Desert Nights: Oman’s five-star luxury camp a sandy pleasure palace

AL-WASIL, Oman – Nothingness.

Even the word sounds menacing. Like drifting in space with no planet in sight. Floating in the middle of a vast ocean. It’s what I feel like right now looking across a landscape of sand.

Sand, sand and more sand.

The sand dune I’m on stands about 250 feet above the desert floor. I look in the opposite direction and see sand spreading all the way to the horizon, melding with the blue sky seemingly as the earth begins to curve. This is the back of beyond.

Actually, I’m not lost in the desert. I’m not on my hands and knees crawling towards my last vestiges of hope, the sun crushing my brain into mush. I can just take the four-wheel drive vehicle that drove me up the dune and return to my five-star tent complete with A-C, Wifi and mini bar.

I’m at a place called Desert Nights Resort. It has turned the vast emptiness of the desert into five-star luxury accommodations. In the last week of March I came to Oman for 10 days and Desert Nights was my birthday present to myself.

At €575 for two nights, it was the most expensive present I’ve ever received.

But to experience Oman, you must experience the desert. It’s hard to avoid it. Desert and valleys make up 80 percent of Oman. Considering Oman covers 120,000 square miles, its desert is the size of Wyoming. 

The arrival

Not wanting to worry about GPS, road signs and getting stuck in sand, Marina and I eschew the normal Oman MO and choose public transportation instead of renting a four-wheel drive at the airport.

But getting from the capital of Muscat to a campsite in the desert takes almost as much patience and faith. The Desert  Nights receptionist tells us over the phone to take the bus from Muscat to someplace called Al-Wasil Al-Maha. Is this a town? No.

It’s a gas station.

Oman doesn’t really have bus stations. It has bus stops. Sometimes, in the case of Al-Wasil, they’re in the middle of nowhere. We’re told to tell the bus driver in Muscat that when we reach Al-Wasil drop us at the gas station called Al-Maha.

We’re hoping he remembers. It shouldn’t be hard. It’s Ramandan, the Islamic month of fasting, and few Omani move during the day. The bus is only one quarter full. Two Slovak women are the only other travelers.

We leave Muscat where a long line of beautiful palm trees shepherd us from the city outskirts to the desert. From there it’s three hours of monotony: rocks, dirt piles, the black outline of the distant Hajar Mountains. 

I keep thinking, I could bury a lot of bodies out here.

The driver does indeed drop us off at Al-Maha which consists of one gas pump and a small convenience store that is not selling food. After about 10 minutes, a four-wheel drive with a “DESERT NIGHTS” sign on the door pulls up and drives us 11 kilometers on a beeline through the desert.

Soon the desert goes from empty and desolate to littered with big pointy white tents. Opened in 2007, Desert Nights consists of 88 tents scattered over 10 acres. They accommodate 160 people but on this last week of Ramadan, they have only 16 guests.

Without asking, they upgrade us to a villa suite.

From the outside, our room looks like a big Arabian tent, at least big enough for a harem. But few Bedouin tents are made of concrete and inside it could pass for a suite in a Marriott: a big living room with lots of cushions and a bedroom with a king-size bed. Water jugs hang from a wall.

As we tour the grounds, we wonder where is the pool we saw on the website? It’s 94 degrees but feels hotter. My skin is burning just walking to the reception. Turns out, the pools are private for six deluxe villas. I ask how much?

That would be 350 rial, a cool $840 a night. And the pools, enclosed by high walls, are tiny. 

We return to our tent and take a nap.

Sunset in the desert

At 5 p.m., Desert Nights has a ritual. Guests gather outside the reception and a four-wheel drive hauls us four at a time up the sand dune to catch one of the best sunsets in Oman. The drivers are as amazing as their cars. The sand going up the 45-degree grade is as deep as a Colorado snowdrift.

The driver storms up like an Indy car into the straightway, cuts left for traction and cuts right for more traction before finally depositing us on the plateau. There we join about a dozen guests looking out over the vast ocean of sand. I have more sand in my shoes than Donald Trump after nine holes of golf.

I’ve been in deserts all over the world and never tire of looking at the gentle undulating waves the wind makes on top of sand dunes. They look carved by a desert-dwelling Michelangelo. I feel my footprints almost desecrate them.

At about 6:15 p.m. when the fasting ends every night, we’re rewarded with a bright yellow sun breaking from beneath a cloud and settling atop the horizon. It seems to wait for us to take the ubiquitous desert sunset shot. As we all pour into the long string of four-wheel drives taking us down the dune, the sun politely slides beneath the surface.

Wadis

There’s not a lot to do in the desert. Desert Nights has an outdoor cinema where I watched Speed for the first time. It has a foosball and pool table and a massage spa. The breakfast and nightly buffets are spectacular with a long line of Omani dishes as well as Western staples and the delicious fresh fruit juices for which I’ve developed a dependency. 

But one surprise comes when Desert Nights introduces us to wadis. These are water holes scattered around the desert in the most unlikely places. In the middle of a desert are naturally carved clearings where fresh, clean, blue-green water greets panting visitors.

We sign up for an excursion to Wadi Bani Khalid. Khamis, our driver, takes Marina and me in his Land Cruiser back to the main road for a short spell before we start zigzagging on newly paved side streets, climbing into the foothills. 

Wadi is Arabic for “ravine” and just past the village of Bani Khalid we see a forest of palm trees. We park and Khamis leads us to what looks like an oasis off a Hollywood set. Desert rock encloses a beautiful, huge pool of fresh water with a cluster of palm trees on both sides.

And it is nearly empty. 

Khamis leads us to the far end, past a pedestrian bridge often packed during the tourist season. I slide off my cargo shorts and roll into the water. Perfect temperature of about 80 degrees, so clear I can see little fish nibbling at my feet when I stop treading water. You can swim through different pools separated by rock enclosures.

Sold, we later visit Wadi Ash Shab north of the seaside town of Sur. Wadi Ash Shab is a challenge. It’s a 30-minute hike through a rocky gorge over various degrees of sharp and sometimes slippery rocks. But the flat portions on the side provide a perfect sunbathing spot. We lay on our towels, staring up at the towering cliffs of the gorge.

Sure beats $840 a night.

Life of the Bedouin 

During our brief stay, we get to know our initial driver. Zahran Al-hajri, 38, has striking, sharp features with piercing brown eyes and a stylish goatee. Zahran is a Bedouin. They are a tribe that has traditionally traveled the deserts like nomads.

The name comes from the Arabic term bedawi, which means “desert dweller.” They originated in Syria but spread around the Arab world with the rise of Islam starting in the seventh century.

But Zahran represents the new Bedouin. He doesn’t live in a tent. He lives in a house with his wife and four children in Bidiyah, the closest large town five miles south of Al-Wasil. He doesn’t have a camel. He has worked for Desert Nights in various capacities for 15 years. Like all other Bedouins, he has a cellphone. At our trip’s end, I meet him in the lobby and discuss the life of the modern Bedouin.

“People who like change they move to the town,” he says. “They leave their camel in the desert and they have cars. They drive every day to see them, see if they’re OK. They need more food. They bring water for them. They make money somewhere in the town.”

He says they sell goats and camels for meat in the market or drive children to school. Some work with tourists. Few travel more than 10-15 kilometers in the desert.

“For them, they’re happy because it’s a little bit difficult to live in the desert, particularly in the summer,” he says. “Sometimes it’s more than 50 degrees (celcius).”

Two days in the desert is enough. Zahran drives us into Bidiyah for our bus to the sea.