Around Sur
Today our driver took us around for a brief tour around Sur before leaving for sights further afield. Sur is famous for handmade dhows so it seemed appropriate we started at a dhow-building yard.
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- Dhows are still made by hand here …
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- … with wood from Malaysia and India, with local Omani expertise and Indian workers.
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- At the camel farm … beatiful lashes.
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- Have you seen a real camel’s toes?
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- A castle along the way to Tiwi.
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- By the castle.
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- This is Qalhat, the oldest city in Oman. Doesn’t look it.
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- I’ve seen Tiwi a million times on the moving map while flying across the region. Now I know what it looks like.
Heavenly Wadi Shab
The highlights were meant to be Wadi Tiwi and Wadi Shab, two nearby dry river beds.
Wadi Tiwi wasn’t much use … it is inhabited and had nice banana, mango and chiku trees on the side. With road works in progress, it was dusty and not worth the visit at all.
On the other hand, Wadi Shab was utterly delightful. We walked from the car through the rocky dry riverbed, then climbed boulders to paths hewn in to the rock, looked into clear aqua pools … wondering why our guide still didn’t want us to start taking our much needed cool dip.
After more walking, we were then told to leave our cameras, day-clothes, etc on the rocks and be prepared to swim. We swam through beautiful aqua rock pool, waded, walked and swam some more. Finally, he showed us a hidden spot where we could swim underwater briefly to get into a cave with some cascading water. Some wadi-boys were swimming inside the cave … they also scaled up the side to jump into the deep cool water.
It became clear why the guide didn’t want us to take cool dips earlier because the later sites were much better in comparison. Not many people make it all the way to the cave. It’s certainly worth having a guide/driver to make sure you get here without incident or having to look too hard. As it is, we took about an hour walking each way.
This is certainly something I’ll remember for a long long time! Unfortunately because of the swimming (including underwater), ordinary cameras weren’t suited for capturing memories. I’d strongly recommend buying a disposable underwater camera if you don’t have a diving case for your camera.
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- Walking into Wadi Shab.
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- Can we swim here? No, I will show you a better place … says Shibu the guide.
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- Can we swim here? No, I will show you a better place … says Shibu the guide.
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- Can we swim here? No, I will show you a better place … says Shibu the guide.
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- We were getting very hot and sweaty … dying for a swim.
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- Finally we get our cool dip. From here we swim, wade and swim underwater to get into a hidden cave with cascading water. Unfortunately no cameras beyond this point.
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- This leads to the hidden cave … all the way at the end.
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- Cool clear waters of the Wadi.
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- This is where we hid all our gear to swim to the hidden cave.
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- Jack (Taiwan), David (Hungary), Me & Shibu (our guide). I’m old enough to be the father of those two students! But I’m much cooler than their Dads, they say!
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- Leaving Wadi Shab.
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- Cliffs by the seaon the way home.
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- The local graves are simple and not marked with names.
New idea for another adventure?
I asked the Taiwanese-Hungarian pair about their studies in Kuwait. As it turns out, the Kuwait University offers one year scholarships (tuition, boarding, food, airfare) internationally to people to do one year Arabic courses.
What a wonderful idea!! Gotta find out about the pre-requisites. My 3 months of Arabic studies may not be sufficient 🙁