Following Sinbad Cruising the Omani coast in a traditional dhow, Jeremy Seal encounters flying fish, shooting stars and infinite silence. So who needs a cabin? Sunday Times, 27/1/2002
'Will you look at that!' said somebody in a tone of apprehension and exhilaration, combustibly mixed. We stood among piles of colourful fish on the quay at Dibba on Oman's Musandam Peninsula and stared at the 70-foot dhow which was to be our home for the next four days. Stargazer had a grimy smokestack and a tatty industrial-green deckhouse, but she also sported a handsome high prow hung with worry beads and adorned by a starfish. Her stern was a fancy balustraded thing, galleon-style, with fishes carved upon it and two tapered timber baulks protruding aft like the fins of some 1950s American automobile. She was a seaborne jalopy, with decided Oriental knobs on.
Stargazer was originally built to carry freight, but had recently followed regional waterborne counterparts like the Nile felucca and the Turkish gulet into tourism's fickle waters. Which was what had brought us to the shores of this little-known Omani enclave, a mountainous protuberance to the north of the United Arab Emirates which spears towards Iran, squeezing the Straits of Hormuz to a mere 30 miles across.
It was very clear, however, that expense had largely been spared on Stargazer's refit. Cabins and showers were there none. Down below, where the stores and luggage were kept, was low-roofed as a Napoleonic gundeck and quite as noisy; in the absence of sails, the diesel engine hammered ceaselessly. There was a liferaft but no sign of sea charts; the only one we would see was pinned to the wall of the Khasab Hotel at the end of our trip.
No matter. The group included a maritime artist, a romantic novelist on the hunt for new material, a Polish nurse from Melbourne via Riyadh and a phonecard-collecting Cajun musician from Dulwich; a singular bunch who merely reminded themselves that a certain Sindbad had been Omani, and sailors don't come any better, before turning their minds to higher things than mere hygiene or privacy. Stargazer decidedly made up for in atmosphere what she lacked in facilities, and after passing through the sanitised city states of the UAE en route to Dibba, Arabia's fabled atmosphere was what we craved.
We'd flown into Dubai to discover ourselves in the midst of the emirate's annual shopping festival. Neighbouring Sharjah had seemed no less banal until we discovered the waterfront where the trading past recently forsaken by Stargazer continued in a stirring timewarp. Dark-chocolate dhows, their teak hulls beamy as saucers, were loading Lahore rice for Yemen and Indian dried ginger for Kuwait. Pink marble from Esfahan and coal from Somalia were being landed. A Bangladeshi scuttled up a gangplank, the holed sack on his shoulder pissing a thin stream of cardamoms. Carriage by dhow worked an evocative alchemy upon even the most ordinary quayside goods, investing boxes of lightbulbs from China, wicker stools from Abadan in Iran, tins of 'light meat tuna flakes' from Thailand, timber baulks from Malaysia, boxes of dates, cans of paint, wheelbarrows, water tanks and even plastic piping with an exoticism that could only be called dowdy. By the time we boarded her, Stargazer seemed less like a mere boat than old Arabia's last stand against the modern Gulf, all duty-free shopping and desert golf.
Still, we were grateful for the onboard basics, like the frames which had been fitted fore and aft where shade tarpaulins were slung; the loo unit mounted unceremoniously but securely over the stern, and the nearby fresh water basin. There were deck chairs too, and a scattering of purple and gilt cushions which lent the ship a low-rent harem charm. This could even be comfortable. Our three-man crew put to sea in a glutinous calm. The hot air erupted in a sudden blizzard of yellow butterflies.
The Musandam peninsula met the sea as high-sided walls of red limestone which retreated into remote treeless khawrs, or fjords, where occasional villages clung to the scoured banks of river wadis. In the late morning, we puttered into a bay and dropped anchor. The crew grilled fresh snapper over a brazier as we broke out the snorkelling gear.
'Titan triggerfish!' The romantic novelist had just found the name of her next hero among the pages of Fishof the Indian Ocean, and leapt smartly overboard with the intention of meeting one in person. Musandam's marine life is especially abundant, as if to make up for the desert paucity of the land, and muffled howls of delight could soon be heard from the snorkel tubes. Coral reefs fringed the rocky shore where thousands of striped and mottled fish - blue, yellow and black - threw diaphanous folds around the snorkellers. A turtle soldiered past. A manta ray flapped across the seabed, putting up slow-motion puffs of sand. A lionfish lurked among the rocks, deadly but alluring as an Indian chief's headdress, only slept-on. Even a blacktip reef shark, six foot long, bulleted past, chilling the water around me, and I hastened back to the dhow.
In the late afternoon, Stargazer motored down the great uninhabited fjord of Khawr Najd towards her anchorage. In these deep-set inlets, the sun rises late and sets early, turning the land to copper and the sea to silver. Flying fish tore brief rips across the flat water, and two flamingoes trailed long legs across the sky. The romantic novelist raised her head from the fish book; she'd just discovered the name of Titan's unsuitable love interest.
'Oriental sweetlips!' she exclaimed.
The head of the khawr had a moonscape beauty, marred only (in the standard Arabian manner) by a large shed which had been constructed as a US storage depot during the Gulf War. A land party had arrived ahead of us to prepare dinner on the beach. There was houmous and mtoubal (aubergine dip), kebabs and russian salad, vegetable stew, rice and naan bread, and that much-travelled pudding staple, creme caramel. A bearded Iranian played a country lute after dinner, and two shy youths from Kerala sang along. (Musandam, like the UAE, is largely manned by foreign workers from India, Bangladesh and elsewhere.) The music came to a halt, and an infinite silence rolled down from the empty mountains. Some took to tents on the beach while the rest of us returned to the dhow, phosphorescence winking around the dinghy. We unrolled mattresses and sleeping bags on the deck and lay beneath the sky, watching stars shooting out of Leo.
We motored north in the days that followed, stopping for meals and to snorkel (so long as the jellyfish were absent), and for occasional shore visits. We anchored off Kumzar, whose people are a commingling of the passing traders of many centuries - Indians, Omanis, Iranians, even English and Dutch; their patois is a combination of the lot. The village was a jumble of houses squashed so tightly into a wadi that graves had sprouted wherever flat ground allowed, and the villagers who moved down
the beach with the falling tide seem to exult in all the space, however temporary. The women were shawled and wore black metal face masks which had the effect of giving them heavy cartoon eyebrows and moustaches - Grouchos all. A fishing boat pushed up the beach, the crew flinging the tuna catch onto the sand. We bought two fish, eighteen pounders at 500 baisa (£1 each). As the dhow made for that evening's camp site, we gutted them on the foredeck and served fresh sushi in soy sauce.
We cruised up Khawr Ash Shamm to anchor off Telegraph Island, flat-topped with the ruin of the British telegraph station established here in the 1860s to link Karachi and London. No plum posting this one, where men's minds went soft from loneliness before being broiled by the heat; the expression 'to go round the bend' was supposedly coined by the men employed here as they rounded a final corner before the island appeared. There was no such lunacy now, only more fine snorkelling and the romantic novelist wondering about naming a character after a fish called Convict Tang, and dolphins riding our bow wave as we made for Khasab.
A rare break in the mountains, a palmery and a sun-baked mud fort announced Khasab, the peninsula's main town. A large tiger shark, a maneater, lay in the bottom of a fishing boat tied up along the quay. Beached on the shingle were a number of the small speedboats we had often seen tearing across the Straits of Hormuz over the past few days, outrunning the Iranian coastguard as they returned from Khasab with contraband electrical goods and cigarettes. I walked along the shingle where the smugglers were openly unloading their boat of a great many unlabelled tins.
'Iranian caviar,' one of them explained. Hygiene and privacy or tiger sharks and caviar smuggling; as traveller's choices go, it seemed we had made the right one.
ENDS
Jeremy Seal was a guest of Explore Worldwide (01252 760000; www.exploreworldwide.com) on their eight-day Arabian Seatrek. Explore run eight departures from 21st October 2001 to 7th April 2002, from £945 including flights, accommodation and most meals. The trip includes a tour of Dubai and a 4WD safari into the Musandam interior. Expect temperatures in the high 20s.
Visas are required to visit Oman costing £40 through the Omani Embassy (recorded message on 09065 508 964), or can be arranged through Explore for an extra fee of £15.
Reading: Oman and the UAE (Lonely Planet, £9.99)
HOLIDAYS ON WORKING BOATS
Egyptian feluccas
These romantic open-decked sailboats have ferried goods and passengers along the Nile since time immemorial. Expect atmosphere rather than comfort, which means eating simple meals prepared by the crew, sleeping on deck under the stars, and forgetting about the likes of hot showers and flushing loos as you relax into the languid rhythm of the river. A 9-day trip is available with Exodus (0208 675 5550) which runs all year except July/August and includes 3 nights and 2 days on a felucca, sailing downstream between Aswan and Luxor and including visits to the temples of Kom Ombo and Edfu. From £559 including flights, plus a local payment of £35, and £50 for extra meals.
Kerala rice boats
Kettuvallams have traditionally carried rice cargoes along Kerala’s extensive network of inland waterways. Many such rice boats have since been adapted to tourism, some merely by erecting a sun awning. Others are less makeshift; Steppes East (01285 651010; www.steppeseast.com) offer purpose-built craft – a hybrid of rice boat and Kashmiri houseboat – with double cabins and ensuite bathrooms, onboard cuisine and comfortable wicker furniture. These ply the waterways between Cochin and Alleppey at a leisurely pace; £185 per person for 3-night trips on a four-berth boat, including full board and excursions.
Turkish gulets
Until the 1960s, when few roads existed in mountainous Southern Turkey, the local mandarins and oranges were shipped to Izmir by wooden gulets. Many such gulets, with their wide decks and spacious interiors, have since been refitted as informal, small-group cruising vessels which potter along the coast between Bodrum and Antalya, dropping anchor in the countless enchanting bays and coves, with views of the extensive classical ruins. Gulets sleep up to 14 guests in double cabins, and carry windsurfers and snorkeling equipment. Traditional Turkish meals are prepared by the crew. Gulets are available on sole-charter or cabin-only basis. Almost uniquely, the gulets of Tussock Cruising (0208 510 9292; www.tussockcruising.com) sail rather than motor where possible; prices are from £205 per person per week not including flights, and an additional £25 per person per day for all meals and drinks. Flight inclusive, full-board packages also available, from £625 per person per week through Tapestry (020 8235 7777; www.tapestryholidays.com).
British narrowboats
Britain’s canals were the arteries of the Industrial Revolution. After a long abandonment, these waterways are now being restored at an even faster rate than they were first built back in the 1790s, with the 20-mile Huddersfield Narrow Canal reopened this summer. Putter in a leisurely narrowboat, a waterborne campervan with honourable freight-carrying origins, along some of Britain’s 2,000 miles of canals and navigable rivers, taking in the best of rural Britain and its pubs as well as canal cities such as Bath, Oxford or even London (the London Ring, taking in the Regent’s Canal and the Thames, provides a unique perspective on the capital). Prices from £476 per week for a narrowboat sleeping 4 through Blakes Boating Holidays (0870 2200577)
'Will you look at that!' said somebody in a tone of apprehension and exhilaration, combustibly mixed. We stood among piles of colourful fish on the quay at Dibba on Oman's Musandam Peninsula and stared at the 70-foot dhow which was to be our home for the next four days. Stargazer had a grimy smokestack and a tatty industrial-green deckhouse, but she also sported a handsome high prow hung with worry beads and adorned by a starfish. Her stern was a fancy balustraded thing, galleon-style, with fishes carved upon it and two tapered timber baulks protruding aft like the fins of some 1950s American automobile. She was a seaborne jalopy, with decided Oriental knobs on.
Stargazer was originally built to carry freight, but had recently followed regional waterborne counterparts like the Nile felucca and the Turkish gulet into tourism's fickle waters. Which was what had brought us to the shores of this little-known Omani enclave, a mountainous protuberance to the north of the United Arab Emirates which spears towards Iran, squeezing the Straits of Hormuz to a mere 30 miles across.
It was very clear, however, that expense had largely been spared on Stargazer's refit. Cabins and showers were there none. Down below, where the stores and luggage were kept, was low-roofed as a Napoleonic gundeck and quite as noisy; in the absence of sails, the diesel engine hammered ceaselessly. There was a liferaft but no sign of sea charts; the only one we would see was pinned to the wall of the Khasab Hotel at the end of our trip.
No matter. The group included a maritime artist, a romantic novelist on the hunt for new material, a Polish nurse from Melbourne via Riyadh and a phonecard-collecting Cajun musician from Dulwich; a singular bunch who merely reminded themselves that a certain Sindbad had been Omani, and sailors don't come any better, before turning their minds to higher things than mere hygiene or privacy. Stargazer decidedly made up for in atmosphere what she lacked in facilities, and after passing through the sanitised city states of the UAE en route to Dibba, Arabia's fabled atmosphere was what we craved.
We'd flown into Dubai to discover ourselves in the midst of the emirate's annual shopping festival. Neighbouring Sharjah had seemed no less banal until we discovered the waterfront where the trading past recently forsaken by Stargazer continued in a stirring timewarp. Dark-chocolate dhows, their teak hulls beamy as saucers, were loading Lahore rice for Yemen and Indian dried ginger for Kuwait. Pink marble from Esfahan and coal from Somalia were being landed. A Bangladeshi scuttled up a gangplank, the holed sack on his shoulder pissing a thin stream of cardamoms. Carriage by dhow worked an evocative alchemy upon even the most ordinary quayside goods, investing boxes of lightbulbs from China, wicker stools from Abadan in Iran, tins of 'light meat tuna flakes' from Thailand, timber baulks from Malaysia, boxes of dates, cans of paint, wheelbarrows, water tanks and even plastic piping with an exoticism that could only be called dowdy. By the time we boarded her, Stargazer seemed less like a mere boat than old Arabia's last stand against the modern Gulf, all duty-free shopping and desert golf.
Still, we were grateful for the onboard basics, like the frames which had been fitted fore and aft where shade tarpaulins were slung; the loo unit mounted unceremoniously but securely over the stern, and the nearby fresh water basin. There were deck chairs too, and a scattering of purple and gilt cushions which lent the ship a low-rent harem charm. This could even be comfortable. Our three-man crew put to sea in a glutinous calm. The hot air erupted in a sudden blizzard of yellow butterflies.
The Musandam peninsula met the sea as high-sided walls of red limestone which retreated into remote treeless khawrs, or fjords, where occasional villages clung to the scoured banks of river wadis. In the late morning, we puttered into a bay and dropped anchor. The crew grilled fresh snapper over a brazier as we broke out the snorkelling gear.
'Titan triggerfish!' The romantic novelist had just found the name of her next hero among the pages of Fishof the Indian Ocean, and leapt smartly overboard with the intention of meeting one in person. Musandam's marine life is especially abundant, as if to make up for the desert paucity of the land, and muffled howls of delight could soon be heard from the snorkel tubes. Coral reefs fringed the rocky shore where thousands of striped and mottled fish - blue, yellow and black - threw diaphanous folds around the snorkellers. A turtle soldiered past. A manta ray flapped across the seabed, putting up slow-motion puffs of sand. A lionfish lurked among the rocks, deadly but alluring as an Indian chief's headdress, only slept-on. Even a blacktip reef shark, six foot long, bulleted past, chilling the water around me, and I hastened back to the dhow.
In the late afternoon, Stargazer motored down the great uninhabited fjord of Khawr Najd towards her anchorage. In these deep-set inlets, the sun rises late and sets early, turning the land to copper and the sea to silver. Flying fish tore brief rips across the flat water, and two flamingoes trailed long legs across the sky. The romantic novelist raised her head from the fish book; she'd just discovered the name of Titan's unsuitable love interest.
'Oriental sweetlips!' she exclaimed.
The head of the khawr had a moonscape beauty, marred only (in the standard Arabian manner) by a large shed which had been constructed as a US storage depot during the Gulf War. A land party had arrived ahead of us to prepare dinner on the beach. There was houmous and mtoubal (aubergine dip), kebabs and russian salad, vegetable stew, rice and naan bread, and that much-travelled pudding staple, creme caramel. A bearded Iranian played a country lute after dinner, and two shy youths from Kerala sang along. (Musandam, like the UAE, is largely manned by foreign workers from India, Bangladesh and elsewhere.) The music came to a halt, and an infinite silence rolled down from the empty mountains. Some took to tents on the beach while the rest of us returned to the dhow, phosphorescence winking around the dinghy. We unrolled mattresses and sleeping bags on the deck and lay beneath the sky, watching stars shooting out of Leo.
We motored north in the days that followed, stopping for meals and to snorkel (so long as the jellyfish were absent), and for occasional shore visits. We anchored off Kumzar, whose people are a commingling of the passing traders of many centuries - Indians, Omanis, Iranians, even English and Dutch; their patois is a combination of the lot. The village was a jumble of houses squashed so tightly into a wadi that graves had sprouted wherever flat ground allowed, and the villagers who moved down
the beach with the falling tide seem to exult in all the space, however temporary. The women were shawled and wore black metal face masks which had the effect of giving them heavy cartoon eyebrows and moustaches - Grouchos all. A fishing boat pushed up the beach, the crew flinging the tuna catch onto the sand. We bought two fish, eighteen pounders at 500 baisa (£1 each). As the dhow made for that evening's camp site, we gutted them on the foredeck and served fresh sushi in soy sauce.
We cruised up Khawr Ash Shamm to anchor off Telegraph Island, flat-topped with the ruin of the British telegraph station established here in the 1860s to link Karachi and London. No plum posting this one, where men's minds went soft from loneliness before being broiled by the heat; the expression 'to go round the bend' was supposedly coined by the men employed here as they rounded a final corner before the island appeared. There was no such lunacy now, only more fine snorkelling and the romantic novelist wondering about naming a character after a fish called Convict Tang, and dolphins riding our bow wave as we made for Khasab.
A rare break in the mountains, a palmery and a sun-baked mud fort announced Khasab, the peninsula's main town. A large tiger shark, a maneater, lay in the bottom of a fishing boat tied up along the quay. Beached on the shingle were a number of the small speedboats we had often seen tearing across the Straits of Hormuz over the past few days, outrunning the Iranian coastguard as they returned from Khasab with contraband electrical goods and cigarettes. I walked along the shingle where the smugglers were openly unloading their boat of a great many unlabelled tins.
'Iranian caviar,' one of them explained. Hygiene and privacy or tiger sharks and caviar smuggling; as traveller's choices go, it seemed we had made the right one.
ENDS
Jeremy Seal was a guest of Explore Worldwide (01252 760000; www.exploreworldwide.com) on their eight-day Arabian Seatrek. Explore run eight departures from 21st October 2001 to 7th April 2002, from £945 including flights, accommodation and most meals. The trip includes a tour of Dubai and a 4WD safari into the Musandam interior. Expect temperatures in the high 20s.
Visas are required to visit Oman costing £40 through the Omani Embassy (recorded message on 09065 508 964), or can be arranged through Explore for an extra fee of £15.
Reading: Oman and the UAE (Lonely Planet, £9.99)
HOLIDAYS ON WORKING BOATS
Egyptian feluccas
These romantic open-decked sailboats have ferried goods and passengers along the Nile since time immemorial. Expect atmosphere rather than comfort, which means eating simple meals prepared by the crew, sleeping on deck under the stars, and forgetting about the likes of hot showers and flushing loos as you relax into the languid rhythm of the river. A 9-day trip is available with Exodus (0208 675 5550) which runs all year except July/August and includes 3 nights and 2 days on a felucca, sailing downstream between Aswan and Luxor and including visits to the temples of Kom Ombo and Edfu. From £559 including flights, plus a local payment of £35, and £50 for extra meals.
Kerala rice boats
Kettuvallams have traditionally carried rice cargoes along Kerala’s extensive network of inland waterways. Many such rice boats have since been adapted to tourism, some merely by erecting a sun awning. Others are less makeshift; Steppes East (01285 651010; www.steppeseast.com) offer purpose-built craft – a hybrid of rice boat and Kashmiri houseboat – with double cabins and ensuite bathrooms, onboard cuisine and comfortable wicker furniture. These ply the waterways between Cochin and Alleppey at a leisurely pace; £185 per person for 3-night trips on a four-berth boat, including full board and excursions.
Turkish gulets
Until the 1960s, when few roads existed in mountainous Southern Turkey, the local mandarins and oranges were shipped to Izmir by wooden gulets. Many such gulets, with their wide decks and spacious interiors, have since been refitted as informal, small-group cruising vessels which potter along the coast between Bodrum and Antalya, dropping anchor in the countless enchanting bays and coves, with views of the extensive classical ruins. Gulets sleep up to 14 guests in double cabins, and carry windsurfers and snorkeling equipment. Traditional Turkish meals are prepared by the crew. Gulets are available on sole-charter or cabin-only basis. Almost uniquely, the gulets of Tussock Cruising (0208 510 9292; www.tussockcruising.com) sail rather than motor where possible; prices are from £205 per person per week not including flights, and an additional £25 per person per day for all meals and drinks. Flight inclusive, full-board packages also available, from £625 per person per week through Tapestry (020 8235 7777; www.tapestryholidays.com).
British narrowboats
Britain’s canals were the arteries of the Industrial Revolution. After a long abandonment, these waterways are now being restored at an even faster rate than they were first built back in the 1790s, with the 20-mile Huddersfield Narrow Canal reopened this summer. Putter in a leisurely narrowboat, a waterborne campervan with honourable freight-carrying origins, along some of Britain’s 2,000 miles of canals and navigable rivers, taking in the best of rural Britain and its pubs as well as canal cities such as Bath, Oxford or even London (the London Ring, taking in the Regent’s Canal and the Thames, provides a unique perspective on the capital). Prices from £476 per week for a narrowboat sleeping 4 through Blakes Boating Holidays (0870 2200577)
