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desert tracks from Sarig to tuiyeh
A new road stares at the Sharqiya desert head-on. Written and photographed by Pinaki Chakravarty

We are crunching over pebbles scattered around a lone watchtower with a caved-in roof, somewhere in the far northeastern corner of the Sharqiya. Once upon a time, a desert sheikh had built his gardens here, but the falaj is now choked with sand, and the watchtower has nothing to watch over, except a desert of salt flats on one side, dunes to the west and distant mountains to the north. For centuries the camel caravans had come and gone by here, trudging from one be'ir, or water well, to the other.

We are in their footsteps, but the sand is now brushed over with the thick sweep of tyres, not hoofs, and sometimes the soft pitter-patter of desert foxes. More present is the vegetation, clinging to the edges of a seemingly endless series of sandy ripples that flow southwest. Every tree here is a ghaf, and it is under their extensive clumps that you will find the Bedouin and their ramshackle huts of corrugated metal and sticks, wire netting encompassing family, goats and camels.

We are sitting in one such house with Obaid Hamed Wani al Owaisi, who invited us in after driving us through the desert and into the woodlands. Obaid is as grand a Bedu as his name suggests – a stocky weathered man who, despite his short stature, commands respect with his mix of paternal ways and military background. He managed to look imposing even as he sat in his undershirt, surrounded by five wild-eyed children and walls hammered together in the sand. Our packet of biscuits was ceremoniously handed out while his wife made unsweetened tea and kahwa in the background, and we crunched on dates and sand on a furry carpet layed out for us. Outside, goats nibbled on ghaf, clothes hung from branches and a winter sun shone through scruffy trees. It was time to move on, again.

We had slithered northward with Obaid all morning, turning off the new road south of Al Ashkharah at a patch of sabkha around the settlement of Sigla. Our goal was to follow desert tracks that led to Jaalan Bani Bu Ali and Hassan, up north where the highway was, following ancient trails that were used until recently when the new road was built. Hard sabkha soon turned into soft sand dunes, and we roared up and down, desperately trying to keep afloat. We were following a fast disappearing sandy track, heading west and then north, straight into the desert. It would seem, until we reached an abandoned road, almost like the end of the world.

The ends of the Earth might be empty by definition, but they are precisely where you will find road construction companies. And this end lead us to the Strabag Oman site camp, base for the making of the just-complete road that makes its way down from Al Ashkharah. Last month, general manager Stefan Altziebler had thumped on his desk in Muscat, telling us how a desert road was like glass on a soft pillow (See our lead feature in the previous November issue of Oman Today). Now, we were with his project manager at ground zero, thumping on the ground ourselves.

Majoe Mathew has been staring at the ends of the world a long time, and according to him, it's constantly changing. Standing at the last frontier between desert and road at sunrise, Majoe inhales deeply. You can smell the freshly sprayed bitumen here, mixed with the dull scent of industrial machinery. And beyond, always present, the whiff of open sky, rolling desert and an incredibly deep blue sea so full of fish you can see them jumping out if you look long enough.

Majoe seems to live and breathe the road here, heading a team that has built the newest road in the sultanate. As the site manager of road maker Strabag Oman looks out over Khuwaymah, where Phase One of the tarmac, now complete, ends, he tells of the story of the road. It is a complex tale of discovering the desert, getting stuck in it and surviving sand storms for three months a year. But over the technicalities of blasting rock, building upon sand and through sabkha, Majoe laces his experiences with a first-hand account of the land and its people.

While phone calls in his office make him roll out blueprints, it is a National Geographic that lies on his table at the site camp, tucked away in a pause in the sand dunes, off the new road. So instead of bitumen ratios and kilometre readings, there's a prehistoric chimp staring up at you from its yellow-rectangle frame. "I don't believe that you can really get a feel of a place as a tourist," he says. "To really experience a place, you have to live in it, and know its people." Such insight developed early, from his roadwork around the Indian subcontinent, where travel went hand in hand with asphalt. "I was always interested in the socio-anthropological aspect of things around me," he says, halfway through a carrot.

This depth of interest makes good roads too – and the new one promises to be excellent. Although following the coast, Phase One is a triumph of sorts, making its way through treacherous salt flats, shifting sand dunes and, occasionally, rocky outcrops that need to be blasted and cut through. Of course, when people drive over this new road, they tend to take it for granted – driving over a smooth surface at 100kmph with ocean on your left and desert on your right is immensely pleasurable, far away from thoughts of back breaking work. The Bedouin like it too, evident from the furious circles of burnt rubber that hint at joyrides – marks that have already appeared before the first coat of paint has dried.

"There was nothing when we first came here," says Matthew. "Just desert and sea." Every part of building a road through the desert is difficult, of course, and some parts are more difficult than others. A road over sand is built layer upon layer, from softer to progressively harder. More difficult are the patches of sabkha – salt flats that look deceptively hard, right until the moment your vehicle gets stuck. To support the road, modern materials called a geo-fabrics would be layed under – a sort of synthetic sheet that acts as a barrier between the loose particles of road base and the soft, porous surface of the desert. Underneath might come a geo-textile and then, between bottom layers, a geo-grid, its mesh large enough to allow water to filter through, while small enough to keep the base material from disappearing into the soft sabkha and sand. Such intricate systems dramatically increase the cost of these patches of road, and this overall increase in time and expenditure is further added to by other engineering methods.

"Sabkha is an Arabic term which refers to flat and very saline areas of sand or silt lying just above the tide or water table," says Kris Vallancy, a Muscat-based marine scientist. "It is a salt crusted desert. In Oman there are primarily two types to be found: inter-dune or inland sabkha occurs in low-lying basins often between dunes in the desert, while coastal sabkha which, as the name suggests, is found at the coastal shoreline. Inter-dune sabkha is formed when wind erosion removes surface materials down to the water table. Water is the vital ingredient that enables all sabkha to exist in the first place and is present in the form of flooding, runoff accumulation, capillary rise and tidal fluctuation." Matthew gets more technical – sabkha is a surface with a low CBR – the California Bearing Ratio that serves as a penetration test for the evaluation of the mechanical strength of road sub-grades."

So how does one make a road over an area dominated by the effects of water? One way is to raise the road above the sabkha, on an embankment called an Irish bridge in the industry. This is a costly, time consuming affair, and the other, easier and less expensive option is an Irish crossing, where the road is kept to the same level as the ground. Here, it is protected by a low concrete wall (that extends below the surface of the road, not above), which is, in turn, protected by a layer of rock that runs parallel. This allows water to flow over the road, while protecting its sides from being washed away. Irish crossings might be considered for areas that have a low probability of flooding – the stray incidents that might occur once in a while might not warrant the cost of building a raised wall underneath.

Such foundations are a world away from where we are now – in the desert without roads. We get stuck, of course, but it's all part of the experience, and in the hours it takes to crawl out we can decide who's fault it is. How does one stay on top of sand in a heavy vehicle? Everyone in Strabag has his own answer, and they're all correct (they all get stuck in the sand too). Stefan Altziebler, the general manager, does what everyone should, and just steps on the gas, revving through. Majoe Mathew, after three years on site, says, "You have to know where to stop – find hard ground (the colour of the sand will indicate this), or stop facing downhill." And Obaid? He puffed on his pipe and said we had the right car with the wrong tyres. "With sand tyres, no problem – Land Cruiser number one."

Just out of the soft dunes is the old gravel road that Strabag built from Ashkharah to Khuwaymah, now replaced by the tarmac that runs parallel to its east. Follow it south for a few kilometres, before turning right onto sandy tracks that will take you into the desert woodlands. From the old road, Obaid scratched his beard, puffed his chest out with Bedu pride and swept a hand over the desert. That rocky outcrop to the left, he said, was Nimr, there was Wadi Arafat, the white sand you see there is Wadi Hayyan, and the tracks to the right lead into Wadi Hamed. But best of all, in the distance, were shagara al ghaf, or trees of ghaf – a scraggly canopy that would look unremarkable if not for the fact that these were trees that rose out of desert sand, not soil.

The desert is full of surprises – scattered shade over sand instead of blistering sun, Bedu families where every child goes to school and a mix of old and new wells that dot the sandy tracks you will follow. And perhaps best of all, a new road that is as much about turning off as it is about following through.