A new brilliant sun rose over the eastern coast of Oman. It found us camping at the beach by the north end of Tiwi village, right before the entrance of Wadi Shab. Upon exiting the tent, I witnessed a herd of goats in the business of clearing our dinner leftovers. They ran away in terror. We prepared a good breakfast, packed a few essentials in the backpack, tossed the rest of our stuff inside the car trunk, and headed for the canyon.
It was early morning but a pretty large number of people were already gathered at the entrance of Wadi Shab, right underneath the highway bridge. Foreign and local visitors alike were arriving incessantly by cars and coaches. The small snack bar beside the parking space was getting busy. Local villagers were accumulated by the bank of the estuary, ready to take the tourists across to the other bank (where the trail begins) on their small motorboats.
They charge 1 ryal both ways, which is not that much, but quite unreasonable given the very short distance. At lower water levels, which allegedly occur at other times of the year, one may also wade across. During this visit of ours, however, the water was high and the only way to obviate the boat and the ryal was to swim across. I also contemplated the possibility to climb over the cliff wall on the other side, but I didn’t decide on it as it almost certainly would have led to a tragic outcome.
So the boat dropped us off on the opposite bank and we started our hike. It was a beautiful one. This canyon was absolutely gorgeous. I wouldn’t hesitate to say it was the most fascinating place I got to see in Oman altogether.
Tall, perpendicular cliffs soared defyingly against the blue sky. Human toil and trenches have crammed the bottom of the canyon with lush groves of date palms, oranges, papayas and various sorts of trees you don’t usually see in Oman.
It took about 30 minutes to reach the Wadi Shab Pool. This was a little hidden spot of heavenly qualities. We settled there for a while; had a snack, jumped from the cliff to try the water out…
From there on you are supposed to wade and swim further through a number of pools to reach the wondrous water-filled cave, which is the highlight of Wadi Shab. But we decided on a different approach…
We headed over to the right bank and took an astoundingly beautiful narrow trail over the verge of some scaringly tall and vertical precipices deeper into the canyon. The views over it were spirit-elevating.
We went a good way past the cave and we were steadily gaining more height. We were constantly looking for a good spot to get back down, but there was no such that offered reasonable chances of doing so and staying alive.
Eventually, we made it to a point overlooking a tiny human settlement way deep inside the canyon. A steep, sort-of-trail led down to it. We made it down to the bottom and headed backwards, scrambling over the giant boulders that occupied the canyon bed.
Then we heard excited human whoops; we were approaching the cave from behind. We ended up on a rock right above the cave. Now we needed a plan. The question was how to get back to the first pool from there without needing to walk all the same long way back and not have all our things soaked in the non-waterproof backpack.
A good deal of circumspection led to this plan: We would wrap all the water-sensitive stuff within whatever plastic bags we had; put the rain cover on the backpack; make an impromptu raft with whatever little branches were to be found around; Max would take the raft and the backpack and get over a narrow circumeventing passage to a relatively low rock platform beside the entrance of the cave; I would jump straight into the cave from above it and swim out to meet Max by the entrance; he would pass me the raft with the backpack on the water; he would also jump in and we’d nicely and easily push the floating backpack across the pools back onto dry land. We proceeded with the execution…
With a loud splash, I fell into the cave, startling the swimmers in it who weren’t aware of my presence above them. I took my time to enjoy the freshness of the place and dove out of the cave underneath the narrow slit that constitutes its entrance. There I met Max waiting on the platform up the rock. Slowly and methodically we lowered the raft and the backpack onto the pool surface…
Well, the whole raft plan proved a plain disaster. We proceeded with plan B: Max jumped into the water as well. We lifted the backpack with one arm each, while with the other one we endeavored gallantly to keep the bag and our heads out of the water and swim out. A good length of toilsome time later we were safely ashore. The backpack had absorbed all the water it had the capacity to, but at least it was there and not at the bottom of the pool; plus all the electronics had remained dry within the plastic bags. Relative success.
More folks than before were now accumulated beside the main pool. We also remained for a bit to take a last glimpse of this little paradise and started hiking the way back. The canyon now looked even more spectacular than before under the late-afternoon oblique light. The day was to dusk soon. We rode the boat, got back into the car, and headed towards Sur in search of a home for tonight.
Accommodation and Activities in Oman
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