Fat drops of rain fall outside of my tent and after a few days in Oman, the Omani love of picnics in the rain makes complete sense. We’ve just gone through a five hour drive from Muscat to The View, one of the most spectacular camp sites on top of Oman’s mountains. Dear Reader, I know that camping and I are not exactly friends but this is not your usual camping. There are seven tents and The View, aptly named but a little misty on arrival is a luxury campsite 1,400 metres up where you don’t need to set up a tent or bed.
The drive to The View starts with sealed roads; the roads in Muscat are smooth with wide lanes to cope with 120 km/h speed limits. There are actually three main streets that run through the city of Oman. Our guide, Abdul tells us that if you get caught speeding at say 160km/h, a couple of nights in prison might set you straight. Unlike Salalah there are no camels crossing the roads as it is a large city.
To fortify ourselves for the day, we stop at a large supermarket for supplies for a typical Omani breakfast. We buy some Arabic bread, some triangles of soft children’s cheese, a packet of Oman chips (made in one flavour, chilli), Omani hot sauce, a Sun Top drink and Mountain Dew. Yep Mountain Dew, apparently they are crazy for the stuff there as they find the citrus flavour refreshing.
Our guide Abdul and an enormous display of Mountain Dew (it’s bigger than Coke here!)
Abdul even tells us that they tend to drink Mountain Dew with fish or chicken and Coke with beef! There are plenty of overseas brands here at the Lulu hypermarket supermarket and we pick up some cardamom flavouring in small bottles, some nuts in honey as well as Oman’s favourite chocolate, Galaxy which is like a caramel and chocolate in one with a slightly stretchy texture and very sweet taste to it.
I had to pick up some cardamom flavouring too…
Along with nuts in honey
Sitting by the water, Abdul spreads the cheese on a round of soft bread, fills it with chips, splashes some hot sauce on it (which isn’t that hot but is addictive) and wraps it up. Delicious! I haven’t had a chip sandwich in years and now I think that adding cheese and hot sauce to it is a great idea. Sun Top…well that is like a popper drink but a really artificial one more like an orange cordial than a juice. And Mountain Dew? Well I’m still not a big fan but I’m still glad that we tried it as we wanted it to be as typical an Omani breakfast as possible.
Setting off for the long drive, we stock up with plenty of chilled water. The first portion of the drive is on smooth road and we nod off and stop for lunch at a little coffee house. Abdul tells us that there is nothing for another 2.5
hours so we need to eat now. The menu is in Arabic so he orders for us and I choose a chicken biryani and we also get some salad and hummus as well.
The biryani has sultanas in it and the chicken is much crispier and juicier than it first looks. The salad is a welcome sight and we dip the bread into the hummus. And the cost for three chicken biryanis, salad, hummus and drinks? 10Euros for the three of us.
We turn off onto the mountainous road where they are building new roads and the 4 wheel drive kicks into gear. The temperature outside climbs and dips from 42 to 52C (107.6-125.6F) as we climb up and down the mountains. It’s rocky, rubbly and during it, you wonder if your brain will dislodge from shaking. We meet plenty of goats on the way who scale the rocks with ease and graze on shrubs. There are rock terraces and we see a car off into the distance, looking impossibly far away.
Looking up even further, Abdul points up at the top of a mountain and says “That’s where we will be going.” He’s a joker so I’m not sure if he is being truthful but it turns out he is. It is called The View for a reason and up the top of an imposing mountain are the tents. It takes less time to approach this from the historic area of Nizwa.
We pass villages along the way and amongst these are vegetable plantations. A garlic plantation is lush and green and we see walls of water piping snaking alongside the mountain. They are a veritable oasis amongst the mountainous desert. We pass rippled mountains of every shade and texture. From palm trees hang baskets of fresh dates.
Balad Sayt Village
Al Hamra village which means reddish
After scaling mountains with extremely sheer drops (kudos to Abdul for his nerves of steel) we reach The View at Hail Al Shas. I hide a smile as I know that Mr NQN has been trying to get me to camp for ages to no avail. But walking into the main area we are given cold towels which instantly cool us and a glass of mango nectar.
the view trio
the view trio
We are shown to our “Eco luxe” tents and they’re quite lovely and simple. The winds are intermittently strong on the mountain and inside is an air conditioning unit that blasts Arctic cold wind. There is a bed, two singles pushed together, touch lamps and tea and coffee making facilities.
There is also a bathroom with a shower and toilet and for hot water, you just need to flip a switch 30 minutes beforehand. But in this heat there is no need to flip it as the water comes out warm. You do need to bring your own toiletries as there isn’t any apart from liquid soap and towels are noticeably hard. The zips on the tents don’t work and in this wind, I secure the velcro as tight as possible. There are creature comforts like tea and coffee and a 1.5 litre of bottled water.
The large balcony area looks out into the vast expanse of the valley and I stand outside and admire the view until rain begins to fall and the hot winds whip around me. I retreat back into the tent to have a shower, write and make myself a cup of tea. I watch as the sun cast a peaches and cream glow over the camp-site and then head to dinner in the main dining room. Dinner is buffet style and there is also a family of four and a couple also as guests.
That’s a bright green patch of a football field below. It is lit up with a game in progress!
The entree of minestrone needs a little hot sauce and Natasha asks for some and within minutes, they bring it along with a sweet hot ketchup.
There is a chunky Greek style salad with feta cheese, cucumber, capsicum and carrot. Hummus is laid out on a large platter and there are rounds of Arabic bread, plain rice, Goan chicken curry, creamy penne pasta and steamed vegetables. The goan chicken curry is particularly flavoursome with a decent bite to it and the chicken is tender with the sauce creamy and strong with green cardamom pods throughout-seconds aren’t really possible as everyone seemed to like this. Fruit salad is offered and we watch the twinkling lights glow stronger as darkness fades.
I decide that there is nowhere else that I’d rather be than here.
So tell me Dear Reader, do you enjoy camping?
NQN travelled as a guest of the Ministry of Oman
The View Hail Al Shas
http://www.theviewoman.com/
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22 Comments | Add your own
Wow! That looks quite amazing….certainly different camping to what I am used to. I enjoy camping but it is many years since I have been. I enjoy my creature comforts a bit more these days
When i was growing up my parents loved to go on camping holidays because they are relatively inexpensive. I however did not enjoy camping. But if you don’t have to put the tent up and you have running water, a toilet and a bed it’s not really the sort of camping I dislike. I would be quite happy to go and enjoy The View
I don’t like camping…..but this place could make me change my mind.
I tell my girls when they ask to go camping…”I do the hotel holidays and Daddy can do the camping ones while I stay home”
I never thought of camping as fun, especially in rain but obviously I was wrong – the scenery is so beautiful and I love the fantastic food available – yay for only chilli
Cheers
Choc Chip Uru
I DETEST camping! Insofar as I don’t welcome sharing a hot airless nylon box and sleeping bag with bugs and leeches and grit, don’t like eating canned and dehydrated food with a hint of metho spirit taste, am paranoid about shared pit toilets and perpetually feeling dirty. I have no patience or empathy for those types who play accordion til the early hours and assume the entire national park will not mind. BUT, NQN, this place you describe, it could convert me totally. How lovely it looks. And the food, totally absolutely delicious, mmmmmmmmmmm!
PS, a few days in jail for speeding, now there’s an idea with some merit
A chip sandwich for breakfast washed down with Mountain Dew? That’s definitely a new one for me. And I never drink coke while eating beef! I’m not one for camping because I just can’t stand all the packing and unpacking that has to be done, nor do I like the crowded campsites you’re herded into but this sort of camping would be fine by me xx
Oh, this makes me want to go right now. I love Oman and haven’t been since 2010–though when I lived near, I went frequently–back when the borders were porous. Love the food. Love the photos. Just loving all of this.
I love camping of all sorts, but my oh my, this camp does look nice!
Never really camped, then two years ago did a fabulous trip from Darwin to Broome down the old Gibb River Road…sleeping in a swag, next to the campfire or in a little pop-up tent. Best trip we have ever done. Actually got booked on the wrong trip; thought we were on an oldies bus trip – couldn’t cancel and so off we went. 11 wonderful days – and how good does camp food taste when you’ve been hiking in the Bungle Bungles!!!
I don’t enjoy camping but glamping sounds like more my cup of tea.
Well Lorraine, I thoroughly enjoyed my Sunday drive with you through Oman this morning while sipping my coffee. The terrain, the goats,the date palms, the scattered oasis here and there, the old villages looking the same as they have looked for centuries. Such a dreamy ride, if only there was a lovely hotel perched at The View!
Camping will never win me over I’m afraid, as hard as I try I’ll always opt for my creature comforts in the true sense of the word.
I’m not a fan of camping, but have had to get used to it in the recent past when my daughter took up playing polocrosse – an Australian game that is a blend of lacrosse, netball and polo played on horseback – and I had to spend weekends sleepoing in a paddock full of horses in the back of a horse float.
Your version looks much more pleasant.
What a delightful Sunday morning drive: thank you! Very impressed with the Omani progress: that supermarket looked most interesting and, after an unreal drive, the tents seem to belong to the old ‘Sheiks of Araby’
! And the Omanis seem to be most sensible: Mountain Dew rather than Coke 
! Camping: well, no, has never been quite my thing either – but this can hardly be called camping, can it 
?
If by “camping” you mean “a cabin with heating and a real bathroom and protection from insects”, then yes.
Also, Mountain Dew tastes like sweetened chemicals, not any citrus I’ve ever come across…
sharta! yummy
I’ve never really camped in a proper tent and quite frankly
I don’t think I’ll enjoy it very much hahaha I much prefer my bed and soft pillow 
I can’t believe Mountain Dew is actually more popular than Coca Cola that’s quite amazing, because the only time I see Mountain Dew here in Melbourne is when we go to KFC!
I dislike camping. A LOT. But I could go to THIS camping trip everyday. Oman is so beautiful….and I drool over the food.
I think that would more be called glamping. I’m NOT a fan of camping. The one and only time I’ve been it took me 2 days to get everything ready then you have to set it all up when you’re there and when we got home it was a day of unpacking/cleaning/putting stuff away. No thank you! Probably just me but I much prefer a bed and bathroom.
Looks like you had a rather interesting breakfast there.
It’s great to “travel” with you!
Lovely! What a great journey to learn the culture and street food! The scenery looks so stunning.
Hi Lorraine!
I saw these and thought you may like them for Hallowe’en.
Charlie
http://patti-comfycuisine.blogspot.ca/2012/10/halloween-party-sundaysupper-marinated.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+ComfyCuisine+(Comfy+Cuisine)
We always went camping as kids, but let me tell you that travelling across the Nullabor with one pup tent for 6 people is NOT my idea of fun!! I prefer your experience of Glamping (glamour camping) instead
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