I'd got the call the night before from Adam and Nakia. I was out at 'Left Bank' which is a bar/restaurant, about 5 minutes from where I'm staying in Qurum. Gill had given me the details of a girl who she sings with - Elayne, who is a year or so younger than me. Anyway, she suggested getting in touch with her and when I eventually did, Elayne was nice enough to meet me for a drink and a chat.
It was a nice evening, it's getting cooler here, so it was lovely sitting outside in the gentle breeze. The wine was ridiculously expensive, from Chile and not terribly fantastic.
Elayne is a Marine Biologist and we chatted about diving, some strange sea creature called a 'dugong' that she is researching (a 'dugong', I learned, is a large dolphin sized, grey, slow moving sea creature that eats sea grass - it's commonly known as a 'sea cow') and about various environmental issues here in Oman. Interesting lass, very intelligent and is fun to hang out with.
Anyway, I got the call from Adam and Nakia asking if I wanted to head along to the desert with them the following day. I'd been hanging out to get the desert (as you no doubt have been reading). I was told to be at Janeys in the morning and to pack light. Hah. Pack Light? Those words aren't in my vocabulary. I do, however, have 'kitchen sink', 'uneccessary' and 'useless', so I made sure I put those words to use when I packed the next day.
I rolled around in the morning and was already beaten by the blazing heat. My trusty Nissan Sunny rental has air-con, but, unfortunately it takes about 20 minutes to crank up. And it takes about 22 minutes to get to Al-Kuwayr.
I fell out of the car onto the pavement and crawled my way into the lift and fretted while the disturbingly slow lift edged me up to the top floor of the aparment building.
I reached the door (finally) and was greeted by Sam (the dog) and a spritely Adam.
'Maaaate!' he twanged as he held out his hand to usher me in. I haven't always been fond of the Aussie accent, but I mimicked him (in appreciation and respect, of course) and followed with the a-typical Kiwi-to-Aussie hassle, like 'shreemp on tha baarbie', 'feeesh end cheeeps' and the like. We laughed and joked, with Adam telling me I should tell my interviewer (I had a job interview - more on that later) that I'm an Aussie, and that will get me the job. I agreed. I mean, us Kiwi's are a pain-in-the-ass-breed - all our binge drinking and illegal distribution of pornography (two Kiwi ex-pat's have recently been expelled from Oman for selling porn and being 'drunk and disorderly') - nice one!
Naseeb rocked up soon after (not in 'the donkey' unfortunately) and I was introduced to his son, Farsah.
After a brief chat, we were on the road, screaming in and out of the busy streets, dodging people crossing the road, swerving in between lanes and setting new land-speed records out of Muscat.
The drive was about two and a half hours out (over half-way to Sur) and went pretty swiftly, as we all chatted and gazed out the window at the passing villages and the rocky mountain ranges that sat behind them. Again, pretty crazy driving speeds - the limit on outer roads is 120, but at one point I looked over Naseeb's shoulder at the speedo and it was hovering just below 160... and there were cars passing us!
We again spoke about all things Sultan related, specifically related to his yearly 'tours' of the country, his entourage and the affects of technology on the interior.
We arrived at a small village and I instantly spotted the towering red dunes in the distance. They were quite a sight. Apparently the Wahibah Sands have a stretching area of around 120,000 square km. And they are growing at a rate of around 3 feet a year.
They're home to the Nomadic Bedouin, of which there are around 1500 scattered across the sands. That number is decreasing, with the introduction of technology and as they move from the desert in to neighbouring villages permenantly. Though, I'm not quite sure of the relationship between technology and moving out from the desert, as I would have thought that with technology, comes the ability to stay where they are, or where they move around to...
But anyway.
We drove out on the sand and began sliding around. Naseeb was taking the opportunity to show his son the differences between 4WD and 2WD. I listened in as he shouted over the roaring motor and tried to stay still as we slid all over the backseat.
Naseeb then stopped the car and he and Farsah swapped places, for a good old-fashioned driving lesson - desert style!
He told Farsah not to ride the clutch, as this essentially wrecks the pressure plate in 4WD mode. And it only takes about two and a half hours to burn the clutch beyond repair.
He slowly edged forward, at extremely high revs and we were hit by the stench of the clutch burning. Oil and gas fumes flooded into the truck and we coughed and spluttered as Naseeb yelled 'less clutch, less clutch, release it, release it!'
Unfortunately after a minutes of trying, Farsah gave up - probably from a bit of stage fright as well with us peering over his shoulder in the back. They swapped places back again and we rocked straight into 4WD and began motoring over the dunes towards our first destination - a bedouin family who Naseeb was friends with and would let us in for coffee and dates.
We rocked on up, spilled out of the truck and I instantly took the opportunity to take some photos. I've been somewhat repressed when it comes to being paparazzo-Andrew so I was slightly trigger happy. You'll see that from the picasa gallery (and that's the cut-down version!)
It wasn't as hot as I thought it would be. There was an ever-so-gently breeze keeping us cool, but the glare was unreal. Even with sunglasses on my eyes were squinting with the sharp sun rays peircing my eyes.
Naseeb led us into the native Beduoin homestead - a structure built solely out of date palms. We entered and took off our sandals and sat down on the carpets, where the women and girls poured us coffee and fed us dates. They didn't speak any english, so Naseeb translated for us. I managed to communicate quite well with my facial expressions, gestures and general eyebrow raising movements.
It was quite uncomfortable at times, I felt as though they were expecting something, but they were sitting quite happily taking in their dose of westerners sitting down like stunned mullets. Actually, come to think of it, I think I was uncomfortable because I didn't know what to do my with my date pip/seed, that I'd stuck to the side of my mouth. I almost swallowed it at one point when I downed my 4th cup of coffee (I tried to wave 'no' with my hands, but it was missed....)
After purchasing some crafts that the women had made (I bought a woven bracelet for my wrist) we were soon on our way to climb up and over the dunes, back to the village for some grub before catching the sunset.
I must say, Dune Bashing is AWESOME! If I ever lived in the Middle-East, driving around like a menace in the sand would be on high on my priority list. And there is quite a skill required to 'bash th' dunes' - especially when there is no backup to pull you out. I watched as Naseeb carefully mounted and disembarked each dune with skillful ease, swerving the wheel back-and-forth when he got into a rut, pulling the tyres out and throwing us forward through the sand.
So much fun.
After lunch we headed back in, this time along a stretch of 'desert-highway', out to a tourist camp, where we would get supplies, details on dune movement and mince about in the sand.
Quite an interesting little camp - thatched huts and a big open-air dining area.
We sat down, taking in the sight of the sun heading towards the horizon and messed about, building sand-castles (you can't spend time in the sand and not build a sand castle! Them's the rules!) and taking photos of the shapes and colours on offer to me.
I'm a bit pissed, as the UV filter I bought in Singapore, turns out, is absolute crap. Looking at the photos, there's a lot of lens flare apparent in most of the photos. This sux as most of the photos I took were at about 100-200mm, meaning the flared light has an increased ability to bounce and reflect down the lens.
So if I stop by Singapore on my way home, I'm going to go and throttle a certain Singaporean mans throat and ask for a refund. If I can find the receipt. Which I don't think I kept. Damnitt.
After sufficient time playing silly buggers in the sand, we were off on a convoy to see the sunset from a prime location, high above the camp in the towering sands behind us.
We had about 30 minutes till sunset (which is about 5.20pm here) and some more time to go Dune Bashing on the way up and over the slippery sand.
More hair-raising driving from Naseeb (the pro).... at one point Farsah almost threw himself out the window of the truck as he thought it was going to crash....
We stopped at various points, making sure all the trucks made it up and over. There was a real comradery amongst the drivers/operators - all of which were local Omanis. All looking out for each other and being incredibly jovial when stopping for touristy snaps.
We finally reached our designated perch, on a dune that must have been about 150m high. I sat down and admired the landscape as the sun (quite quickly) set in front of me.
It was a real sensation, a real feeling of awe watching the sun be enveloped by the horizon. The colours were amazing, whisping across the sky and bringing an eerie feeling to us all sitting at the top of the sand.
I had some time to reflect and think about some things. How my perspective has changed on a few things since setting off on my brief travels from Auckland, just over 4 weeks ago.
I must have drifted off for about 20 minutes as before I knew it, it was time to go.
We loaded into the truck and set off, right after inspecting the HUGE dune that we were going to drive down to get out of the desert... What... you mean we're going to drive down THAT?... But... Are you sure?... What do you mean 12 trucks have rolled down this?... Your track-record isn't too crash-hot buddy!... Yeah, I probably couldn't get the car out of first gear, let alone down that dune...
We bantered for a few minutes, before roaring to the edge and peering down the sheer drop. All but 1 other truck was at the bottom - I could see people getting out of the trucks and getting ready to take photos... flashes sparkled and glistened in the dusk as Naseeb suddenly roared his trusty Landcruiser into first as the first two wheels went over the edge.
'Any last requests?!' laughed Naseeb as all four wheels were now over the edge and we were carefully making our way on an almost 120' angle down the slope. I made sure my seatbelt was firmly fastened and my tray-table was in an upright position. Farsah had his legs on the dash and looked like he wanted to jump out the window again, while Adam was enjoying every minute of it, cackling and screaming like a Banshee.
Good times. We made it to the bottom and for the, possibly 4th time of the day, I literally fell out of the truck, laughing hysterically as I looked up in awe at the sheer size of the dune that we had the pleasure of driving down.
After making sure the last truck got down safely (he unfortunately blew his 4WD so had to navigate down backwards.....backwards! Don't see THAT everyday!) we roared off into the evening and headed back to Muscat.
Another awesome day, with some damn good company.
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| Wahibah Sands |
1 comment:
Did anyone else notice that the Camel has a handle growing out of its back? It wasnt just me was it?
I find this to be an abomination of nature....pshhh...wind up camel, whats next?
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