Oman - About the Country


Oman is an arid country, located on the eastern corner of the Arabic peninsula. To the east it is bordered (from north to south) by the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen, and to the west by the Indian Ocean. The Capital is Muscat, a harbour city at the northern coast. Oman is not a well-developed tourist destination, but because of the oil dollars, it is well developed with modern infrastructure and rather expensive.

Today this country is important for its oil deposits. In former centuries it was important for its frankincense. Frankincense is the resin of trees called Boswellia of the family Burseraceae. It contains a volatile oil which was valued in ancient times in worship and as medicine. Despite the mystic qualities, it actually is a mild disinfectant.

There are numerous fine caves in the country. However, until a few years ago, the country was a white spot on the map, concerning any kind of underground tourist site. Even cavers had explored only a few of the known cave systems. Most work was done in connection with underground sweet water bodies.

Some years ago this seemed to change, as the Omani government realized that caves could be a tourist attraction, and probably an after-oil business. Al Hoota Cave was developed as a show cave and opened in 2006. Visitor numbers of some 75,000 people annually convinced the government to develop even more show caves. The most interesting candidate is Majlis Al-Jin, a single chamber of enormous size with three holes in the ceiling where the sun shines in. Another impressive cave, which was discovered in the 1990s, is Teyq Cave, which is 250 m in depth and said to be 300 million m³ in size. This would make it the largest chamber of the world concerning volume, but it seems the surveying is not completed so far. The cave Al Kittan, which contains gypsum minerals, was explored and evaluated a few years ago for its show cave potential by German cavers. It was intended to become the second show cave of Oman, because it is horizontal and thus easier to develop than the other two.

It is our impression that government agencies have money to spend and do so without any real intention to actually do something. Probably they would be liable for doing something wrong, doing nothing seems to be without consequences though. Although all success stories are automatically attributed to the monarch, failures are the fault of someone else. As a result, it’s obviously easier to fake development than to actually develop. There have been several approaches, mostly by foreigners, to create World Heritage Sites, National GeoParks and Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). The result is as far as we can see no GeoParks at all, and the loss of a UNESCO WHL entry in 2007 as a result of Oman’s decision to reduce the size of the protected area by 90 %. They actually have the fame of having "the first site ever to be deleted from UNESCO’s World Heritage List".

In the official lists of caves in the country, about 50 % of the caves are wild caves that require caving equipment. 25 % of the caves are extremely difficult and dangerous and therefore not suitable for normal tourists. The remaining 25 % are so-called sacrificial caves, easy-to-walk-through, undeveloped caves that have been sacrificed for tourism. And then there is the single show cave whose train never runs. Most sites we list are actually tufa deposits and bathing spots.