Magic Arabia Tour - Day 2
Today started early at the Kempinski Hotel, where Ahmed collected me to drive by a circuitous route to the desert camp, where I was supposed to sleep under the stars. Turns out, plans changed, partly by design and partly by the weather.
As we were leaving the hotel, Ahmed offered some options to contrast with the planned tour day, as the original plan had a long drive to visit a sinkhole before visiting a wadi and then heading into the desert. Instead, we drove more directly out to the desert by way of an ancient village, a different wadi, and then lunch with Ahmed's family, as they live relatively close to the desert camp.
While driving (and there was still a lot of it on almost empty massive highways), I have tried to capture some of the landscape in Oman and failed pretty miserably. There are times when you look out across the hills/mountains in the distance and you can see four different ranges at different distances and they are all shaded lighter and lighter hues of purple. If you saw a painting of it, you would think that the artist was fantasising. The camera does not capture this!
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Fun fact: we drove through the only two tunnels that Oman has created to keep its highways running smoothly through the hills/mountains. Everywhere else, there is massive earthworks and civil engineering.
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The ancient village is just outside a small town on the road into the desert. (I have no idea where I am in Oman by now, nor even which direction we are heading in!) And turning into the town was just like stopping at a country town in Australia, but set in a desert. |
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The ancient village was set among existing homes in the town and completely uncontrolled in terms of visitors, access, and maintenance. In essence, these buildings that Ahmed told me were likely 400 years old, just stand there for people to visit or ignore as they choose. In terms of heritage protection, I was horrified, especially when you see that some of the timbers used in door frames and doors is so ornately carved and the houses are rendered and the render has patterns embossed in it too. History buffs and archeologists would be beside themselves to see such neglect.
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We drove on to the wadi and I would occasionally try to take photos of the geology. Ahmed and I discussed that Oman is a geologists paradise as all the geology is in plain sight, not covered by dirt, vegetation or snow.
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The Wadi Binh Khaled was a lovely chain of rock pools that was inhabited by tourists swimming (it was 30C by the time we got there) and clambering around on the rocky wadi walls to get to and from the swimming spots.
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After a coffee at the main wadi pool, we headed on into the desert to visit Ahmed's family and have lunch. This stretch of driving was definitely "in the desert". It also involved some skillful sand dune driving by Ahmed in our big land cruiser. He definitely knows the limits of his vehicle and the ride was wild. (There are no photos of that bit!)
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After a lunch with Ahmed's family (he's one of eight and he had about a dozen nieces and nephews present too) that comprised a kind of rice paste mixed with (unnamed) meat, which had the texture of unbaked bread dough but was quite flavourful, dates, and arabic coffee, we set off into the desert again. This drive had two unexpected encounters. We came across a small group of young men with a jeep towing another jeep. The second jeep had clearly been in an accident and had two tyres completely shredded. The towing jeep was stopped with its bonnet up because it had not coped with towing the second jeep in the desert. Ahmed left them with several small bottles of water once he determined that they had help coming.
The second encounter was a close-up visit by a camel. Ahmed stopped by the animal and lured it up to the open driver's window with food (nuts first, then a banana) and proceeded to take selfies with the camel. I took quite a few shots because of the novelty, a few posted here.
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After a bit more dune bashing, we arrived at the Desert Nights camp, where Ahmed left me for the night. I checked into my room with instructions from the reception clerk to be back at reception at 5:15pm for the desert sunset trip.
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The sunset was postponed for tonight - gathering clouds for the predicted storms blotted out the western sky. I returned to the camp on foot, striding down the steep dune that they'd driven us up and then making the short walk across the ~500m of sand to the camp. I had another expensive glass of second-rate wine at the restaurant/bar building, though I ended up taking the glass back to my room as it started to spit rain.
Over the next 20 mins, the spitting turned into a full on rain storm, complete with close by thunder. The rain lasted for nearly two hours, only finishing while I was having dinner back in the restaurant. It will be interesting to see what effect all that rain will have on our tour plans for tomorrow. I've learned already that Oman does not deal with rain well as there's no storm drainage on any of the roads and, apparently, all the wadi crossings are fords because bridges just get washed away! By the time the wadi has collected all the rain wash-off from the hills, they are major torrents down here on the roads crossing the desert (and in the towns and cities by the coast - as I've witnessed already).
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