Taqa Town and Mountain Tour

Together with my mum we booked the East tour with Dhofar SAS trips in November 2024. The trip started with the pick up at our hotel in Hawana Salalah through our Omani tour guide Aziz. Our first stop was in Taqa, a small city near Hawana Salalah where we visited two sites, one of them at the top of Taqa where we had some traditional Karak and listened to Aziz’ catching stories about this historical place. After this first stop we drove to the beautiful Wadi Dharbat while meeting some camels, horses and goats on the way. At the Wadi Dharbat we had the chance to take some breathtaking pictures. While Aziz explained a lot about the animals and trees on the way to our next stop in the mountains we were able to enjoy the beautiful scenery that changed with every turn upwards the mountain. In the mountains we visited three different observation decks which were in such an original condition that is really rare to find these days. The view on the first two decks was so breathtaking and impressive even more so while we listened to Aziz’ fascinating stories about these places. On the third observation deck we unfortunately had a little bit of bad luck because as we were driving up to one of the highest points of the mountain we were suddenly surrounded by very heavy fog. We were really relieved to have Aziz with us who navigated us very safely through this part and made us feel very secure. Sadly we were not able to enjoy the view from this platform due to the fog. However this was a really cool and interesting situation we will likely never forget. The next two stops were made on our way down and were as impressive as the other ones. On the next stop we saw some very old trees with really thick trunks and on the following stop we visited the point of gravity return. To this day I still can‘t wrap my head around what happens here. Aziz demonstrated this to us with his car as well as a bottle of water. Essentially there is a street that goes upwards and the car with no running motor will drive upwards on its own. Same with the bottle of water. If you are visiting Salalah you should not miss this stop! On our way back Aziz stopped to order some traditional Omani bread and Karak which we enjoyed at Taqa Mountain where we watched the beautiful sunset and had some really great conversations. Our trip together with Aziz into the mountains was really awesome, breathtaking, interesting, funny and so much more. We still look back to this experience with so much joy and can warmly commend to book this tour especially with Aziz. During each part of the tour you could just feel the love he has for his country, the people, the culture and what he does. He always offered very fascinating answers to all our questions and made this trip unforgettable. Thank you so much Aziz!

We did our second tour with Aziz and we loved it. It was very interesting and we got a lot of details we would not get from anyone else. We had a great insight in the culture and nature of Salalah.