off road | Chaos roaming the world

The Easter holidays of Lina and Michael’s international school were coming to an end. Today was the last day for any shenanigans as they needed the last day to prepare. Yes, school starts on Sunday. Which makes Friday and Saturday the weekend days. Now that I know, it seems very logical but really, I haven’t thought about it so it took me by surprise.

The road to the grave site ended quite abruptly

Another lovely long breakfast was had and then we decided to have a pot luck of sight-seeing. School colleagues had given Lina and Michael their GPS with many, many points of interest in the area on it. Not knowing what a lot of them were, we decided to check them out anyway.

The first one led us to old graves which lay very close to the road. A sign gave us at least the information of “old graves” and the information that violators will be persecuted. Apart from that, we were left to make sense of the scene ourselves. Slightly unsure, we looked out for stone heaps which we thought might mark the graves and pottery shards. Michael had been at an archaeological site with his class. Once you know what to look for, he said, you’ll find shards everywhere. So we kept an eye out for them, looked at them and then carefully placed them back. We pretty much did the same with interesting rocks we found.

Two very different qualities apparently from very different time periods.

From here, we went off road as the next point of interest was only 8km away. Maybe these tracks would lead there? Also Michael was keen to drive more off roads tracks. The scenery, again, was beautiful. When the tracks turned into a washed out riverbed, we stopped and hiked up to the ridge of the hill to have better views. Up there, many ruins of walls and houses could be seen. Also, the whole area was littered with pottery shards so we were especially careful. Here, we saw shards with patterns and even some with glaze or colour. I’m not an archaeologist by trade so my knowledge is not better than anyone else’s but as an art historian, this was amazing. Even just to look at without knowing much about it. Once back at home, Michael compared our photos with an archaeological guide book and the ones we saw were about 2000 years old.

The wadi has no flowing water, but the green shows where the water is hiding

Oman seems to be full of ancient relics. So many in fact, that some just won’t be worked on for decades to come. Not, if there isn’t an amazing new fund that sparks more interest in that particular site. However, the government is interested in preserving the past so that archaeologists check the areas that have been green-lit for building.

After this hike, we tried another point but couldn’t really find the off road tracks that would lead there. The one after that turned out to be an industrial mine (at least we think that’s what it meant as we ended up in one) so we stopped for the day. Instead, we had a lovely evening coffee at the mall.

Dinner was a homey affair. Lina and Michael shared their tradition of comfy burgers with us. To accommodate Nina, a vegetarian burger patty recipe was tried out. It was delicious and just the right finisher for an all around great day out.

: The road to the grave site ended quite abruptly

: We expect this was one of the graves

: The first pieces we found.

: These deep red stones were strews very sporadically around the area

: It is always a bit surprising to find something alive around here

: These are really shaggy goats …

: Our on-board biology teacher informed us that this is an example for biological weathering

: the rocks around are fascinating as well

: Sneaky lizzard

: The wadi has no flowing water, but the green shows where the water is hiding

: Dugout and wall

: Glazed piece pf pottery

: Two very different qualities apparently from very different time periods.

: Very fine linework in this shard

: We even found a couple glazed ones

: Everyone is hunting for treasure

: They were all just lying there on the ground like this

: We don’t know for sure what these ruins were for …

: … but there were a lot of them around.

Just keep following. And don’t bump your head

We had been thinking of going camping all together, but the recent heat made that a less appealing idea. Thus, we were keen to join when colleagues of Michael and Lina’s asked us to join on a picnic trip to a wadi nearby.

Wadis are valleys and rivers carved mostly by rain water. Some of them have running water at all times, some just after rainfalls. The one we went to today has water all year round enough for a swim in some places.

Mats are useful all around the world. Might need to buy cheap ones again

Given that we want to have as much time as possible for my arm to heal and we did not know the road, we decided to stick this one out in our friends’ 4×4. It turned out to probably have been the wiser choice nonetheless, since the road up the wadi had deteriorated quite a lot since our guides had last been there. Michael clearly had fun with it, which may not be true for everyone in our little tin can. Either way, Gandalf the White (their car) did a splendid job with the gravel track.

The picnic spot was superb and would be just as good for camping. Nice, even ground raised off high enough off the wadi floor and river to drastically reduce the risk of being caught in a flash flood (not that there was rain today, but people die every year in these). The view was great, the water was pleasant and there were perfect swimming holes nearby, shielded from the road.

Least appropriate swim wear. Exposed shoulders and legs are a no no…for men and women

So we enjoyed ourselves – first with a great picnic of delightful turkish food and later with a refreshing swim in the wadi. It was a bit awkward since we have the least appropriate swimwear for a Muslim country, but the good old Rarotongan sarong came in to the rescue. The water was beautifully cool and clear.

After a couple of hours we quickly packed everything up. The sun had come out in the meantime and the views all around were just stunning. Eager to have a bit more fun with the car, Michael convinced Lina and the rest of us to go and explore a bit further down the track and up the wadi. We drove up a hill, down the other side, crossing the river twice for about 800m when the little convoy was stopped again.

The recent rains seemed to have had a bigger impact than just making the road a bit worse. Here, the entire road has been washed away since our guides had last been here, down to the bare and jagged rock underneath. Even the decent 4×4 were not ready to cross the 60cm steps of rock that now lay were the road has been. It was nice enough, we walked around a bit more and enjoyed the landscape on foot before finally turning around and heading home in the golden afternoon light.

After all this excitement, we were all pretty hungry again. Instead of cooking home-made burgers for two hours, we went for lazy pasta which was soon done.