A dry dam… along the E102 Road, in Ras Al-Khaimah territory (I think), just before the turnoff to Hatta Road. Let’s see whether I can find a name for this in Google Maps… There it is! Wadi Al Munay Breaker. Breaker? Shouldn’t it be ‘Dam’ instead? Who named that?
Whoa! Not again? Last week, there was another rain scare in Dubai. Yup, the UAE announced another round of distant learning for schools on last Thursday and Friday, and our office (including our dear head office this time) asked us to work from home last Thursday. Sure enough, rain came on Thursday, and we had half a day of rain. It wasn’t bad. There were no massive floods like in April. There were a few localized puddles at known low locations (and it added a little bit of water to the previously flooded locations which still haven’t been completely cleared).
No big deal. But, …what’s happening?? Is this due to global warming?? We’re supposed to be a god-forsaken desert, aren’t we? We’ve had more rain in the last few months than I’ve ever experienced in my 10+ years in this desert of a place. At the apartment that we’re staying in now, I remember we’ve had no rain for something like 1.5 - 2 years. And now there’s rain every few weeks?!?
Are we turning into a tropical friggin country? Have the prayers of the UAE people finally been answered? (UAE airlines artificially ‘green’ the UAE region in their in-flight maps that show the planes’ flight paths when they fly over the UAE. You’ll see the normal brown-yellow of Iran, and then, lo and behold, the UAE’s all green and nice like it’s a friggin tropical country!) Now, there’re mosquitoes all over the friggin place, and they’re growing fatter by the day. Where do these critters suddenly come from? I thought they didn’t exist in the UAE (except for our house, because Anu’s a giver of life. Her garden’s full of life: trees, plants, birds – I can’t count how many generations of doves and sunbirds that our garden has produced, ants, butterflies, slugs, etc, and of course, pesky mosquitoes).
People here no longer post photos of having tea and picnic in the rain. Previously, when there’s rain, it’s like a water fair! Frolicking and playing in the rain like babies who’ve never seen water before. Now it’s pictures of cars inside water, homes damaged by water, but there’re still some funny ones of people with too much time on their sleeves paddling their kayaks in the housing area streets… And, there’re no more talks of cloud-seeding. “Huh? What? What’s that??”
Anyway, I’m not much of a sucker for the rain. I’ve had enough rain, and mosquitoes, in Malaysia and India to be too big a fan. I especially don’t like the mud and muck that the water leaves behind. But I do like the occasional downpour that cools things down and bring life to the wadis. And the smell of an impending storm and the sound of thunder in the distance. That’s always cool to me.
It’s been a week since the last rain, and it feels like we’re finally getting back to being a desert. Things are steadily heating up. It’s mid-May after all. In the previous years, it would’ve been a friggin oven by now. This year, the heat’s a little slower, thanks to the rain. It’s still OK to walk out in the gardens… But it’s coming, the dry ol’ days. “Die, mosquitoes, die!”
Here’re some photos of when things were ‘nice’ and dry, when we had to go hunting for water in the dams and wadis of the UAE, just to have some fun. A last picnic post before we head into heat wave territory… It’ll have to be at least October, or more like November, before we could think of camping again, sigh.
Another photo of the Wadi Al Munay ‘Breaker’ / Dam – dry as a bone, Nov 2022
Another dam, Siji Dam, Fujairah, Jan 2022
Oh, there’s the water!! There’s actually more water further upstream, and at the old dam site, but it somehow wasn’t very accessible
Fooling around at Wadi Siji Dam
Don’t forget our picnic! Wadi Siji, Jan 2022
Wadi Shawka Dam! Feb 2021
Wadi Shawka Dam Park, Ras Al-Khaimah. Feb 2021 was our first visit to Wadi Shawka. Little did we know then, that as time comes, Wadi Shawka would become our favourite camping site in the UAE. No, not the dam, but the wadi itself
Hey, where do those stairs go? Wadi Shawka Dam
What do you think these are for? A stand for some performance?
Beyond the dam! Hey, it’s quite interesting
Huh? What’s this? People picnicking? How did the cars come in? If they can come, so can we. We’ll find a way, hehe
Wadi Shawka, Ras Al-Khaimah, Feb 2021, the first of our visit – Just you watch, we’ll be back!
There you go. Visits to some of the ‘lesser-known’ dams in the UAE. The more well-known dams are the Hatta Dam and Rafisah Dam, which are usually crowded, not really our cup o’ tea.
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