We took our longest road trip ever to reach one of the famous camping and fishing areas here in Oman. They call this place Ras Al Madrakah.
It is a long weekend here in Oman in celebration of the 46th National Day and of course we took this as an opportunity to explore yet another interesting place here in the Middle East. Together with our group, The Fishermen and The Mermaids as we call it, we searched the internet for places to go. The name of our group tells something about itself. Our core values are fishing and swimming.
After hours of deliberation, we were able to have a short list of places for consideration: Al Sifah, Qantab, and Ras Al Madrakah. Most of us favored Ras Al Madrakah and so after persuading those who were against it, we got down to hatching a master plan for the trip.
The Plan
Kickoff is at 0600H from Ibra. We will go through the wilayat of Sinaw and head south to our destination.
We will have our breakfast along the way and then we will have our lunch in Ras Al Madrakah. Google Maps said that travel time is a little less than five hours so we will arrive at the beach at about 1200H.
Fishing and swimming will commence after lunch. Our ice boxes are on standby. Since we know that Ras Al Madrakah is a fishing village, we know that ice will be available to preserve our catch.
We will have dinner once the sun sets and the fishermen will go fishing again and the mermaids will chat endlessly into the night.
On the next day, we will take our breakfast and then fish and swim again. We will leave the area after our lunch and then head back home to Ibra.
The Reality
We missed our kickoff time by about half an hour. Five minutes into our trip, we made a wrong turn. However, all is well and fine. We finally found our way and so our journey to Ras Al Madrakah officially started.
We had our breakfast at Lulu Hypermarket in Sinaw but not before doing a little shopping inside.
Google Maps is good enough to know that we are in Oman but it failed to consider that we are not Omanis. Maybe it made a mistake of calculating our travel time and used the Omani average driving speed of 160km per hour. And so by 1200H, supposedly our lunch time at Ras Al Madrakah Beach, we were still on the road.
We reached Duqum at around 1300H and we stopped by a Shell station to refill our tanks. The staff there told us that we are not so far from our destination. We are almost there as a matter of fact. We just have to drive for another 90km. And with that piece of information we decided to take lunch there at the station.
It took us another hour after taking off from Shell Duqum before we finally saw a signboard that points to Ras Al Madrakah Beach. At around 1430H, we set foot on the white sandy beach of Ras Al Madrakah. Let us call this Ras Al Madrakah Beach 1.
There is a slight problem by the way. This is not the exact place that we saw in YouTube and so we decided to look for that spot. We were able to locate that place, let us call it Ras Al Madrakah Beach 2, in just a matter of minutes. And so everything is back in order.
By 1500H, we started pitching our tents on the soft sands of the beach. There are other campers who came ahead of us but the beach is not so crowded so we were able to choose a nice spot.
Fishing started immediately after we finished setting the tents up. The sea is not that smooth and we had to stand of the rocks to be able to cast our lines. We fished and fished until dark and so when the night came in, one of our ice boxes is filled with four pieces of fish :). We cooked them right away so we can enjoy its freshness.
A sumptuous dinner followed under the star lights and LED lights as well. By 2200H, we started to feel the fatigue of the day’s ride and we drifted into sleep.
I got up by 0500H and saw Sir Darwin already on the beach. By 0530H, all the fishermen are up. We cast our lines and almost at the same time as the dawn approaches, the fishes started to tackle our lines. All of us fishermen enjoyed the catch. Even our Utoy who is nursing a slight fever got his own too.
The mermaids prepared our breakfast so we stopped fishing for a while to feast on boiled eggs, coffee and cheese-honey-stuffed bread. We fished again and again but with more fish comes the problem with ice. So we went to the village searching for ice. Along the way, we met one expat who is friendly but cannot speak much English and we don’t know the Arabic word for ice. Luckily we have some cubes left in our box so we showed it to the guy. He gestured us toward the direction of the building where we bought ice for our fishes.
But We Were Still a Bit Disappointed
Yes, we caught a lot of fish but not the ones that we expected, at least in size. One of the main reasons we came here is because of the YouTube videos that show large breams being caught from the shore of Ras Al Madrakah. This led us to make a decision to take a quick lunch, break camp, and head back to Ras Al Madrakah Beach 1 and try our luck there before finally driving home.
Beach 1 is almost empty when we came which as a good thing. We cast our lines immediately but to no avail. Maybe it is because of the tide or maybe it is because of the season. Those huge breams that we are looking for are not there. We gave up after about an hour of fishing.
The mermaids, however, were able to get some mussels from the rocks so we left Beach 1 not so empty handed at all.
The Long Way Back Home
A couple of minutes of rest and by 1500H hours we started the long drive going home. We made three stops along the way. Twice to refill our tanks. Once to take our dinner in Sinaw. For dinner, we had chicken and beef biryani from a local restaurant.
We reached home just past midnight. Tired, happy and very much willing to go back.
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