Let Fujairah take the weight off your shoulders – just don’t frighten away the fish

By the time you’ve passed through small towns with names such as Idhn, Khatt and Ghub, and begin the descent down to Dibba, you feel as though you’re in a different world.

I’ve made a few visits to Fujairah recently, and must say how much I enjoy the emirate by the Indian Ocean.

It’s nice to get out of the hustle and bustle of Dubai, and from the moment you turn on to the Mohammed bin Zayed motorway you feel some of the big city angst drain away.

The electricity pylons become less frequent, the sand dunes more regular. There’s nothing that relaxes the mind quite as quickly as watching sand dunes slide past from the AC’d comfort of a Land Cruiser.

But it’s at the unglamorously-named Truck Road that the excitement beings as you begin to pass through the upper stretches of the Hajar Mountains. Their rugged giddiness, etched with sedimentary folds in intricate patterns, is a welcome relief after the flat monotony of Dubai.

By the time you’ve passed through small towns with names such as Idhn, Khatt and Ghub, and begun the descent down to Dibba, you feel as though you’re in a different world.

There are industrial facilities in Dibba which pass you by unnoticed, and farther south at Khor Fakkan and Fujairah town there are of course quite substantial industrial and marine developments. But on Al Aqah beach, south of Dibba, you wouldn’t know they existed.

I’ve got to know the strip along Al Aqah quite well over the past few weeks. You pass the new Radisson hotel, then the Rotana, Le Meridien and the Miramar before getting to Sandy Beach Hotel, the quaint establishment closest to Snoopy Island, which most visitors head towards.

Sandy Beach must have been the first on the Al Aqah strip, and it’s showing its age in some respects, but it remains a wonderfully cosy place, with little villas (they’d be called chalets in England) where you can have your own barbecue and chat to your neighbours, almost invariably Arab or Russian families.

Snoopy itself doesn’t look very much from the shore, just a lump of rock fringed with barnacles at low tide.

But get out there with a snorkel and you’re instantly in a wonderworld of brightly coloured fishes darting through the underwater rocks. There is even, they say in a whisper, the odd small and (we’re assured) harmless shark.

I had one of those “parent” moments when I saw my six-year-old daughter, on her first time in the sea with a snorkel and flippers, strike out from the boat and away from me, absolutely fearless and oblivious to my irrational concerns. Only six, but already swimming away from me. It was magical, but slightly sad.

We were staying at the Meridien this time, and it’s a great place from which to explore the area.

The hotel is rather more modern than Sandy Beach with everything you want, and a good rate at this time of year. The balcony sea views were spectacular. At night you could see the lights of the oil tankers twinkling in the horizon as they lined up to get into the Strait of Hormuz.

The only blot on this serene landscape lies directly south of Le Meridien. Right next door, a new resort is being built, and work is well advanced. I couldn’t make out any signs of ownership, but the internet said that a few years ago something called Al Fujairah Paradise resort was planned there by a Saudi investor. There were said to be 1,000 luxury villas for sale or rent.

That is the size of a small town, and I wonder whether Al Aqah has the resources to sustain such a development. That many extra visitors would scare away the fishes, for sure.

Follow The National's Business section on Twitter