An adventure with Vijay

Family and acquaintances have seen some cool stuff from my travels and also heard the occasional story of things going wrong. Nachiket (“Nachi” for short), a former colleague of mine, knew some of these and had invited me to visit him in Dubai to go scuba diving together in Oman. This sounded perfect for a long stopover on my way to India for Christmas. 

The plan was for me to fly into Dubai on Saturday morning and for us to drive to Muscat, the capital of Oman, early on Sunday. We might do some night dives on Sunday, but had the whole of Monday and part of Tuesday for diving before we would return to Dubai. I was also interested in hiking in Oman, but our schedule left us no time for this. 

Nachi took me for a cruise through the Dubai Marina with his family the evening of my arrival. I got to experience the brilliance of Dubai’s night lights. A seemingly nightly drone show with at least a thousand drones highlighted the Emirates airline and Dubai’s tourist attractions. I also observed the frantic development of Dubai; at one point, eight lit-up cranes were visible to me from a single spot on our route. Dance performances kept the tourists entertained on the boat when we drew away from the lights. A skinny man whirling around in a long skirt with LEDs on the skirt was the highlight; a belly dancer was also memorable. We had a late night. 

On Saturday, leaving later than planned at around 11 AM, we drove across the desert. Out of the city, the landscape was predictably arid. What I did not anticipate were the rocky hills rising around us. The hills would be original and beautiful, if harsh, to hike on.

We passed into Oman via the Hatta Border, the most convenient crossing between Dubai and Muscat. The UAE charged us a per person “exit fee” for leaving the country. The border crossing involved a number of stops (pertaining to immigration, customs, security, tolls, etc.) on the UAE and the Oman sides, but we did not have to get out of the car at any time. We passed through barren, empty lands to get to Muscat. There were scattered villages with brick houses. Some of these had a mini fortress quality, with the exterior walls of the houses linked together with additional walls to make a contiguous wall around the entire village, with a gate leading inward. We also passed through more modern towns.

Stopping at a Pakistani restaurant at one of these towns for lunch, I was surprised that Nachi could speak to the waiter in Hindi and be understood. This was an observation I made throughout the trip; there were lots of Indians and people who understood Hindi (e.g. Urdu speakers from Pakistan and thereabouts) in Dubai and Muscat (Indians make up 38% of the population of the UAE; together with Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and others, South Asians make up 59%, far exceeding the Emiratis at 12%). This was not an advantage for me, my Hindi not being up to scratch. 

Upon our arrival in Muscat, we learned that night dives were not available and that Sunday did not look good either due to choppy seas. As a contingency, we decided to go to the Bimmah Sinkhole and hike Wadi Shab. Nachi is not a hiker, so it would be a new adventure for him. 

On Sunday, we drove 1½ hours from Muscat to the Bimmah Sinkhole. The sinkhole was walled to protect visitors as the sides dropped steeply from it. It is big, 50-70m wide. Stairs lead down to a dry rocky patch where visitors could stand and, if desired, leave their dry clothes. Fish swam inside the aquamarine waters. Some visitors swam in the water and some climbed up the sides and found spots to jump into it. It was a bit too early in the day for us to get wet as our main destination was yet to come, so we did not take the plunge.

We drove the 20 Km to Wadi Shab, “wadi” meaning canyon. There was a reasonably-sized parking lot at the starting point. The first thing to do was to cross a stretch of water in a 1½ minute boat ride costing 1 Riel each. 

Then we hiked. The rock faces of the canyon arose on both sides. Some of the rock resembled the wind-swept rock that I have observed along the coasts of Hong Kong and Taiwan. 

After about 45 minutes, we arrived at the end of the hike, a long pool of water in which many people were relaxing. 

Nachi and I left most of our stuff at the waterside; I packed the phones and Nachi’s car keys into multiple layers of “waterproof” bags (the stuff got a little wet). We then swam upriver. The water was not at a consistent depth. Occasionally there would be footholds or even areas where we could walk; at other times, it would be deep water where swimming was best; sometimes we had to clamber over slippery rocks taking care not to fall. The worst bit was a 30-50m stretch where we had to painfully walk barefoot over small pebbles to get to the next swim section. 

Arriving at our destination, we saw water flowing out from a cave. The entrance to the cave was low; barely enough space if one wanted to keep their head above the water. I took a breath, submerged my head and swam the 3 metres to get inside. Nachi followed. Inside was an area the size of a large living room. There was a waterfall, which some people tried climbing up using a knotted rope. There was no place to set down one’s feet in the cave and we were treading water. Under slightly different circumstances, I would have spent time climbing the waterfall using the rope. However, I was uneasy about the fact that we were in a dead end with a narrow exit and more people coming in behind us. We exited and made our way back to the place where we had left our stuff. 

I had taken my GoPro with me for the swim, but unfortunately my SD card was corrupted and we lost all the footage taken during this part, so here is a video by someone else six years prior.

Back at the start, I told Nachi that he had now had an adventure with Vijay. 

We were finally on for scuba diving the next day, Monday. “We have checked the boxes for this trip”, Nachi had said on our drive to the dive centre. “Not until we are in the water”, I had responded. The Mola Mola Diving Centre in Muscat had a comfortable boat with a large amount of space on the main deck and an upper deck upon which one might sunbathe. We left for the Daymaniat Islands, one of the many diving areas along the coast of Oman.

Our first dive was a shallow dive of no more than 12m depth in the Coral Garden dive site; it turned out to be one of the best dives that I have done so far. We saw three large stingrays, large enough for the divers to call them “tabletop stingrays”. Two of the rays were camouflaged under sand when we spotted them. One swam away after we got too close, spilling the sand as it shed weight upon flight. It was satisfying that we left the last one sufficiently undisturbed to remain where it lay. There were plenty of moray eels, including a big honeycomb moray and several geometric morays. Spotted boxfish and trumpetfish were in abundance. It was porcupine fish, lionfish and scorpionfish galore on dive two. We saw a turtle on each dive. The reefs were colourful. Box ticked. I spliced together a video with clips I took using Nachi’s GoPro.

Nachi had an important business call at 7 PM. We docked in Muscat at 2.30 PM and immediately drove back to Dubai. It was tight. Despite making a good pace, our estimated time of arrival was slightly past 7 PM. 

We passed the Omani side of the Hatta border without issue. At immigration on the UAE side, I was told that I could not enter. When I had applied for my five-year multiple entry visa to the UAE, Dubai was not available as the Emirate where I was making my application; I was forced to choose another and selected Abu Dhabi (the first list entry). I was told that I could not enter the UAE via a Dubai border with Oman as I had an Abu Dhabi-issued visa, but I could enter via the Fujairah border toward the north. This did not make sense, but there was nothing else to do. To add insult to injury, the immigration staff told us that Dubai had just started issuing the multiple entry visas two weeks prior, just a week or so after I had made my application. Nachi had his call pushed to another day and we set off again.

We had to continue forward toward Dubai and get the customs staff to open a gate for us to return to Oman. Then we would need to get the Omanis to cancel our exits from Oman as we had single entry visas for Oman, which we had just used. At each step we would need to explain to the staff that we had been refused entry into the UAE. It was uncomfortable, but we were not given any trouble. 

After a drive of another hour, we got to the Fujairah border. At the first stop on the Oman side, Nachi asked the staff whether we might have any trouble entering the UAE. The guy asked Nachi what visa he had for the UAE. Nachi responded that he was a Dubai resident. “Then you should enter through Hatta.” However, he did not stop us from leaving. We had a bad feeling that one of us might be obligated to return to Dubai via one crossing and the other through a separate crossing – we were joking with gallows humour about this. Having passed the Omani exit checks, we saw the confusing sign for the “Fujairah” border: “Welcome to Sharjah”. However, we got through immigration this time and the only wrinkle was an extra-thorough security check.

We had lost an hour and half on our return leg and were hungry, but otherwise were no longer in trouble. Now we had indeed checked the boxes for an adventure trip involving Vijay – we had a new story to tell.