Fort-tour turned wadi tour - Barka, Nakhal, Wadi Al Abyad

The weather forecast was very bad for this weekend - huge storm was coming, the country was preparing for some serious rain down south, the military put some extra resources in place etc. Therefore we planned relatively light off-roading and tried to keep outside of the wadis what is kind of challenging here. Wadi is basically a river bed - most of them only have water temporarily, during heavy rains. Some have all-year pools. And there are plenty of them here in Oman - they can be beautiful but also dangerous with flash floods. We stayed close to Muscat and headed towards Barka and we planned to visit a few of the forts in that area. Forts or watchtower ruins are everywhere here: some are renovated, sometimes too much, some are left behind and honestly we prefer these.

Locations:

- Sur ar Rumays: 23.6894, 57.99029

- Barka and Nakhal forts: type same in Google Maps

- Wadi Al Abyad: start of the wadi is at 23.3640,57.6704. Oman Off-road book, route 20

    

Our first one was the unkept fort of Sur ar Rumays - we were driving up and down on the village streets and almost gave up when all of a sudden it was there, hidden behind a taller villa. It is beautiful and mesmerizing! The stormy weather meant high humidity and cloudy sky, so there were practically no colors - still it was somehow special.

Next stop was Barka fort - this one is renovated (little too much) and was closed as everything else due to COVID. 

Next stop: Nakhal fort, another renovated one which is actually under renovation currently. It has scaffolds all over it, so did not take any picture - we did not even get out of the car.

From Nakhal we planned to drive to Rustaq to see more forts but last minute we changed our mind and we drove to Wadi Al Abyad and we did not regret. We found a beautiful, lush plantation where temperature was much lower than elsewhere with a cute little village. We did not drive deep into the Wadi due to the weather forecast but it is supposed to have some nice pools - maybe an other weekend!

Locations: start of the wadi 23.3640,57.6704, village and plantations 23.381592, 57.661723. From here you can drive into the wadi bed (make sure there is no rain in the forecast!) or hike in it - there supposed to be water pools on the way. From the end of the track around here you can hike to Al Abyad through the plantations.