It all started days before the actual trip.
We knew for some time that kayak trips in Musandam were organised by a French travel adventure company. We didn't have the time up to now to go for it, but this year was the one!


About the travel adventure companies
The holidays described in the next posts are actually organised by Oman Nature a spin-off of Svalbard Nature. Svalbard Nature was founded by Pierre Fijalkowski who discovered Oman when he was in charge of the sea kayak for Raid Gauloises in Oman in 1992 (you can see here that they had some kayaks ...)

For the record, Svalbard Nature and Oman Nature belong to 66°Nord travel adventure company.

For this 2011-2012 season, the two different kayak trips in Oman proposed by Oman Nature are also sold through four other travel adventure companies.
The two trips go in Sham bay to do kayak in the Arabian fjords.
For one trip, called Djabel Harim, you do 4 days of kayak in the bay, a one-day hike, to end with a one-day visit of Dubai.
For the other, called Détroit d'Ormuz (Strait of Ormuz), you spend 5 days kayaking in the bay and end with a one-day visit of Dubai.

We did the "Djabel Harim" trip, and in our opinion, it is the most well-balanced. The one day hike is really worth it, and spending 4 days in the bay is enough.

We booked our tour at Nomade Aventure, which is actually the only one (on top of Oman Nature) to sell the "Djabel Harim" trip.
Three companies sell the "Détroit d'Ormuz" trip: Club Aventure, Allibert Trekking, Atalante.

For kayak fans, Oman Nature, used to organized a 9 day intense kayak trip around the whole Musandam but which seems, for the time being, no longer proposed.


Also, in the special Summer 2009 issue (HS23) of Canoë Kayak Magazine there is a "lyric" paper about this trip by Jean Robert entitled "À fleur d'eau dans les fjords d'Arabie"
















About the flights
To go to Dubai, when booking the tour, Qatar airways flights from Paris with a stop in Doha are proposed. On the way in, take-off is at 11:00 from Paris to land in Dubai at 22:45. On the way back, take-off is at 22:15 from Dubai to land in Paris at 06:35.

Actually since we were flying from Toulouse and to avoid multiple connexions we asked for a direct flight between Paris and Dubai. We got one, for almost the same price, on Air France (Paris 13:35 - Dubai 22:15 on the 29/10/2011 and Dubai 01:30 - Paris 05:55 on the 6/11/2011)

In the group, we were the only two with these flights and it had a great advantage: being able to stay later in Dubai on the last day and thus enjoy Dubai scenery at night.


About Oman and Musandam
Below are some excerpts of the (very interesting) Bradt guide about Oman:
"Musandam is a paradox. While it is Arabia's least-known and least-populated corner, it overlooks one of the world's busiest and most strategic waterways: the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is only 55-95km wide, but a large percentage of the world's crude oil trade passes through it.Isolated from both Oman and the United Arab Emirates by its own rugged mountains which fall directly into the sea, the Musandam Peninsula belongs geographically to neither. Only sparsely populated by the semi-nomadic mountain tribes, it did not much matter to whom it belonged until the late 1960s and early 1970s when the granting of oil concessions to foreign companies meant that allegiance had to be decided and borders drawn up accordingly. The Shihuh, the most populous of the three tribes of the Musandam, decided their allegiance lay with the Sultan of Oman and hence the border was drawn along the edge of Shihuh territory to separate it from the tribes whose allegiance lay with the Sheikh of Ras al Khaimah. Musandam is therefore cut off from the rest of Omani territory by a 70km tract of UAE land. Some of the old tribesmen have been heard to mutter that they now wish they had backed the UAE horse as it may have proved more beneficial to them throught possible generous handouts from the UAE federal budget."

Still in the same guide, concerning the accessibility of Musandam:
"Roads are a recent phenomenon in this peninsula: before 1980 precipitous footpaths were the only links between the mountains and the flat open plains of Fujairah and Ras al Khaimah. Even donkeys could not be used on such paths, and the Musandam towns of Khasab, Bukha, Limah and Bayaj, with their small harbours, could be reached only by small boats.
Musandam has throughout history had no exploitable commodity - no copper diorite or chlorite in ancient times, no oil in modern times - so no incentive has existed to defy nature and blast routes through the barren limestone. There is no coastal plain, and the sheer cliffs plunge straight into the sea in all but a few coves and bays where the towns and fishing villages sit. These are in turn connected by steep paths to a handful of mountaintop plains and terraces where rainfall in winter is plentiful enough to allow for limited agriculture."