but not all the fellow bloggers could go wrong! Soon enough our GPS started displaying sudden increase in elevation, patches of unpaved roads, and the much awaited drop in temperature!

Before we knew, we were at 1700 m. Road was getting steeper. A vista of mountains and canyons laid all around us. We could smell the nostalgic scent of the first rain. We were not sure where we were heading as we had multiple detouring trails. Actually, we did not mind getting lost. We already knew Jebel Shams was not going to disappoint us!

Please see our drive-blog below:

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