The Legendary and historical traveler IBN BATUTA has said that “Travel Leaves You Speechless, Then Turns You into A Storyteller” …this is true for many of us who loves to travel and explore known and unknown places.
My experience recently was so when while driving on the beautiful mountain road from Al Shuwamiya to Salalah I found a green patch of palm trees and a lake on the way. It was an oasis in the dry land of Oman. The road to Salalah is mountainous surrounded by limestone mountains called Jabal in local language and driving beside the turquoise blue sea visible in between in this stretch of my journey.
As usual the oasis and the green vegetation of that place made me curious to explore more and thus I along with my colleagues drove through a dusty road into the oasis. The drive was not smooth since it was a graded and bumpy road meant only for sudden travelers like us who love to explore. A 4 by 4 vehicle is always preferred in these types of areas, and we drove to almost One km or more inside the palm vegetation and stopped at a dead end where a mountain stopped us from moving further.
We felt happy to see the shade of the palm trees and cool air flowing inside unlike the heat wave outside on the main road. The best view was of the blue water and green grasses surrounding the water body which we noticed is a back channel of the sea nearby and formed a horseshoe shaped lake. Beautiful, Gorgeous and colorful lake not being exploited by the touristy crowd or locals much though we noticed old, burned charcoals and some plastic dumped in the area which narrates the visit by some people sometimes. The view from some area on the surrounding hills where we climbed to have a better look fascinated me and the landscape of that area including a small patch of sand of the virgin beach was visible and providing a contrast of colors in that area.
It was a sudden and unplanned visit to this beautiful place which provided us an experience of a lifetime and gave us a feeling like Vasco Da Gama of discovering a new and not much explored natural beauty.
The place is in Hasik area of Dhofar region around two hours drive from major city Salalah in south of Oman by road and around nine hours drive from Muscat via Marmul. One must visit this place when the weather is not so hot because driving to this place will be tiring because of the heat. A Very good place for camping or for enjoying the night in natural surroundings and people can get their small boats to explore the lake.
This was a place which truly made us speechless and inspired me to narrate my story of visiting the place.
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