Tag Archives: Landscape

Oman Day 6 – Wadi View!

Tuesday Feb 26. After a good night’s sleep, lulled by the song of our crickets, we found that the wind, and its accompanying flying sand, had dropped somewhat: so the only hazard we had to deal with over breakfast was the flies, who fancied a share of our fare.

Apart from covering the food, another way to discourage them is to burn Frankincense; the scent seems to keep them away. The breakfast was, as all meals at the Hud Hud camps, excellent, and so we set out for the day feeling replete.
On the way out we passed a goat farm where the goats were all trooping along for their morning drink.

As we exited the desert, it was interesting to see just how clear and sharp was the delineation between it and not-desert – you see flat flat flat flat – desert,

alongside which is a stern warning!

Frankly, I’m not sure how they’d know if you popped in and took a couple of truckfuls, but anyway….a longish drive back into the mountains took us to the outskirts of the village which takes its name from one of the most popular wadis in the area, Wadi Bani Khaled.

Before we took a walk along the banks of the wadi, Rashid took us off road to see it from above. The view over the village is quite striking

but the view of the wadi itself from even higher is, I think, the most spectacular view of the holiday so far.

The photo hardly does it justice; the contrast between the ruggedness of the rocks, the way the village nestles among them and the greenness of the wadi below makes this absolutely remarkably to stand and see. Even Rashid was struck by it

although his mate appeared to have his mind elsewhere.
It looked deserted from up there. We went down to discover that the parking was nearly full and that there were hordes of people heading up the wadi. Bloody tourists, giving tourism a bad name. However, it was a nice enough walk up the wadi, which has several irrigation channels running off it, obvs – the Omanis are vigilant in finding ways to get water to where it’s needed.

After a short walk, you arrive at a couple of pools

and you begin to realise the extent to which the area has been set up for tourists

with specially-installed viewpoints and also a restaurant, on the left in the picture below.

The restaurant serves a mean lemon-and-mint juice, and Jane reported herself satisfied also with the watermelon juice. The juice stop gave us a nice view of people having a nice time.

It’s then possible to walk a little way further up the wadi, where you can see pools that people can paddle or swim in.

though, this being where it is, there are some caveats about dress

(which were being quite widely ignored, sad to say; bloody tourists again, eh?).
Beyond that the path gets very rocky and in places slippery, so we didn’t go much further. on the way back, Jane got a fishy pedicure:

which started off apparently being very ticklish but soon became quite addictive. There was certainly one chap just up from where Jane sat who had been there with his feet in the water for quite some while.

After we’d exhausted the entertainment possibilities we headed off for lunch. The path beside the wadi passed a couple of mango trees, both magnificently in flower.

We’d enjoyed Wadi Bani Khaled, but at the same time found it slightly weird to have such (relatively speaking) naked pandering to tourism after all the other, less exploited places we’d visited. As our late neighbour Cyril used to lament, tourism is ruined by tourists, and this was the first inkling we’d really had about the encroaching effects of tourism in Oman. It’s an important industry, and the country needs to develop and grow it; but the downside is that nature will get built upon. Let’s hope that the Omani government will try to ensure that tourism development is done in the best possible taste.

Lunch was as usual an excellent picnic courtesy of our Hud Hud chef. After that, we headed back into the desert. En route, we saw the extent of the date palm plantation outside Biddiyah. The water supply that feeds it means it can spread until it butts up hard against the desert behind it.

The object of going back into the desert was to visit Said’s gaff to gain a little insight into the bedouin culture. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but in the event it turned out to be a sizeable room, constructed in a traditional manner out of date palm trunks, stalks and leaves. That sounds insubstantial, but, as you can see from the picture below, it is a sizeable and robust fabrication. As you can also see from the cars parked outside, we weren’t the only visitors.

Half of the room is given over to carpets upon which coffee and dates are served to seated groups of visitors.

and the other half to, well, stuff – artefacts and domestic things, some of which are for sale and some of which aren’t.

To give you an idea of the construction, here are close-ups of the ceiling

which is date palm leaf stalks, and the walls

which are also date palm stalks, but with the leaves left on to provide a fibrous surround.

Our stay there was reasonably short, and we headed off back to the Wahiba sands to get back to camp in time for sunset.

En route, we saw several things worthy of a photo: some opportunistic goats grabbing an illicit snack;

racing camels being taken back to their farms after exercise;

and some more hazards on and off the road (which carries right on towards Muhut until it suddently stops being a road and deposits you onto flat sand, at which point you are on your own – further underlining the need to make sure you’re properly prepared for desert travel).

We also stopped off to allow me to try for some arty shots of dunes

To get to a decent viewpoint for the sunset, we piled into the car (taking an extra member of the camp staff with us to help dig us out in case we got stuck on a dune somewhere) and Rashid took us dune-bashing via a circuitous route to the top of a dune overlooking a valley and served coffee whilst we awaited sunset.

The sunset itself wasn’t particularly spectacular, but the location was very zen.

When we got back to camp, we had the usual excellent dinner and, while Patrick and Jane went off to hunt more scorpions, I set to to trying to get some images of the stars. I got some stills which were rather ho-hum, and then set a timelapse going. Again, it’s nothing too dramatic, but it looks like some aeroplanes came through, (I originally thought they might be shooting stars, but I now doubt that):

A post shared by Steve Walker (@spwalker2016) on Feb 28, 2019 at 5:43am PST

After all that excitement, since we were due to leave camp the following morning, there was nothing for it but to try to finish off the gin we’d bought on arrival in Oman. Patrick manfully stepped up to the plate to help us out and by hook or by crook we finished it off with just about time for a reasonable amount of sleep before having to face the next day, which is, of course, covered in the next gripping installment of this blog, where I hope we’ll meet again.

Oman Day 5 – Just Deserts

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Monday 25 Feb. Today was spent transferring to our final camp, in the Omani desert (Wahiba sands, to be more precise). The first part was a reversal of our way in over the salt flats, obvs. We passed the incoming Hudhud truck, which was there to take away the beach camp which had been our home for the last couple of days.

Then we joined the Salalah-Muscat coast road, which I had expected us to follow for a long distance to take us round to the north of the desert that lies south of Muscat. But no; we linked up with Said, a pal of Rashid’s who is bedouin and hence who knows his way around the desert, so that he could take us on a short cut across the sands.

En route we encountered a pretty well-understood hazard of driving in Oman:

(remember the sign from yesterday?) and also unusual-looking formations of what we thought was rock

but which turned out to be layers of sand which had been rained on, solidified and then covered in more sand and rain and once again solidified. Striking, but actually very soft and crumbly.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the desert is, well, deserted. And it has to be said that there can be long distances between highlights; but highlights there were.

The first one was a bedouin settlement. Not tents and camels, but a collection of shacks in which they live

this settlement, called Juraywah, even has a school, which you can see in the background here:

Rashid debunked any idea we might have had about Bedouin being a separate race who lived an ancient and nomadic life among the dunes, carrying their tents and camels with them as they moved. “Bedouin” simply means “nomad”, and today’s bedouin, who are mainly found around Oman and the UAE, are nomadic, but largely between two established bases – the desert in Winter and the coast (as here) in Summer. Rather than their camels transporting them, they nowadays drive the camels in 4×4 trucks (remember my picture from the Days 3 and 4 post?)

It turned out that Said had his own reason to cross the desert – he was taking equipment out for another (non-Hudhud) camp. So Rashid helped him and some mates load up.

Amazingly, everything fitted!

Then we were off into the unforgiving sands of the desert, which have a variety of colours depending on age and mineral content.

We had to stop so that Rashid could let some air out of the tyres, to make the journey safer and more comfortable.

As we bowled along there were a surprising number of distractions from the landscape, which was pretty uniform all the way to the horizon.

with, threading through it, tracks that only the bedouin can confidently navigate.

For example: goats;

bedouin habitations;

a couple of Pakistani guys who have lived in the desert for four months whilst digging a 50-metre deep well, paid for by the local people to replace an older nearby well that was no longer useable;

a mosque;

in fact there are several in the desert, each of which has water for travellers and their animals.

This was actually our lunch stop, under one of the only trees available for shade.

after which the desert carried on in its relentlessly sandy fashion.

until we reached the first outposts of “civilisation” – a tourist camp.

We made a small detour to see the father of our bedouin guide, Said, who is devoted to his racing camels.

I took this photo to record the distinctive way that Said’s father stood while chatting to Rashid.

Soon after our little detour we were running through Biddiyah, prior to turning off once again into the desert, in the Wahiba sands area. The wind was really whipping up the sand – not quite a sandstorm, but certainly enough to make it uncomfortable standing outside.

We arrived at our camp soon after.

If you look at the dunes on the right above, you can see the wind whipping the sand up – and sand was everywhere.

Camp manager Patrick, waiter Janaka and cook were the same team as we had looking after us in the moutains, so a joyful (and warm!) reunion ensued! The tents this time, fittingly, were bedouin style, made of woven sheep and goat hair.

and perfectly comfortable (of their sort).

Patrick reminded us to be careful about our footwear. He had checked for scorpions and cleared the main camp area, but in any case, it was worth taking care and not walking around barefoot. Scorpions tend to bury themselves just below the surface of the sand, so it’s very difficult to see them. We went on a scorpion hunt later that evening and Patrick had with him a neat trick for detecting scorpions – an ultraviolet light, which really reveals them. So, for example, you might hardly notice one just below the surface

but he/she/it becomes much clearer under the UV light:

We found a couple of them around the site, a good reminder to take care. The pictures really are quite remarkable!

We had another splendid dinner, although we had to move the table into the majlis as the wind was still gusting and sending the sand flying. The camp crew fought a losing battle sweeping and clearing our bedroom and bathroom tents, only for everything in them to be covered in sand again in no time. After a couple of gins and a convivial chat with Patrick we retired to bed (along with a cricket or two, much to the surprise of the crew who have never had crickets in the desert camps before. Jane had to pursue and catch one of them twice before successfully ejecting it from our bedroom tent). I tried my hand at taking pictures of the stars, but I’d frankly had one gin too many and the best I can say is that lessons were learned for the following evening. I will post the results of those efforts, and the photos from the rest of the day in tomorrow’s blog post, which I hope you’ll want to read. See you there?

Oman Day 3 and 4 – In Transit (well, Toyota Land Cruiser, actually) to, and a day at, the beach

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Saturday 23 Feb The day had a fairly relaxed start, as the main objective was just to get to our next camp. This was in Barr al Hikman, by the coast, and a good six hours’ drive; so we weren’t expecting to tick large numbers of tourism boxes. But there was interest and scenery in the day even so.

The first thing we did was to go and peer into the local gorge. Near our Jabal Shams camp was a sheer drop

with a view so staggering that it’s impossible to capture on camera.

see what I mean? I tried various video tricks to capture it and I will post any that worked here in due course. But it was a gorgeous view (see what I did there?)

The first stop on our journey was in a town called Bahla, which has a couple of highlights worth seeing. It enabled me to capture a shot of what a typical set of Omani shops looks like.

These are typical of the small, individual booth-type shops that stand by the roadside (there are national brand shop chains, banks etc as well). By decree of the Sultan all shops display a description of their trade or products in English as well as Arabic, which lends a strange familiarity to a very unfamiliar scene! As it happens, these shops were next door to Bahla’s Grand Mosque, which is a striking building.

The main thing that Rashid wanted us to see was the fort, which is being reconstructed, and is a very impressive edifice.

(In front of it is the special local hall for celebrations such as weddings – but for men only. This exercised Jane somewhat, unsurprisingly.)

Rashid also took us to a viewpoint which enabled us to see over the whole of Bahla, showing what a dominant landmark the fort is.

A significant endeavour is the wall which runs right round Bahla. It’s of rudimentary mud brick construction, but stretches right round what you can see above. The authorities have also built a rather imposing gate over the main road into town.

On we motored, and the scenery changed dramatically to reflect the sort of landscape that covers a huge part of Oman – basically desert of various sorts. Plain sand

scrubby vegetation revealing the presence of some water

and mirages of non-existent water; and the ever-present risk of bumping into a camel.

(this means itinerant camels, of course. We also saw another way that you could find camels on the highway:)

This was the scenery that we had for our lunch break.

At about 3.15, we reached Muhut and linked up with the manager of our beach camp, a South African called Devon, who led us on a 50 minute drive over the salt flats to our site – a necessary step, since Rashid didn’t know where the camp was (each camp pretty much gets set up from scratch and the exact location will thus move), and you can get seriously lost when the landscape is nothing but flat sand and scrub. That said, there are markers which those in the know can use, such as this, which shows a fisherman’s track

(my caption for this photo is “The Crate Outdoors”. Thank you. Thank you for listening to my little joke).

Tyres are used to mark junctions.

None of this, however, matches good new-fashioned GPS as a navigation aid, which was what got us to our beachside camp at Barr al-Hikman. This was the same in principle as our mountain camp (majlis, bedroom tent, bathroom tent), but in a very different style:

and it was lovely and warm!

We went for a short stroll along the beach to see what was what. Behind the camp is a lagoon where there were actual flamingoes

There were crabs all over the place

and some mystery plants actually growing in the sand.

The rest of the day panned out pretty much along the lines of our previous, mountain, evenings, only without the shivering – so I was actually able to take a sorely-needed shave.

We ended the day with a splendid dinner on the beach in nice temperatures and with a breeze whose coolness was, for a change, welcome.

And we wound down after dinner shooting the breeze with Devon and making our way further down our supply of gin – a pleasant and relaxed end to a wonderfully relaxed day.

The night passed comfortably enough, but for one noisy distraction – a crab had dug and entered a hole below where our tent was sited, and this wasn’t noticed when the tent was pitched. So the poor thing was scratching to get out for much of the night, but was trapped under the ground sheet. Devon rigged up an escape tunnel in the morning, and it looked like the critter got out OK.

The beach camp is basically 90 minutes by 4×4 from anywhere, so it’s not a base for excursions. Our expectations therefore for Day 4 were of sloth. This turned out to be the case.

Sunday Feb 24 Breakfast was at a relaxed 9am

and we spent the day entirely at leisure. Jane took the occasional stroll to look along the beach, coming across a nice selection of objets trouvés

and I took the opportunity to document the holiday so far (these blogs don’t write themselves, you know). We had a lovely lunch and I tried to capture some photos of local wildlife, with distinctly mixed results. We saw sandpipers

curlews

a heron

and any number of the crabs as they burrowed in for the night (not, thankfully, under our tent this time).

and we whiled away the day in contented relaxation. Tomorrow we have to transfer to the desert, so the story will continue then – tune in again to find out how it went.