A 1001 wadis of heartbreak by Pinaki | because the best stories are our own

1,001 Wadis of Heartbreak

It should be clear that modernist culture is Western in its orientation, capitalist in its determining economic tendency, bourgeois in its class character, white in its racial complexion, and masculine in its dominant gender
Christopher Witcombe

April 2006

Our yells echo endlessly down the wadi, bouncing over rock, rustling through thorn-spiked branches. But the remnants of habitation far below us did not stir, and all that we were left with were mouths left dry after two days of hiking. That dull aftertaste of zigzagging along cliffs too long and too far left us hanging between sea and mountain, and eventually hope and despair. Stuck between sea to our left and mountains to our right, we moved on, stubbing our toes and clinging on to rock. It was a journey of endless wadis, cutting through the mountainous slopes we were on. Each one had to be crossed, either by walking up and down its slopes, or by climbing high enough them to cross above their folds.

We were somewhere along an unknown coastline, not because we didn’t know our destination, but because we hadn’t a clue what we’d find in between. The plan was simple: follow the coast from Sifah until Quriyat. We had left Sifah the previous day, after being dropped off from Muscat, barely an hour away. Half an hour away from Yitti, Sifah is the end of the road, before mountains and sea take over. Usually, one would take the road from Muscat to Quriyat, which skirts around the beginnings of the Eastern Hajar. Now, we were attempting a geographical short cut that would take two days of walking instead of an hour by car.

But the truth was that as we stood, poised above yet another wadi, we had no idea of exactly how far we had come, or how much further we had to walk. On the map, or on a GPS, the coast is a straight line – a very long walk, of perhaps 30km. But the truth is that after a while from Sifah, the geography turns haywire. The coast might be relatively straight, but the topography will take you on a wild roller coaster ride you will be desperate to get out of. There is no escape: each wadi has to be crossed, and freeing yourself from the tyranny of climbing up and down each one will send you along a jagged path not unlike a dogs mouth crammed with teeth. It is occasionally as unnerving too. But the biggest fear isn’t clinging on to the rock face, for you will always find enough footholds to be safe. The real fear is the possibility of the next cliff being impassable, and you being too tired to walk all the way back, with your water over.

And so we walked in perpetual suspense, the next wadi, and its inevitable walls of cliffs, always a mystery. One always hopes to cross the last one, but you will just be greeted by yet another, longer or shorter. This is how we crept along the first day. The beginning of the hike the previous morning was fine, though the backpacks were at their heaviest. We had a driver take us from Muscat early in the morning, drive over blacktop to Sifa and then follow the hard dirt track as far east down the coast we could go. That track will end in a landscape of rubble, with the beginnings of mountains up ahead.

The start is relatively level and uneventful. We soon stumbled upon a suggestion of a trail, losing it often, sometimes imagining it where there was none. The mountains soon closed in, and we were on a rough strip between them and the sea – a couple of shades of turquoise as lush as the rock was harsh. We were five minutes walk inland, crossing wadis just a few feet deep. Apart from a lone, delicately patterned snake huddled under a rock, there was no movement around.

Our first contact with water was an hour later, at a desolate little strip of grey pebbles that disappeared beneath clear waters. We marked this as Pebble Beach on the GPS, and used it as an excuse to take off our backpacks laden with 12 litres of water, cans of food, sleeping bags and some other essentials. We were completely soaked, and were it not for the unknown amount of walking in front we would have gladly thrown ourselves into the sea. Pebble Beach is a good idea if you’d like a nice little walk from Sifah, and it offers unrivalled privacy from the tourist-laden sands closer to town.

Instead, we pressed on, parallel to the sea, on the flat ground of low lying cliffs overlooking the water. An hour and a half later we got our first unexpected taste of changing topography: instead of a flat walk above the water, we had to start climbing the slopes to our right to get ahead. This is a good lesson: it is very important that you free yourself from the instinctive response to an unknown coastline. You will automatically want to be nearest to the sea, but that would mean climbing every wall at the beginning and end of every wadi, which would be pointless, if not impossible. Instead, walk slightly higher, and deeper into the mountains. There, you will be able to cross the wadis at their narrowest, before they open up towards the sea. So now all you will be doing is walk from one beginning of a wadi wall to another, without actually climbing up and down it.

You will not be alone. Although faint and sometimes non-existent, the truth was that through all the uncertainty we had a path to follow most of the way. It was a path of little spaces, between loose stones, sometimes just the dry scrape of donkey and goat dung. And as it turned out, it was almost continuous right from Sifah till Quriyat. Look out for it. We stopped for lunch in a large wadi a little more than two hours from Pebble Beach. This was the first major wadi we had come across, and we stumbled down its wall, into a little thicket of thorny shrubs. We spent the hottest part of the day here, a luxurious hour and a half eating or lying comatose in the shade. It was only after we made our way up the other wall of the wadi that we noticed a lone hut, and a couple of goatherds and their flock. What were they doing here, in this landscape of nothingness? Perhaps the answer lay deeper up the wadi, but we were in no position to make a detour and find out.

We were too close to the ground to notice, but the landscape was already changing slightly, to our detriment. It was getting less flat, and breaking up a little. We changed subtly, but the real wake up call was the next big wadi we came across two hours after lunch. It was good that we had just about enough time to digest our food, for the topography and trip changed immediately after. This marked the beginning of the toughest stretch, a horrendous zigzagging trail of effort and time that stretched through the next morning. We must have crossed at least six wadis after this large canyon, the only consolation being a sun more mellow, and backpacks lighter with less food and water.

There is a slow dread that comes creeping in at this stage. It is the fear that the terrain might not only repeat itself but get worse, which would make it impossible to go on. This is the kind of concern that makes you plod on irrespective of all around you, sacrificing beaches, sea, views and the possibility of enjoying them. It got dark early, because the sun set high behind the wall of rock. We made a decision to spend the night down by the sea, not up on the mountain, for we were desperate for water and the relative flatness of a beach. And so, after three hours of battling wadis, we finally made our way down to a little beach of pebbles, nestled in a narrow gorge that quickly turned ominous in the dark. Its upper reaches must have been beautiful in the light: a wild abandoned growth of fresh grass, flowers and shrubs, tumbling down the wadi over rock turned smooth by thousands of years of flowing water. It was dry now, thankfully, so we stumbled half blind through the twilight, setting up camp on the beach of pebbles.

The water seemed freezing when compared to skin hot from a whole day of exertion, but its sting was fantastically refreshing. We sank down on mats on the most level part of the beach, a few feet above the water. Surrounded by flotsam and the leftover slippers, bottles and nets of fishermen, we ate dinner by torchlight, a feast in the dark. Canned tuna with chilli, garlic bread, baked beans and canned corn disappeared without a trace, followed by a desert of dates and washed down with water. Our toes were sore to the point of insensivity, squished against rock, stubbed into submission. But it was the shoulders and back that hurt most, for we were carrying a massive amount of weight. Most of it was the water, 12 litres of it, three cans of tuna, two cans of corn, one can of chopped tomatoes and olives, one can of baked beans, one kilo of bread, half a kilo of dates and almonds. This moveable feast for two was in addition to the sleeping mats, sleeping bags, clothes, torches, batteries, GPS instrument and camera equipment, of course. The water is the real killer, for each litre is roughly equal to a kilogram of weight. The saving grace is that the more you consume the lighter you get, so we shed kilos with every break and every meal. After spending a fantastic ten hours asleep – from eight in the evening till six the next morning – we started early, lighter and refreshed.

The first fifteen minutes were spent climbing straight up from the beach, and from that point on we walked a hundred or so feet above the water. With a blemishless sky above and the deep exhaling of a whale somewhere below, we made our way forward. The landscape did seem to change slightly, but just as we got our hopes up we were forced around slopes of a very steep cliff. It is not something you would like to do given another option, but there was none. You will, however, be rewarded by flatter highlands up ahead. You will see an island up ahead, to the left of these flat cliffs, which must be Ras Abu Daud. There seemed nice beaches here, but the sand and turquoise waters were too far a detour, and we made do with rock and dirt instead.

We crossed two massive wadis after that. Instead of a temperamental frantic rising and falling, it seemed to heave and sigh. We had to walk down and across these canyons, but there were plenty of natural steps, and these seemed passé compared to the previous evening. We would always find remnants of human habitation at the bottom, the abandoned scraps of houses and rusty water tanks. Who had lived here in the middle of nowhere, why, and what had made them finally leave? There were no clues in the scraps of wood, old tin cans and naked nails sticking out of posts. The only thing the wadi offered us was a bit of level ground, which meant we needn’t stub our toes, and a few trees under which we’d rest a few minutes.

We had probably walked 13 hours by then, and had no idea how much further we had to go. All we could do was yell into the wind, hoping for an answer, directions, anything at all. It looked more promising than anything we’d seen over the past couple of days: the houses were more intact, there seemed to be goats and, best of all, a lone dishdasha stood fluttering in the wind. And this is how we found ourselves above what we would later know as the last wadi before Quriyat. After that all you have to do is get on the beach, walk above your last wall of rock, and saunter into the town.

GPS waypoints:

Start from end of dirt track at Sifah
N 23º22.258', E 058º49.729', Elevation: 30m

Low cliff above beach of pebbles, one hour later
N 23º21.627', E 058º51.118', Elevation: 14m

Path starts to climb right
N 23º20.928', E 058º51.939', Elevation: 29m

Lunch in the large wadi. Human habitation
N 23º20.683', E 058º52.473', Elevation: 12m

Large canyon. Beginning of series of wadis
N 23º20.297', E 058º52.814', Elevation: 12m

Small beach at the end of narrow gorge. Sleep here
N 23º19.740', E058º53.430', Elevation: 11m

End of repetitive wadi section. Flatter from here on. Island on your left
N 23º19.364', E 058º53.729', Elevation: 122m

Big wadi. Abandoned huts
N 23º19.065', E 058º53.955', Elevation: 43m

Big wadi, abandoned huts. Perhaps possible to follow beach from here
N 23º18.140', E 058º54.297', Elevation: 30m

Inhabited wadi. Walk till beach and follow till Quriyat
N 23º17.690', E 058º54.658', Elevation: 13m