weaving in nakhr

Dar's a lazy, sortah hazy/ Feelin’ grips me, thoo an’ thoo;/ An’ I feels lak doin’ less dan enythin’;/ Dough de saw is sharp an’ greasy,/ Dough de task et han’ is easy,/ An’ de day am fair an’ breezy,/ Dar’s a thief dat steals embition in de win’.
Sprin’ Fevah, Ray G. Dandridge

We are 2,000m high on the second steepest dirt track in Oman, driving through cloud and rain, with visibility down to the next 15m. Below and behind us is Wadi Bani Auf, and it was all blazing heat and white light as we had driven through it an hour ago. But now, in mid-August, the northern slopes of the mountain, from the villages at the bottom to the isolated settlements on the top, were drenched in the kind of rain usually associated with Dhofar, 1,000km south.

We made our way up, one slushy turn after the other, the road little more than slippery mud and loose stone. Over the next hour, as we climbed to the peak at Sharaf al Alamayn, the clouds moved in even thicker. And all that rain over one side of the mountain trickled down a million ridges of rock, rushed through a handful of gorges and, in a grand sweeping finale, emptied tonnes of water into one wadi – Bani Auf.

There is one lesson Wadi Bani Auf teaches visitors a few times a year, and it is this: when you feel the first splatter of rain on your cheek, run. Snake Gorge, a knife edged sub-canyon that tourists flock to, has already claimed many, for once you start jumping down its pools there is no way out but forward, and the steep sides offer no escape from a torrent of rain water. By three in the afternoon it had started to turn dark over the mountains, and by the time we returned to the bottom, Auf was underwater, the gravel road gone, and it would take hours of driving bumper-deep through connecting wadis to get us out, through Wadi Gaffar and eventually Wadi Sahtan to Rustaq. It is not something you want to do.

We were up in the mountain settlement of Haat, tucked away in a dead-end dirt track 1,100m high when we heard the first clap of thunder. The wind kicked up and the flies moved in, but we hadn’t made the connection. Instead, we ate dates and were told the story of this village and the few hundred baskets it makes.

< Previous   Next >



© 2001–2008 p i n a k i