The Emirati wilderness, …or is this Oman?? From Google Maps, it looks more like the latter. This was where we camped for the night in Oct 2020, our first of many camping trips to come since the pandemic started.
I got it finally. Blasted COVID. From the son, and he from school. That’s the problem of relaxing your guard, heck! (Not me, but the others out there, not wearing masks, etc, etc, etc). But it ain’t that serious, just like a bad bout of flu for me. Today’s my first day of work after nearly 2 weeks of isolation! While I was out of action from the office, I’ve collected some photos of our first excursion into the UAE wilderness since COVID started.
This was in October 2020. After months of not getting out of our home city of Dubai, we finally decided that enough was enough, and headed out into the Emirati wilderness, for Jayden’s birthday. We found out that Sharjah had just opened a new road through the mountains connecting directly to its enclave of Khor Fakkan in the east coast, so…, what the heck! Let’s go check it out. We packed our tent and the barbecue stuff and headed out as I was pretty sure that there’d be some camping ground on the way. After all, it’s a new road! (But boy, was I wrong…) Here’s the story.
Wow, beautiful new road across the mountains – the Khor Fakkan Road! This is the ermmmm… 4th road across the mountains that I could count in my head, 1) Masafi Road, 2) Hatta Road, 3) Kalba Road and now this one. No complaints for roads, after all I’m in the road construction business, haha!
There’re a series of tunnels on this road… as it cuts across the Hajar Mountains
Hey, why don’t we explore this route through Madha and Nahwa? It looks really interesting in the map. Madha is an Omani territory (enclave) surrounded completely by the UAE. But what makes it even more interesting is that, in the middle of this enclave (or exclave), sits the village of Nahwa, which is UAE territory, completely surrounded by the Omani enclave of Madha. It’s an enclave within and enclave, or what you call, a double-enclave!! We had actually brought along our passports just to find out whether we could drive into this bizarre area. It turns out that there’re no border controls, just drive in and out as you like!
And so, we turned off the Khor Fakkan Road at Wadi Shees (which is an interesting mountain village which we would eventually visit a few trips later), and headed into Madha.
Wadi Shees Road – hey, there’s water in the gap below, cool!
Uh-oh, dirt track ahead! The sealed road’s gone… (This photo was actually taken the next day in the morning, which explains the sunny conditions. At the first time we reached here, it was almost dusk as we started late)
I think we’re in Omani territory now… Really scary road, is that soil gonna collapse? And it’s getting dark, didn’t really see any camping ground, shit!
Hey, we reached a cave! I recognized this as the Nahwa Cave (from pictures in Google), meaning we’ve gone past the Omani parts and entered the UAE territory of Nahwa! Could we camp here?? Nah, don’t think it’s a good idea. Let’s go on, before we lose all the daylight!!
And so, we drove on, past Nahwa, re-entered Omani Madha, went past that and came out onto Khor Fakkan on the east coast of the UAE. Nope, still no place suitable. Hey, how about checking out this place labelled ‘Al Sadah Picnic Point’ inside Madha, Oman? And back we went, into Madha Oman again. Shit, the park is closed! Now, what do we do in the night? I remember a somewhat suitable point further back past the cave, and so drove on. Nope, not here either. It's under a tree but there're lots of rocks, and some trash nearby. Let’s head back towards the cave. And finally, Anu (bless her) chose a spot in the dark and we set up camp! In Omani territory.
Anu’s picnic meal! Yummy! Complete with decorative lights! Happy 6th Birthday Jayden! Here we were, all alone, with no one near us for miles. This was a weekday, as I took the day off for Jayden’s birthday and it was not a particularly busy road. We set up camp on a ledge beside the dirt road. The whole night thru, we were worried about bandits, wild animals, security forces, etc… (Heck, we’re in Omani territory sez Google Maps, and we don’t know whether we’re allowed to camp, or whether this is a dangerous place or not, etc, etc, etc). From the night till day break, I think a total of 3 cars drove past the road below, but none stopped luckily.
Rise and shine. WE MADE IT! See our camp, all by ourselves, in the middle of nowhere. Bliss!
What a wonderful view! View from our camp site, Madha Enclave, Oman. The gap on the left, is the road, the one on the right is a friggin dried up wadi. Just imagine if there’s a rain, the road would be a river!
Here’s Nahwa Cave again! In the morning! See that small UAE flag painted on the wall! We’re back in UAE territory!
Those date palms mark the entrance of Nahwa Village, coming from Shees
Driving past Nahwa… We would head to Khor Fakkan from here but that is another story. In total, we crossed the UAE-Omani border 9 times in 2 days! Talk about border controls. Heck, it was more difficult for us to go into Abu Dhabi than this place!
Here’re some photos of a second drive thru of the Madha Area when we finally visited Wadi Shees Village in March 2021.
Coming from Wadi Shees, instead of taking the left turn towards Nahwa, we turned right into a green plantation area called Hajar Bani Humayd, which would eventually emerge into the main road to Madha
Here’s the Madha Mosque, Oman
Before I go off, if you have some time, please pray for Assam, North East India and Bangladesh. It’s been raining heavily and the rivers have overflown their banks, flooding, …worse, submerging entire villages, killing hundreds and making millions homeless… Water also entered our home in Silchar, but it is not as bad as some other homes… Silchar city is completely waterlogged and cut off, and so are many cities, towns and villages in the region. Pray for the water to recede and for people to be saved.
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