Oman Self Drive Holiday

Seven nights in Oman, self-guided and tailor-made, through the mountains, the wadis and the desert in a 4×4.

Oman is the Gulf state to drive: the roads are excellent, fuel costs almost nothing, the off-road tracks are genuinely challenging and the country is both safe and welcoming in a way that takes most first-time visitors by surprise.

Muscat opens it, with the Bait Zubair museum and a corniche that runs between the mountains and the sea. Jabrin Castle follows inland, a seventeenth-century fortified palace with painted ceilings, then a Bedouin desert experience in the Wahiba or Sharqiyah sands, and the wadis, which are river gorges with pools in the bottom reached by tracks that justify the 4×4. The Ras al Jinz Turtle Reserve closes it with a guided visit, where green turtles have come ashore to nest for as long as anyone has recorded it and the reserve has been running since 1996.

The itinerary is tailor-made and the inclusions are not itemised in detail on the operator’s page, so the accommodation, the vehicle and the activities are worth settling at booking; flights are not included. A local driver and guide can be provided instead of self-driving on request. The price shown is per person excluding flights. October to April is the season, since Oman between May and September is extremely hot. No turtle sighting can be promised on a given night, though the nesting season between June and September raises the odds considerably, which sits awkwardly against the heat and is worth weighing up at the planning stage. Eight days is short for the distances involved, so the itinerary is worth building round two or three bases rather than moving every night.