Chasing Sea Turtles on the Beaches of Oman

It Doesn’t Get Much More Off the Beaten Path Than This

Three fingers above the Indian Ocean, a pale and jaundiced moon tries to bleed through a layer of sea mist. 

Along the periphery of my vision, dark, sharply contoured hillocks are imposing silhouettes against an ash-black sky. From here south, not a single patch of land interrupts the ocean tides until the arrival of Antarctica. 

It’s a lonely, if noisy place as the sea crashes against southern Oman and the ocean wind races onshore. 

This is precisely the kind of place I hunt for when looking for travel adventures to write about. I’ve made a decent side-income from travel writing over the years. Here’s what I’ve learned: Too many writers are writing too many versions of the same story. And way—way!—too many are writing the same 7, 10, 13, 22 best things to see/do in This Country or That Country. 

But the best travel writing always stems from venturing some place that not everyone is writing about seemingly every day. You won’t catch an editor’s eye by pitching yet another story on the Best of Lisbon. That story has been written ad nauseum, an ad nauseum number of times. Better off to pitch a story on an unheralded corner of Portuguese wine tourism that focuses on a region of the country to which few travel writers pay much attention. (I did that with success recently.) 

In this era of post-pandemic “revenge travel,” editors—and readers—want to be reminded that the world is chockablock with places to see that are not major world capitals. Which is why I am standing on this beach in southern Oman, closing in on 10 p.m., with 14 other people—hunting turtles. 

Figuratively, of course.  

These are green sea turtles, leatherbacks, and Olive ridleys. Just about every single day of the year—well, really night—they flipper their way onto the Omani sand to lay clutches of eggs before returning to the sea. 

These turtles are bigger than I thought. Some get up to 400 pounds. Seeing them on a beach at night—lumps of shell that sort of just emerge from the moonlit haze…kinda freaky, honestly. 

The 14 of us are in a fairly accurate representation of “middle of nowhere”—three hours southeast of Muscat, Oman’s sedate capital. The nearest town Sur, home to about 70,000 people, is about half an hour away.  

I’m sure the stars would be more brilliant if not for that jaundiced, full moon and the bright halo that’s washing out most of the sky. 

Several of the people milling about are part of an Omani family, the matriarch covered head to toe in a black abaya, just her eyes visible through a narrow slit. That, too, is kinda freaky—not in any cultural sense…just that it’s near pitch-black outside, and to turn around and unexpectedly find a black-cloaked human form right next to you can be a bit unnerving when you’re not anticipating it. 

Then there’s the English family and the German couple. Not convinced the husband/boyfriend wants to be here…pretty sure the wife/girlfriend is done with this guy. 

But then our guide calls us over by way of a red-bulbed flashlight that he shines onto a green sea turtle, burrowed into the foxhole she’s dug with her flippers. Every few seconds, white, soft-shelled eggs drop into the nest she’s created. 

He turns to point…there, there, there, and there. 

And there, too. 

An invasion of turtles lumbering up the sand, some occasionally hitching a temporary ride on the remnants of a crashing wave that sees them glide effortlessly for 10 or 15 feet. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve loved attending a play in London. Dining at a Michelin-starred restaurant in Warsaw. Wandering Tokyo’s famous Tsukiji fish market at 5 a.m. 

But there’s something about off-the-beaten track adventures that are more compelling to me as a writer and a reader…and a digital nomad pitching travel editors as jaundiced as this full moon.