Beaches in Oman

Over three thousand kilometres of coast on three bodies of water, most of it empty. The Gulf of Oman side has limestone cliffs, white sand and wadis reaching the sea, with the Musandam peninsula at the top cut into inlets that are called fjords and are drowned river valleys. The Arabian Sea coast in the south gets the Indian Ocean monsoon and turns green for three months, which is a genuinely strange thing to see in Arabia and fills Salalah with visitors from the Gulf between June and September. Ras Al Jinz in the east is one of the most important green turtle nesting sites in the Indian Ocean and is visited by guided session only, at night. Wild camping on beaches is permitted and normal, which shapes how the whole coast is used: people drive out, set up and take everything away again, and the country is conspicuously clean as a result. Practically: modest swimwear is expected and covering up away from the water is appreciated; summer on the northern coast is severe, so the usable season there runs October to April, while the southern Dhofar coast inverts it; and a four-wheel drive opens most of the good beaches, several of which have no road at all.

Both are desert shores. Both are unbuilt. Together they account for 2.8 km of shore. · computed from the 2 records below