Travel Blog 42: Feast Your Eye With The Enthralling View Of Wadi Shab, Oman
The Sultanate of Oman is not your typical desert country where all you can see is the endless spread of sand. This country was blessed with spectacular scenic views where these natural beauties never seem to be out of your sight. Whether it's the steep and prominence rocky mountains, the mountain oasis or the pristine beaches, Oman definitely has it all!
Little do you know, besides the amazing landscapes that Oman possessed, Oman is well-known for their 'Wadis'. In English, 'Wadi' is known to be riverbed valleys where it usually appears in between the deep gorge. During the rainy season, these valleys are often filled with rainwater that runs down from the cliff, turning those dry lands into a river. Depending on the nature of the cliffs, some of the stagnant rainwater evaporates into the thin air after a while, while some remains. However, at Wadi Shab, the nature of the land that is filled with rocks and stone is able to preserve the water and the rainwater always remain on the land. Over the time, these accumulated water and slowly turn into different natural emerald-blue pools that are perfect for swimming. This discovery slowly spread across the world, attracting hikers and nature lovers to travel all the way here.
Oman has never been a top-listed Arabic country to visit when it's being compared to Dubai or Saudi Arabia. However, in recent years, Oman has finally opened up their country for tourism, giving us a chance to witness and experience the wonders of this beautiful country. This country is perfect for you to ditch your busy lifestyle and channel your focus into these natural beauties. For those who visited Oman, it is not a surprise to know that Wadi hopping is always on their top-list.
So, where is "Wadi Shab"?
Wadi Shab is located in the Eastern Region of Oman, not too far away from the nearest Tiwi Village. Driving from Muscat is rather easy by using the speedway which is around an hour and a half drive away. This wadi is located deep in a village under an enormous bridge. To be able to arrive at the destination, it is recommended to use a good navigation system or to ask for a driver to bring you there.
Since we camped not too far away from this wadi, we departed later after the sunrise to the Wadi with our rental car. To arrive at this place, we had to drive through a village via the ultra-steep, curvy and narrow road where all the boats are. In order to start hiking, we are required to take a short boat ride across the river operated by the locals for 1 OMR/person.
Although it's not a long ride, but it is definitely entertaining and really build up my anticipation for my hiking adventures. From what I know, the distance from the starting point to the emerald pool is around 3km long. It normally takes around an hour to the end-point but, it also depends on your speed and the pathways that you choose. We hiked more than an hour as made multiple stops for photographs, mesmerizing the nature and going off-path explore the area.
The initial hike was easy as the path is clearly marked. As we proceed on our journey, the path slowly disappeared. At times, we had to dodge and tip-toe at a certain part to make a safe move. Although it's not an easy task to hike and to take photos at the same time, but we really couldn't keep our eyes off at the beautiful canyon. The brownish colored rocks with the greenish river totally captured my attention and I am getting excited to have my feet dip into the crystal clear water.
I was a surprise that we even found a network of irrigation system built along the cliff. Although we weren't sure where does the system leads to or what are the reasons why it's built. But, we are pretty sure that it's man-made and there's definitely people living somewhere around the Wadi.
As we were approaching the river, we can already see a mini-waterfall flowing vigorously over the still water. At this stage, we had to climb over the rocks and make our way up the hill. Sometimes, I need to grab onto other stones and with a little push from the back to make it to the other part of the river in order to continue on our journey.
After quite sometimes of a hike, we finally arrived at the river where we can finally take dip our feet into the cooling clean water. Honestly, I couldn't think of anything better than a cooling refreshing drip after a sweaty hike.
The only regret we had was not being able to make it to the cave as we were running late for our next location. But we definitely had a blast dipping our feet into the water, take a break to enjoy the beautiful landscape. To be surrounded by serenity, peace and tranquil environment. All I can say is we really enjoyed our hiking journey at Wadi Shab.
Just a tip, wear a proper hiking shoe as the path could be pretty slippery at some parts and also bring sufficient water to drink. It could get pretty hot during the midday.
Leave a comment down below:
Check out some of my recent posts at the links below:
Do share me some love if you like the article, follow me for more travel and food posts :D
Resteem & Upvote, this could encourage & support me to continue making good articles for you
Fellow steemit friends, do check out Steemit Bloggers which is a community to help Steemians to build a better empire on Steemit!
Animated Banner Created By @zord189
!steemitworldmap 22.80966 lat 59.18171 long Feast Your Eye With The Enthralling View Of Wadi Shab, Oman d3scr
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://explorernations.vornix.blog/2018/07/13/travel-blog-42-feast-your-eye-with-the-enthralling-view-of-wadi-shab-oman/
Congratulations! Your high quality travel content caught our attention and earned you a reward, in form of an upvote and resteem. Your work really stands out. Your article now has a chance to get curated and featured under the appropriate daily topic of our Travelfeed blog. Thank you for using #travelfeed
Learn more about our travel project on Steemit by clicking on the banner above and join our community on Discord
What beautiful terrain to enjoy on foot @explorenations places like this are hidden gems, that water is crystal clear.
Thanks for the lovely descriptive writing on your hike and superb photography.
Visiting from #steemitbloggers
Thanks Joan! Always glad to see you here :)
Hiya, just swinging by to let you know you're being featured in our daily Travel Digest. Please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider upvoting the Travel Digest if you like what we're doing.
Congratulations, Your Post Has Been Added To The Steemit Worldmap!
Author link: http://steemitworldmap.com?author=explorernations
Post link: http://steemitworldmap.com?post=travelblog42feastyoureyewiththeenthrallingviewofwadishaboman-dbofjvh49d
Want to have your post on the map too?
Really surprised by the view, never thought there would be spring water in there.
I didn’t know there’s such thing as well until I visited the place and came to know more about the history and the natural formations of these beautiful landscape.
Yeah, thanks for sharing this, now we know!
Hey there! This ain't any bot or whatever, I'm just posting this to some people I follow :D
There's a crazy airdrop which takes 5 minutes to complete. You with your reputation can get 40$. Half of those are immediately ready to be withdrawn, the other half you'll get in one year. But that first half, you can have it in literally 10 minutes, ready to be converted to for example STEEM or Bitcoin :D It's stupid and crazy but it works haha.
I've written a post about it and if you follow the steps and click the link, I'll also get some extra coins. WIN, WIN
Here my post with steps:
https://steemit.com/airdrop/@matkodurko/10-minutes-up-to-160usd-airdrop-guide-with-screenshots-sialeny-airdrop-za-10-minut
You can see that in the comment section are like 7 poeple who've already done this. No scam, no clickbait, I'm a polite Steemian haha :) And human, not a bot...
So if you want, check it out and do those 9 steps to get your (and mine) free money. There are several people who've already done this and converted it to SBD. (check for example user for91days and his new deposited 11 SBDs)
Cheers! :D
Martin
Interesting post and amazing photos!
The water looks so clear and beautiful and the canyons make it all the more amazing. It is somewhere I would never travel to myself, but at least we have you to thank for letting people like me be able to explore and experience these places.
Couldn’t agree enough! It’s really ultra beautiful and I am actually quite surprised that not many people is traveling to Oman for their beautiful landscape. I hope I am able to channel these beauties to the world :) thanks for dropping by! You’re words is really motivating :)
You’ve been upvoted by TeamMalaysia Community :-
To support the growth of TeamMalaysia Follow our upvotes by using steemauto.com and follow trail of @myach
Vote TeamMalaysia witness bitrocker2020 using this link vote for witness
Dear @explorenations,
Your story attracted our attention and we would like to introduce our tag #archisteem that could provide you with some extra support. For your information, we are currently running the project – 1001 Places to Remember. Your content is a fit for the project and could be qualified for the 10 SBD reward biweekly contest.
Do drop by and take a look :) Hope to see you around soon.
Stay tuned and Steem on!
@archisteem and team