The four-hour drive towards the Eastern Region of Oman to the Sharqiyah Sands was worth the trouble every kilometre of the way. Once you go past Al Qabil town, little villages dot the route, but the main fascination are the colourful tents of the Bedouins that flap playfully in the wind.
I preferred not to lodge in a two-star hotel but in a desert camp so I could be close to the grandeur of the sands. I had trainers on my feet, shorts, sleeveless shirt, baseball cap, sunglasses, and a drink in my hand. That was all I needed to explore around in that late afternoon.
First, I had to make up my mind whether to walk to the nearest sand dune, venture deep in the desert or take a stroll to the Bedouins camp. I decided to go for the dunes because it happened to be the largest within a 300 metre radius.
What was really fascinating about this particular dune was that it was not only about 100 metres long, but it was in the shape of a pyramid. When I reached it, I stopped on its base and admired its colours, the way you would admire a house of your dreams knowing that you can never afford to own it. The sands on its sides were intricately twisting from top to bottom in different shades of gold. It was made of the fluffiest sand you could ever find anywhere else.
It was not a steep climb but I was breathless by the time I reached the top. I could not help but take a selfie with my mobile phone so I could send the picture in my snap chat to declare to my friends that I conquered a dune in the middle of the legendary Sharqiyah Sands.
The view from the top was sublime. I could see more dunes scattered around and I was wondering why each one was gleaming under the bright sun as if they were made of metal but not sands.
Out of curiosity than anything else, I bent over and took a scoop of sand and examined what was in my hand. I parted the granules with my index finger and realised that they were crystallised with deposits of different metals that naturally occurred over millions of years of the existence of the desert. I let the hot sand roll down from my palm to cause a careless small heap next to my feet.
It was then I heard a soft sound somewhere behind me. It was a whimper of an animal and when I turned around, I saw a red fox making a fuss over its litter of kittens, just fifty metres away from me. I was not sure whether the fox was aware of my presence but she was busy licking the furs of its babies while they were trying to snuggle closer to their mother. Seconds later, the flapping of the wings forced me to look in the sky.
A white and grey eagle was circling above me and I was pretty sure I was not the prey he was looking for.
The mother fox saw the eagle, too. She squirmed, hissed and stared at the circling bird. She then quickly picked each of her three kittens by her teeth and dropped them one by one in a hole under a rock.
With the danger out of the fox’s way, I cast my eyes a distance away to the kaleidoscope of colours made up by clusters of tents — homes of the Bedouins. I also watched camels feeding on thorny trees, women in black walking around doing their chores, boys in white dishdasha playing and girls in bright red and pink dresses running around.
I scanned my eyes to the south and there was nothing but the horizon. To the north was the tourist camp I was going to spend a night and the water vapour rising and falling in the east, telling me there was a water spring somewhere there.
It made sense because the Bedouins would not choose to camp anyway unless there was water nearby.
I must have stayed up there for half an hour before I decided to come down. I walked towards the Bedouins camp, behind two wide dunes. There was a surprise waiting for me there. I usually associate desert plants with cactus or trees with thorny branches but to my amazement, a fauna patch of bright flowers greeted me as I was coming round the bend. I wondered how an area of arid land could be the unsuspecting host of beautiful and vibrant forms of life.
A swarm of bees circling the flowers warned me not to get too close when I was trying to pick one of them. I kept a respectable distance from the Bedouins tents and my desert exploration to make sure I don’t invade their privacy.
An old gentleman, sitting under the shade of a craggy tree, waved his hand and I waved back.
A much younger Bedouin, was skinning a lamb which was hanging upside down from a branch of a tree.
I also saw a woman starting a fire from dried twigs under another tree. I deliberated my walk long enough to see her placing a pot on three stones from which the fire was blazing from. Then it occurred to me how basic their lives are. The kitchen, living room, the food preparation area were all under the shade of trees.
The night in the desert has a different proposition for city dwellers like me. It was cooler and the owls were loud.
The cry of the wolves was eerie and the bats were dominating the air. In the moonless night, the sky was decorated by the glitter of the stars like carelessly strewn diamond necklaces. Yet, it was peaceful, rejuvenating and I was completely enveloped by calmness, unknown to the crude noises and the pollution of the city.
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