Wadi Tiwi: Difficult to cross but enchanting

By Khaled H Abdul Malak — One of the most difficult wadis to cross, Tiwi is one of my favourites. It used to be one of the most difficult trips to do in Oman over two days. Since the dirt road reached the village of Umq Bir it became much easier. Even now you need to plan two days to be able to finish crossing wadi Tiwi from Umq Bir to Mibam. The first day you will spend the night on the terraces of Umq and early morning next day you start your journey that will take around 10 hours. It involves abseiling in two places and a lot of swimming. You will swim in total the distance of approximately 4 kilometres, some pools reaching around 400 metres in length each!

After two hours of bouldering, swimming and abseiling you will reach the most beautiful spot of the wadi: The cave. With around 80 metres in length and a ceiling perhaps 25 meters high you have to abseil a waterfall about 15m high to land in a long thin pool in the dark.

You will come out of this pool in a superb crystal clear round basin with blue green colour. On the sides plenty of concretions grew over the years taking very special shapes like tubes with water flowing out of them. Last year I managed to open a climbing route to cross over the ceiling of the cave and abseil on the other side; I named the drop “Mona’s drop” referring to my daughter who was the first person to abseil it. I did two previous trips with my friends Kester and Ahmed to be able to complete setting the anchors and reach the roof of the cave.

After the cavern, the journey is very aquatic as you have to swim endless number of pools before you reach the trail that leads to Mibam. The anatomy of the wadi changes a lot after heavy rain or exceptional weather conditions. In 2007 after the cyclone Gonu one of the longest pools of wadi Tiwi was totally dry as it was filled with gravel. It was again full of water when we crossed the wadi one year later. Just before reaching the final trail and on the right bank of the canyon we saw a rope with knots that villagers from Mibam and Umq Bir use to climb and reach a ledge that they follow at around 100 metres above the wadi bed. They climb down using the same kind of ropes when they reach the village below.