Oman: A Journey Through Mountains And Desert

April 26, 2023 | Author: Michal Činčiala | Add Comment

Oman. Hajar Mountains. Traverse of the western part. Why go running in the Omani mountains when I love deserts so much and one of them is literally a few kilometers away? Actually, I don’t know. Maybe because this traverse offers a great physical and technical challenge. But I didn’t have to regret it, because I also enjoyed running in the desert, even though it meant a complete collapse of the original plan. But first things first…

About 4 months have passed since the American MOAB and its 240 miles. The physical and mental pains are long gone, and since the project abstinence is (as usual) big, the finger on the map rests on Oman. I write to Peter, my long-term supporter, whether he wants to take another trip to desert after Israel. Actually, the thing was a bit different – we had agreed some time ago that we would go on a project, but Petr’s condition was that it had to be warm area. Basically, this also corresponds to my preferences, because who would want to go somewhere other than a warm environment from the disgusting Central European February weather? After researching resources on the Internet, it is clear that Oman will not be the promised land of running, there are a minimum of marked running routes, in fact, hardly any and mostly unmarked routes, so I reach for the only option, which is the traverse of the western part of the Hajar Mountains. There are not many information sources, so I use the route record of one of my tourist predecessors to plan, click it on the map and “thy will be done”.

With such minimalist information, I present the project to Peter, who responds laconically to the effect that it will be a punk event. I have no choice but to admit it. Also, at least renting a car and especially gasoline in Oman is a pittance compared to Israel (and actually all the other destinations I have been to so far).

Muscat is a bit further than Tel Aviv, so we leave Prague early in the afternoon on February 28th and we don’t arrive at our destination airport until after three in the morning. Before departure, of course, we grab a Pilsner from Billa at the airport and then, after security check, another, we take obligatory 0.7l can of beer from the airport shop. We pass the wait during the transfer in Istanbul with a hamburger and fries – that’s the right nutritional preparation for an ultramarathoner for a demanding project. Petr goes through Omani immigration without any problems, they let me stand there for 10 minutes and then call somewhere. I start to get a little nervous. Finally, the official asks if I have another passport, to which I answer yes, and after presenting it, I get a stamp and I’m officially in Oman. Information from the internet says that car rental agencies and SIM card shops at Muscat airport are open 24/7.

I don’t really want to believe it, but whatever, at worst we’ll wait until morning. Despite the unchristian early morning, the arrivals hall is quite lively and, surprisingly, the rental office and SIM shop are open. Renting a car takes a while, after the experiences and difficulties in Israel we have a full-fledged SUV Toyota Fortuner, buying a SIM is not so easy, but even that is eventually possible. We get in the car and decide to drive to the viewpoint above the city, where we want to watch the sunrise. And since it is a punk project, the preparation was in the same spirit, so we look for the viewpoint on offline maps (because SIM cards are supposed to be active within one hour) and identify it only by the fact that there are serpentines leading to it.

We drive through Muscat, which is exceptionally clean, where there is no traffic yet, we drive up, looking for a parking lot from where we should go to the viewpoint. We find one parking area, but the driveway is so terrible that we are convinced that it will not be the one. We go down, who knows where, we turn around and know that this first trip has failed. We try to find an alternative destination, but after six in the morning it is pretty hopeless. Also because the SIM cards are not working yet and we have no internet. Finally we decide to try the Sultan’s Palace. We get there at seven – it is deserted, only a few employees are sweeping the marble paving.

We take a few photos and with great relief we find that we finally have mobile internet. We head to the great mosque of Sultan Qaboos – it is already quite hot, which is compounded by the fact that you have to wear long pants inside.

We complete the photo tour, but my thoughts are slowly starting to wander about what we are here for. No more jokes, we are going to the Muscat Grand Mall to buy the necessary provisions.

It’s two in the afternoon, we’ve seen basically everything we wanted to, we’ve bought everything, it’s about a two-hour drive to the hotel in the mountains. The starting point of my route is on the way to the accommodation, about 45 minutes away. Although the original plan is to start the next morning, a change of plan is brewing in me – it seems pointless to spend the evening and night inactive, perhaps because our brought beer supply is very limited and, given the almost complete impossibility of buying any alcohol on site, there is minimal space for an evening preparatory party. So I decide to go out into the terrain for the night.

The hotel is a kilometer-long steep road uphill – at the bottom there is a police checkpoint where they check whether the car has 4×4 drive. Others are not allowed up. The view from the hotel is impressive, and when I put my things away in the room, I’m a little unhappy that I’m leaving in a moment.

PART ONE – HAJAR MOUNTAINS

My home preparation before departure is becoming more and more “economical” as I get older. Perhaps that is why preparing my things and clothes for the trail run (including thinking about what I should take with me) takes me longer than I would like. At seven o’clock, when we set off towards the start, it is getting dark and when we arrive at the starting point it is already completely dark. A signpost on a pole lets us know that this is the starting point of a trail, but it is loose and has fallen to the ground (Petr lifts it up to take pictures). Of course, it is not clear where it was originally heading, so I rely only on the GPS.

We take the obligatory photo and chat a bit, but when a local comes out of a nearby house and looks at us suspiciously, wondering what is going on, I set off into the darkness. It should be seven kilometers up, then a few kilometers down; I don’t know any further and probably don’t want to know. I descend for a while on a gravel road, call while there is signal, and put the live track on the net, but my initial optimism that it will not be so hot with the difficulty of the terrain is already fading as I start to climb.

The first part of the route is supposed to be marked. Indeed, from time to time a mark appears. The problem is that in complete darkness I walk in the bed of a river that flows here only a few times a year, I climb rocks, jump from rock to rock, from boulder to boulder, I have to be really careful not to hurt myself, and following the marks is quite a problem. Sometimes there are short, flatter sections, but they are full of fine gravel. The climb is getting steeper and more technical. It stops being fun. Maybe it’s better that it is dark, because it mercifully hides the dangers, which would probably make me quite nervous. The GPS route is useless. You can’t follow it. The canyon is narrow, the accuracy is poor, the position on my watch jumps by tens of meters. Which is to say, in normal terrain it wouldn’t be a problem, but here, where every meter matters, determining how deep the cliff or steep slope will be, and if I don’t end up somewhere on a rock above an abyss, that’s a problem, and a big one.

Several times I start to despair when I can’t find the mark for a long time and in the narrow cone of light I have no idea where to continue, but at the last moment I always somehow find the mark. I’m slowly starting to get used to it when an already difficult climb turns into a downright mountaineering insole. The fine stones crumble under my shoes, I have nothing to hold on to and my back is covered in cold sweat. One wrong step and it’s going to be a flying day. At one point, when I haven’t seen a sign for about 20 minutes and the terrain is so confusing that I really don’t know how to continue, I sit down on a rock and look down at the lights of the city in the distance, take out my phone and make a few calls to find my lost ground again. When after another 10 minutes it seems like I’m getting lost again, I sit down again and seriously start thinking about whether to wait for the light or turn back – but I realize that finding my way back would be another struggle, comparable to continuing uphill, because the GPS track of the route I’ve covered so far is completely useless. I take a deep breath and continue on. And lo and behold, right behind the next boulder is a sign.

The climb is incredibly slow and difficult. It should be about 7 kilometers to the top, but since the distance shown on the watch is unreliable, I have no idea how far it is. After five hours of strenuous hiking, I reach a small plateau, where I put something small in my stomach. I look forward to working up an appetite on the descent. I believe that it can’t be that crazy going down.

The first few meters throw me off course. A brutal parachute on a smooth rock, the trail leads to the left, I suspect there’s a chasm like a pig in front of me, I see this when I walk a few meters of the smooth part along a narrow ledge and the headlamp just shines aimlessly into the darkness. Fortunately, the light doesn’t shine far, but even so, my knees start to shake and I can feel my heart in my throat. Going down the hill, I feel even more insecure than when I was going up, I don’t have any space to follow the signs, which are sporadic, the GPS record is better, but it’s still not enough. Many times during the descent I have to ride on my ass and hold on to branches and bushes, whose strength is very flimsy. I am in constant stress and, apart from navigation, I don’t think about anything else but how to stay in one piece and alive.

I lost sense of time and wake up only when I see the lights of a village below me. But for many minutes I can’t find a way to get from the rocks to the road I see below me. I walk along the slope and at one point, which is only two meters above the road, I lower myself down. Of course, I fall and roll in the sand, because the road is sandy. I reach the village of Hadash, it’s 4 in the morning, I sit under a lit lamp, which after long hours of stress seems like a complete luxury, and I have a little snack.

I have only covered 11 kilometers in almost the entire night. According to the original plan, I should have been dozens of kilometers further, and it is clear to me that the plan is completely ruined. Perhaps because I now have another demanding hike to a height of over 2300 meters above sea level, again in impassable terrain. A minor consolation for me is that dawn is about to begin soon, so hopefully navigation will be easier and the views of the surroundings, which I did not enjoy at all at night in the pitch black darkness, will also lift my spirits.

The views are really beautiful, but unfortunately I do not have much time for them. The ascents are mountaineering, the descents are even more of a pain in the ass, I often “rappel” on my butt and more concerned with the surroundings than with always having a handhold in reserve that I could grab in case I slip.

The terrain has changed somewhat, it is no longer so technically demanding, but there is even more danger of a fatal fall, I often feel like a chamois.

After 14 hours, I see signs of civilization below me, the town of Wakan. I descend in bearable terrain and a couple of goats accompany me as an honor guard. It is ten in the morning when I reach the spring from where the water flows down. When I see green algae and mud deposits, I don’t dare to drink, let alone refill my water. The heat is bearable for now, it is under the clouds. I am looking forward to maybe walking for a while on some paved path. At one of the viewpoints, a young couple is sitting on a bench and of course they are staring at me like an alien. Like, some white lunatic will appear here in the morning from the mountains… My hopes for at least somewhat runnable terrain are brutally cut short by the watch, which shows me that this is not the way, and I have to climb up again. I walk past a high fence, feeling betrayed and secretly hoping that the gate I’m supposed to go through is locked (crap, even if it was, I’d still climb over the fence) – and it’s not locked. The sign was down, there’s a field of boulders in front of me on a steep slope and I can’t see any other sign. The GPS tells me to go straight ahead, so I climb again, but this time I’m already starting to grill in my own juice. I have 10 kilometers to go to the checkpoint where I’m supposed to meet Petr for the first time.

The terrain is no longer so technically demanding, but there’s still no question of running. I’m starting to hate wadis – you have to struggle down, then scramble back up. Without the wadis it would be a nice plateau, but this time it’s an endless battle with dry riverbeds. I haven’t seen a single living thing in the terrain itself. However, that changes when, on one of the climbs, I see a group of about 5 people with large backpacks in front of me. Since I am wearing just a light backpack, I catch up with them in about half an hour.

The time plan has long been thrown in the trash, but one important thing follows from this. It is already brutally hot, I had nowhere to refill my water, and so I have 3 deciliters of water left for the next estimated 6 hours of pedaling. I try not to think about what the consequences might be. I always only take a short sip to cool my throat, saving as much as possible. It turns out that the group consists of French people, who fortunately speak good English. We start talking and I explain what I am doing here. I feel stupid asking for water, because I know how valuable it is here. Fortunately, one of them asks me if I have enough water. The result is that I receive half a liter of precious liquid, with which, I believe, I will get to the meeting place with Petr. When I say goodbye to the French, as a “reward” I have to climb such a smooth and steep rock over such a deep precipice that it doesn’t feel good at all.

I pedal and pedal, wadi after wadi, all my mental effort is now focused on saving water and not drinking the rest at once.

I switch to autopilot, I feel lethargic. I am only snapped out of it when I see the buildings of the historical village of Al-Sugra – Sayq in the distance. Although it seems within reach, I have to overcome 3 more wadis, which are now really annoying me. There is a village in the last one, so although I can already see Petr on the road on the opposite side, the descent and ascent to the car will still give me some work.

I have decided a few hours ago that I am done with the mountains and the original plan. I’m more than half a day behind, completely mentally destroyed (physically appropriate to the situation), the landscape is nice, although not as nice as in the Negev desert, but I’m starting to get a little bored, and I don’t see the point in bothering myself any further. I’ve covered 32 kilometers in 20 hours with an average pace of 37 minutes per kilometer. That speaks for itself.

I sit down, eagerly replenish my fluids, and let Petr know about the situation. It is about 40 kilometers to the place where Petr has accommodation at the second checkpoint. It is four in the afternoon and the new plan for the rest of the day, after agreement, is to be driven a few kilometers on an asphalt road, get off and do a thirty-mile run to the guesthouse as a training run in fatigue, with the understanding that we will agree on the next step in the evening. The bonus is that out of thirty kilometers, twenty is a fairly large downhill, and that is very pleasant after the hardships of the previous night and day. And so it happens. It gradually gets dark and then darkness falls, but I don’t need a headlamp because the path is lit like crazy by the moon.

Gradually, the accumulated fatigue is starting to show, my legs hurt when I run down, and so I welcome the onset of the straight. When I turn right at the gas station in civilization, I turn on my headlights anyway, because of the cars, and set off for the final ten kilometers to my accommodation. I run through nice towns and a few kilometers before the finish line I reach a larger city, where evening entertainment is in full swing. I try not to be conspicuous, but it is quite difficult, because they probably haven’t seen this here before. I am terribly hungry, I have hardly eaten anything in the whole time, and the smells from the restaurants irritate me. It is a pity that they don’t serve beer here, I would have stopped for at least one.

I have a few kilometers left, another steep climb. I am fed up with it. I write to Peter to pick up the stinking animal by car, and together we soon arrive at the guesthouse (which, by our standards, I should rather describe as a shack), where there is fortunately one extra bed. With extraordinary joy, I throw off my things and take a shower. The beer from the imported iron stocks is cold and despite my efforts to resist, I drink two cans. I think I deserve them. We chat with Petr about the progress so far and I leave the decision about what our next steps will be for the morning. I fall asleep before midnight, as quickly as if someone had thrown me into the abyss.

PART TWO – JUST MORE MOUNTAINS

I wake up in a good mood in the morning. Surprisingly, my legs don’t hurt, it seems that a good sleep has also blown away the mental fatigue. Although I swore yesterday that I wouldn’t go to the mountains anymore, today is different. But actually it is and isn’t. I want to go to the hills, but not to the terrain that I struggled with yesterday. The ideal would be some paved road, a forest road or something like that, for the whole day with the aim of enjoying myself a little and catching up on the kilometers that I haven’t done much yet.

Petr is an expert in these cases. He quickly and expertly (this is not his first time) plans a route of about 45 kilometers with an elevation gain of 3200 meters, which will certainly not be an easy thing. However, before I reach a runnable section, I still have to complete a three-hour hike, which is more or less in the spirit of the previous day.

The start is at something that looks like an oasis. We have never seen so much greenery together in Oman.

It is noon. While I start climbing, and it is not an easy hike at all, Petr goes a little further and higher to the meeting point, where he sets off on the Balcony Walk, a scenic route in the mountains with beautiful views, and where he leaves me hidden water. My route is not for running, it is full of unstable rocks that are piled up as they please. There is also some rock climbing, but it is daytime, the sun is shining, there is a beautiful view of the valley, so it is bearable.

The route is relatively well marked. After three hours I actually reach the parking lot at the starting point for the Balcony Walk, fill up with water, write to Peter and set off on the planned circuit.

Finally I’m running!

I trot along a nice gravel road, up and down, through undulating terrain. There’s a tourist resort here, here and there a building, a small hotel and so on. Suddenly a quality asphalt road appears. I’m in seventh heaven. Although one of the longer ascending segments doesn’t smell very good to me, I like it overall. I descend to a crossroads and just as suddenly as the asphalt road appeared, it disappears. I turn right and start climbing a steep hill. With surprise I come to a fence and a large gate, which fortunately is open. I wonder why it’s there. This is explained a few kilometers further on, where I find another fence with barbed wire and a guardhouse – no entry, air base. Well, there’s no space for a runway here, so it’s probably going to be the road to the radar station I see on the hill.

I’m walking through small villages, I don’t understand how anyone can live here in a stable way. As dusk falls, I can sporadically see the lights on. The houses are strangely completely dark. Either their shutters are closed, or people go to bed early. I don’t know, but the truth is that I don’t see anyone in the villages. It’s a bit annoying that the mobile signal disappears and I’m completely without a connection. I’m already high in the hills, the road is very winding, I’m running here and there, mainly downhill. In the middle of nowhere I see a few lit houses and as I run down them, two guys appear in the light of my headlamp. They’re probably as surprised as I am, but they don’t forget to say hello.

I’m relieved to see that my mobile has a signal. I’ve planned the route so that it follows the roads, but with one exception, and that is the transition from one road to another in the terrain. I’m not looking forward to it at all, it’s only three kilometers, but from my experience the day before, I know that it can mean extra hours.

But what a relief I am when I find out that online maps can sometimes be wrong. Instead of a terrain insert, the connection is a very nice road that you can run on. From the map on my mobile phone, I see that it’s only a few kilometers to the agreed destination, which is the starting point of Petr’s hiking trip. I close the loop by getting back on the asphalt road and a few dozen minutes before the agreed meeting point, I am woken up from my lethargy by the flashing lights of a car – Petr drove towards me because the signal was weak at the original location and the wind was blowing, which made it impossible for him to cook on the gas burner. I am grateful that he pours hot water into one can of instant food and hands it over me, because I haven’t eaten anything all day.

We talk about what to do next while eating in the car. We have plenty of time, we don’t have accommodation for the night, we’ll sleep in the car anyway. It feels like a waste to just go to bed, I’d like to cover a few more kilometers. We agree that we’ll lie down at the starting point down by the oasis. But I don’t feel like running straight from the car, because that would be the third time I’ve run a few kilometers along the same route (including the asphalt section). So Petr takes me to the start of the regular route into the valley, drives to the place where I’ll spend the night, and I add another twenty kilometers to the original 45 kilometers under the bright moonlight.

I get to the car around two in the morning, I immediately do the most necessary cleaning and get into the car. We’re not woken up until sunrise. We have breakfast, and since I know that this was the real end of the part in the mountains, we decide that the coming day will be a day of consolidation and planning the rest of the project.

PART THREE – NIZWA

The closest (and perhaps only) place in the area worth visiting is Nizwa.

We deserve a beer. And both of us. The problem is that alcohol is absolutely unavailable to locals in Oman, for expats it is available with a special permit, and for tourists only in a few places in the whole country that have a special license. There are maybe three places in Muscat itself (well, maybe more, but we didn’t look too hard).

And it is in Nizwa that there is the only place within a radius of tens (or hundreds?) kilometers where they have a license to serve alcohol, and that is the Falaj Daris Hotel. And that is exactly why this hotel becomes our home for today.

We have lunch, cheap even for our means, and an ice cold beer with that. And then one more beer, because as the popular song goes, “if you can put in one, there is a space for another one.”

We head into town, walk around the fort, hear the obligatory “Allah akbar” from the mosques, do some shopping for a few souvenirs. There’s not much to see.

For lack of other opportunities, we also visit a small park with a canal with free-flowing water, which is unusual here. Before dinner, we take a look at another fort, from where we watch the sunset.

Over dinner we plan to discuss our next plan. But it’s crystal clear that we’re going to the desert to enjoy the sand. How could we not, when it’s just a stone’s throw away? Petr books a tent in a remote place in the desert, supposedly romantic. Well, I don’t know. We’ll have a few beers during the discussion, since we’re already here, right? Before I go to bed, I’m still getting my things ready, because I’m going to go running straight from the car. I’m mentally preparing for a first-class hike, but I’m actually looking forward to it. I have a desert marathon planned, which doesn’t seem like much, but anyone who’s ever run on the beach knows what that entails.

PART FOUR – THE DESERT

We sleep in relatively well in the morning. We leave Nizwa and after an hour’s drive to the southeast, the mountainous profile turns into a desert. On the outskirts of the town of Bidiyah, where the asphalt road ends and turns into a sandy one, I change clothes, put on a backpack with three liters of water, no food, an unnecessary burden on my eating habits. We have to hurry, because in the few minutes we are standing here, 3 cars stop by with the offer of a dune buggy ride. It is difficult to refuse, the people are persistent. And they say that I should not run into the desert, because at noon it is bad for health. With my experience with running in the heat, I think my own way.

Petr’s task is to check in and transfer to the tent where we will stay for the night. I run out. The beginning of the path is still a bit rocky, the running is quite good. After a while, however, I reach the sand worn by cars, which crumbles under my shoes. And because, as has been mentioned several times, the preparation was punk, I didn’t wear gaiters, so in a short time I have about a ton of sand in my shoes, which reduces the space for my feet and toes and running starts to hurt a lot. I take off my shoes, shake off the sand, and repeat this several times. It’s a Sisyphean task. Finally I remember that this is not how you run in the desert. You have to speed up and really lift your legs. And suddenly there is sand in your shoes, almost. I’m running in slightly undulating terrain in a valley between two high dunes.

Camels keep me company. SUVs drive past me here and there at high speed – in difficult places I prefer to be careful to stay out of the way of cars, because I definitely don’t want to suddenly appear in front of a speeding car. The desert is not deserted, after all, it is a tourist area, so there are tents on the slopes of the dunes. Here and there a black plastic pipe, probably a water pipe, peeks out of the sand, I wonder what would happen if someone damaged it.

The hours pass, the sun is scorching hot, I am occasionally woken up from my slumber by the honking of passing cars as a greeting. A few of them even stop and offer me water. I refuse with thanks, because I have had enough for now. After checking in, I meet Petr on the road, who has meanwhile let the air out of the tires of our SUV, because that is how they drive in the desert, and I see that he is enjoying the rampage on four wheels. I enjoy running on the flat and in the desert and it is clear to me that I am a flat runner after all – mountains are nice, but I have enjoyed them enough in the last few projects and it is nice to get back to my roots (even if it is not asphalt). Petr then leaves for the tent, where he has a meeting with the owner, who is supposed to drive him through the dunes.

The plan is to turn around at around kilometer 25 and arrive at the tent, which is about ten kilometers into the desert. As a turning point, I choose some resort under construction, I don’t understand how anyone can build a concrete monster here in the desert. It’s even more fun when I see big trucks driving for sand several kilometers away, when there is sand everywhere, as much as they want. I turn around, increase my pace a little, the sun is already setting. I’m quite tanned, but I’m still having fun. I pass the same camels, who look at me with the same astonished expression.

Petr writes that the tent is high in the dunes, beyond their peak, and sends the exact coordinates. They say it won’t be very easy to find. Fortunately, at the turnoff (that is, on the GPS track, there is none in reality) he and the owner of the tent arrive from a trip and direct me to the place. It’s a steep climb – after seven hours I don’t really feel like going up, but I still claw my way up in the car’s tracks instead of taking the offered ride. It’s no fun in deep sand. When I reach the top, I see someone sitting in the distance on a dune, I think it’s Petr, I wave and shout at him. And it’s not Petr. I must look like an ox. I look around until I finally notice our car and see Petr trying to bobsled on the sand. In front of me is a tent, next to it is a metal booth without a roof, it’s a toilet and shower in one, solar panels and a car battery and a fire pit with something similar to a pergola.

I take off my shoes, take off my rags and immediately go into the shower. I almost scald myself, because of course the sun has heated the water to a temperature incompatible with my body. I have to drain the water for minutes until it is bearable – what a waste here, where water is so expensive.

Then the sun sets, beautifully behind the dunes.

After a short dinner, which the locals make on the fire and during which there is almost a gale, which is said to be a local thing that happens regularly for an hour and a half every evening, we lie down in the tent. Petr and I watch a movie, then I read the news for a while to keep myself out of the picture after the days and then we fall asleep. We don’t enjoy the starry sky that we were looking forward to for the whole time, because the moon, which shines as if devoid of meaning, spoils it for us.

In the morning I want to run out in the dark and watch the sunrise, but I wake up just as sun starts to rise, so I take a few photos, put on my running clothes and set off on a fifteen-kilometer desert fun run with a delay. There is no time for anything more, because we are flying back at night. I walk down to the valley barefoot, it’s pleasant in the slightly warm sand. I say good morning to the camel, put on my shoes and start running. After seven o’clock I decide it’s time to go back. I climb the unpleasant hill to the tent again, but this time in shoes, because the desert sun has heated the sand so much that it’s impossible to walk barefoot. It’s already brutally hot in the tent, so we pack our suitcases, throw them in the car, and turn on the air conditioning – we plan to get in immediately after a shower, because any stay longer than a minute in the tent means liters of sweat. But before that, my On Running trail shoes go into the trash, which are so charged that there’s no point in taking them back as a burden.

We don’t have a plan for the last day, so we finally decide to drive to the sea, look at the lighthouse and set off along the highway to Muscat. There, faithful to the consumer society, we stop at a hypermarket to do some shopping – it’s surprisingly cheap. In the evening we have dinner at an Indian restaurant and head to the airport, where we spend long hours before boarding the plane at four in the morning. We quench our thirst with an incredibly expensive can of beer during a transfer in Istanbul.

EPILOGUE

This project, which I would call hybrid, ultimately seems to me to be a success. A total of just under 200 kilometers were covered, there was plenty of adrenaline, no accidents or injuries. Oman is good for people who like mountains or the sea, otherwise there is not much to see, in the sense of classic “sightseeing” tourism.

Now I will have to get back on the tarmac, because in a few weeks I will have a classic, Ultra Milano Sanremo, where I will find out whether, after a series of run-walk events, I still have the stamina for classic ultrarunning.

Equipment: