A Sandy Desert, an Old Town Rebuilt, Date Palms and High 'Green' Hills
Leaving the Wahiba Sands
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| Oman |
Finding ful beans on the breakfast buffet was a pleasant surprise. We first encountered ful, dried broad beans soaked and boiled until they start to disintegrate, in Sudan where they are eaten by all (and if you are very poor they are all you eat). In Egypt they are everyone’s breakfast. I like them best mixed with a chopped boiled egg, some fragments of feta-style cheese and chilli powder.
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| Morning at the 1000 Night's Camp, Wahiba Sands |
We arrived in Oman with modest expectations, but had eaten well, enjoying the ubiquitous dates and their distinctive halva. We were also discovering that Omanis borrow judiciously from their neighbours; biryani, chicken curries and gulab jamun from India; ful and last night’s Umm Ali from Egypt.
We left the camp heading back towards Bidiyah, as did many others. On the way in we had climbed a dune via a zig-zag of packed sand, but leaving we made a direct descent. Y parked at the top so we could enjoy the view….
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| Descent in the Wahiba Sands |
…and insisted in taking a photograph of us. The backdrop is a sandy waste but it is not empty, three other moving vehicles can be spotted and there is an encampment, top right. Wild camping is popular, Y told us, but some campers pack their rubbish into black plastic bags and leave them in the desert. He found it incredible that anyone who appreciated this landscape would do such a thing - and so did we - but they do, as we saw later.
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| In the Wahiba Sands |
In days gone by, Bedouin nomads led their camels and goats across these sands as they did across the Empty Quarter. Modern borders dividing Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and the UAE cramped their style and then they discovered the settled life was much easier. Today many live round the desert fringes, still keeping their camels….
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| A camel waits patiently in the Wahiba Sands |
….and their goats, but driving out to provide such feed as these resourceful animals cannot forage for themselves in this barren land.
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| Goats on the outskirts of Bidiyah |
Back in Badiyah Y had the tyres re-inflated for our return to tarmac. We would first drive to Ibra near the sands’ north-west corner and then continue in roughly the same direction, along the yellow line below.
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| Today's journey roughly follows the yellow line from the Wahiba Sands to Ibra and continuing to Birkat Al-Mouz and the Jebel Akhdar |
Ibra
Ibra is 40km along the main highway from Badiyah. It is an old town, pre-dating Islam, but on aerial photographs it looks like any other Omani town, low-density buildings strung out along a series of branching roads with no apparent pattern. On the ground it made a bit more sense and could be split into three.
New Ibra, is very modern and largely under construction along the highway; it detained us little.
The Souk
Off the main road we visited the souk area, not quite so new, but hardly ancient. There was little activity, though we would have expected Saturday, the second day of the Omani weekend, to be busy. The pavements were arcaded to protect shoppers against the sun. In summer the average daily high exceeds 40º, in mid-November, a time the locals call ‘winter’, the temperature was barely 30.
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| Souk area, Ibra |
The fish market was behind the main market. Perhaps most activity here was earlier in the morning.
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| Ibra Fish Market |
Shark is popular in Oman, and although we have seen and eaten shark in various places (shark steaks occasionally feature on English menus) I had never before seen hammerhead sharks. Perhaps these relative tiddlers would have been better left in the sea.
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| Hammerhead shark and other fish, Ibra fish market |
Outside the fish market an elderly man had laid his meagre wares on the ground. Y decided to purchase a small knife; maybe he needed one or perhaps it was a small act of charity.
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| Y buys a knife, Ibra |
Old Ibra
Ibra’s old town is not far away, and it is falling down. The old Souk is empty…
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| The Souk, Ibra old Town |
…the streets are deserted…
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| The deserted streets of Ibra old town |
….and the buildings crumbling.
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| Crumbling buildings, Ibra old town |
The government has built nice new homes for all Ibra’s residents, spacious, air-conditioned and with drinkable running water, so no one wants the old buildings anymore - though there are signs that many of them had some modern facilities.
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| Crumbling buidlings with satellite dish |
These buildings have only been abandoned in the last five to ten years, but without constant maintenance mud-brick houses fall apart quickly – and this is happening in towns all over Oman. Public buildings are maintained, like this mosque….
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| Well maintained mosque, Ibra old town |
…and gardens are looked after…
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| Garden, Ibra old town |
…but the only living soul we saw was a young man transporting a lawns-worth of grass on his pushbike.
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| A load of grass, Ibra old town |
The locals are missing a trick. Later, in other places, we would see mud-brick houses restored for use as tourist attractions and boutique hotels. They may no longer be good enough for locals, but foreigners lap them up.
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| Picturesque enough for tourists? I think so. Ibra old town |
Birkat Al-Mawz
Camel for Lunch
We left Ibra, heading for Birkat Al-Mawz (spellings vary) 120km north-west along a good road through country that was largely flat and always arid.
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| On the road from Ibra to Birkat Al-Mawz |
On the way we talked about food and the subject of camel meat came up. We told Y we had never eaten camel. ‘Do you want to?’ he asked. ‘We’re always happy to try something new.’ ‘There’s a Yemeni restaurant, near here,’ he said ‘it usually has camel.’
A little later we parked in front of a restaurant, one of a line of businesses apparently sitting alone in the desert, though they were much closer to Birkat Al-Mawz than we realised.
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| Restaurant near Birkat Al-Mawz |
This day’s fare was laid out cafeteria-style. There were two camel options, a stew and cubes of spicy camel meat. We tasted one of the cubes expecting it to be tough and strong, maybe even gamey but it was tender, gently spiced and delicately flavoured.
We lunched on spicy camel, a couple of slabs of chicken, biryani rice and salad with a mildly-spiced tomato-based sauce to help the rice down. And would we eat camel again? Definitely, though it was the texture and spicing that made it so moreish, a distinctive ‘camel flavour’ was harder to detect.
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| Spicy camel, near Birkat Al-Mawz |
The Date Palms of Birkat Al-Mawz
A short distance down the road Y suddenly swung into what appeared to be the yard of a roadside business and then up a steep stony hill with a telephone mast on top.
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| Uo to the viewpoint, Birkat Al-Mawz |
There had been no signs, but several cars were parked by the mast, and the reason was obvious. The valley below was filled with date palms, by far the largest, expanse of green we had seen in Oman. The modern town was out of sight to our left but, as at Ibra, the two mud-brick settlements on the far side of the valley are deserted and crumbling.
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| The date palms of Birkat Al-Mawz |
Another car arrived, a four-wheel drive containing two European tourists with no local driver. Y looked at them open mouthed. ‘How did you get here?’ he asked as they got out of the car. ‘We have an ap,’ was the swift (and slightly smug) response. ‘Well done, you,’ I thought; Y looked impressed too, but maybe he was also seeing a threat to his livelihood.
Y drove us down into the valley and through the palms. They are all irrigated from one stream, and the owner of each plot has a designated time each week when the water is directed to his trees. In November the date season is drawing to its close, but well over 30 different varieties are grown in Oman, all fruiting at different times in the season, so fresh dates are available for six months of the year. Each tree produces 60-70 Kg a year, so the produce of this one valley is mountainous.
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| Down among the dates, Birkat Al-Mawz |
Falaj Al-Katmeen
The irrigation system is known as a falaj (literally: 'split into parts') and this falaj, the Falaj Al-Katmeen, is one of five Omani aflaj (plural of ‘falaj’) which together make up a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We drove into Birkat to look at the origin of the water which gushes along a channel in the village centre.
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| The Falaj water gushes through central Birkat |
It is not just the sharing of the water that makes the system special. From a water source far inside the mountain a gently sloping underground channel was dug almost sideways until it emerged into the light. To build a 2.5km channel under a mountain, vertical shafts had to excavated every 20-30m along the course.
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| Yep, it's a World Heritage Site |
This system of transporting water by gravity - generally known as ‘qanat’ - is very ancient and tunnels can exceed 50km in length. The system was developed some 2,700 years ago and gradually spread across the world’s arid regions.
In 2008 we visited such a system in Turpan in the Taklamakan desert, western China. They called it ‘karez,’a Uigher word, rather than Chinese but they claimed it as a Chinese invention; the Chinese invented much, but not everything. It was generally accepted as a Persian idea, but evidence now suggests some qanats in the south-east of the Arabian Peninsula are just as ancient. Possibly (or probably?) qanats were developed independently in two centres; the idea travelling east along the Silk Road from Persia to Pakistan, Afghanistan and China, and west with the Arab invasion of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. The Spanish subsequently introduced the technology into South America.
The emerging water is clean enough to drink and close to the exit washing and paddling are strictly forbidden (the English version of the notice actually forbids swimming, which would be an interesting challenge). Omani tap water is safe to drink, but desalinated seawater never quite tastes right. Bottled water is widely available, but people come here to fill their bottles for free. ‘It tastes sweet,’ Y said, slurping it up. We checked, it does (and we came to no harm).
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| Lynne conducts an organoleptic examination of the falaj water |
Jebel Akhdar
The Al-Hajar mountains form a high rocky crescent following the shape of the coast but 50-100km inland. Our journey from Muscat via Sur had brought us round their southern tip and we had spent today on the elevated inland plain behind the mountains.
Birkat Al-Mawz is the gateway to the central Jebel Akhdar section of the Jebel Al-Hajar and it was time to head for the hills.
A police check point sits at the bottom of the mountain road. The police are less of a presence in Oman than in some middle eastern countries and, according to Y, are reliable and honest. Keeping to that approach, the check was for safety, not security. They were only permitting four-wheel drive vehicles up the road and offering advice on mountain driving.
They were being over-cautious. The Jebel Akhdar road is new, wide, well-maintained and relatively gently graded.
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| The road up to Jebel Akhdar |
The mountains do not have towering peaks but form a high rocky plateau riven with deep valleys. Our hotel on the edge of the village of Saiq, stood high on the plateau overlooking one such valley and we had time to contemplate the view and visually plot the three villages walk we had neither the time nor the energy to complete.
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| Our hotel in the Jebel Akhdar |
Jebel Akhdar means ‘Green Mountain.’ It may not look very green to a British eye, but at this height there is sufficient rainfall to support shrubs and trees and for the locals to grow crops on the terraces visibly in the picturesm though many are no longer worked as people seek an easier life in the lowlands.
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| Villages in the Jebel Akhdar |
Darkness fell, and with it the temperature. We sought out the warmer clothes we had put away at Manchester airport, unsure of exactly how high we were, but suspecting it was above 2,000m, (6,500ft).
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| Looking into the valley from our hotel in the Jebel Akhdar |
During a shivery sundowner on our balcony we recalled how cold we had been at this height last November at San Cristóbal de las Casas in southern Mexico. On descending for dinner (we were on half board as there was nowhere else to eat) we found the restaurant was heated – that never happened in San Cristóbal! After a large camel-y lunch we did not do the buffet justice but we enjoyed the first lamb we had encountered on this trip.
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| Village in the Jebel Akhdar |
Later we wrapped up and went out to look at the stars, but knew it was a fool’s errand even before we saw the clarity of the moon shadows following us round. The moon was not yet full, but it was far too bright for stargazing.
18-Nov-2018
Only in the morning did we spot the hotel’s viewing platform on the edge of the valley. The photos above were all taken in the early morning from that platform.
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| Viewing platform at our hotel in the Jebel Akhdar |
We had breakfast - I was delighted to find ful again, Lynne seemed more excited by the Rice Krispies – and then headed back down the mountain to the welcome warmth of the plain.
Part 1: Muscat, an Unusual Capital
Part 2: Sur and Turtles
Part 3: Wadi Bani Khalid and the Wahiba Sands
Part 4: Ibra, Birkat al-Mawz and the Jebel Akhdar
Part 5: Nizwa
Part 6: Bahla, Jabreen, al Hamra and the Jebel Shams
Part 7: Misfat Al Abriyyin, Wadi Bani Awf and Nakhl
Part 8: Salalah and the South Coast
Part 9: Salalah, the City
Part 10: To the Edge of the Empty Quarter
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