Literature and biking through Wadi Tayyin by Pinaki

Literature and Biking through Wadi Tayyin

August 2007

It’s five in the morning and the backroads of the northwestern Sharqiya blur as we lower our heads to the handlebars and twist the throttle as far as we can. Date palms and ancient architecture whiz past, opening up to the vast emptiness of the open highway. Up ahead, Jim frames a thought as his Harley-Davidson barks out in the blackness. With desert to our right, mountains to the left and stars above, the road — and ride — is the only reality.

But there is a grey stretch between recognising reality and realising an obligation towards it. Jim Leary is somewhere in between, stretching it, hanging in time and space. That is the promise of the open road, and the reason why he and many others have left homes on the other side of the world to come to Oman. This Canadian has spent most of his time in North America pursuing a career in education. Now he lives in the sultanate, exploring its culture and people, and most often its tarmac.

This endless spider’s web of blacktop that we’re racing across now is one of the reasons he chose Oman. “It is the first thing I searched the net for when looking up the country,” Jim confesses at a roadside stop near Mudairib. He is on a white and very hairy Canadian sheepskin draped over the seat, sitting as if this is the most natural thing in the world. It could be, except it is half past five in the morning, and even the Bedu are asleep. “I looked to see how much of highway Oman had, and how much bush there was to explore. I have always been intrigued by the desert, and this was the opportunity to explore the things I’ve always wanted to, with the things I know. It is, in many ways, like northern Canada, with its wild open spaces and isolation.”

That openness is something that people, and even countries, try to escape. But others, like Jim, embrace it, and he has found a country that does so too. Why else would you find 54 Canadians teaching in Ibra, a town most people know of only as a dot on the map, a point between Muscat and the desert camps, or the highway to Sur. As the northern mountains give way and the great plains of scrub gradually crumble to desert, Ibra blossoms with expatriates in search of more.

Faraway lands have always held a draw for travellers, and as we turn off the highway into Wadi Naam you can see why. With mountains at your doorstep, the desert a few minutes away and the Arabian sea a few hours ride to the east, this is prime location. But instead of rave parties, hippies or foreign nomads through the desert, this patch of Oman draws a different crowd. Jim is 58 years old, no wanderer in search of himself. He knows who he is, and what he wants. That might seem like a personal story, but it is as much about the country as it is about Jim, or his ride. Perhaps it is the desert and how it shapes people. The ways of the Bedu against sands falling away into sea demand comprehension not easily found amongst a lost generation. They need a certain maturity to appreciate, from the palm fringed alleys of Mudairib to the onion-domed mosque in Jaalan. The desert might make fools of people, but it also makes men.

Such thoughts flow easily on a bike, over the open road, through the Sharqiya. “For most people, a bike is a means to get somewhere. For me it is a vehicle for mental transport. It is fully conscious meditation, absolute sensation.” Anything that can get a Canadian grandfather to sit on a Harley and tour the Sharqiya has got to have something to it.

The desert sun is up by now, and children in crisp white are lining up for school. It is already getting too hot to be dawdling around, and we need to move, get the wind through our helmets and protective clothes. This is the promise of the desert too: the sharp winter nights, the sting of the sun on your arm as you ride, the hot air like a slap through your lungs. “It’s all about the senses. The feel of speed, the wind over the hair on your arm, dust in your nose.” We ride back towards Ibra, tanking up at the last filling station for the day. Up ahead, to our right, is Wadi Tayyin. Jim will soon become the first rider ever crazy enough to ride a Harley-Davidson through the wadi, over mountains, through its water-choked depths and across to the other side.

People don’t buy big cruisers that weigh a couple of hundred kilos to splash around through wadis. The initial plan was for Jim to follow the dirt bike a bit of the way, up the mountain where we could get some pictures of him. That soon changed, for Wadi Tayyin will soon have blacktop, and a diversion within means you’ll be following another wadi till the road gets over in a few months. That was too long a wait though, so Jim ploughed through. He would do perhaps 30kmph while the off-roaders did 80, but he did it anyway, without falling off or losing any of his sheepskin, leathers, cruiser trinkets or stickers that said “I love Oman” (each with a discreet maple leaf in the corner).

Hours later, after we had splashed through pools of water, followed the falaj system and raced over gravel plains, we made it to the finished road at the end. The dirt bike was plastered, the Harley dusty and Jim utterly unruffled. We stopped by the side of the road, our bikes waking the old man lying under the tree. Instead of being irritated he offered us dates and coffee, and, the crowning glory of the wadi experience, miniature pancakes soaked in local honey.

Can you imagine the sheer exhilaration of eating pancakes towards the end of Wadi Tayyin, sitting with an old man under a tree with a 1,000cc cruiser and a 650cc dirt bike parked beside? Air-conditioned 4WDs and bottled water seem shameful in comparison. Jim is already scratching at his stubble, formulating a phrase. Such moments give rise to his poetry, like the first paragraph of his Desert Ride: ‘Hot pins in my hands,/ powder dust in my nose,/ searing wind on my skin./ Ride the white line.’

That white line is leading him a long way from home. “I calculated that if I rode 1,000km every weekend for six months, I would cover all the blacktop in the country. I’ve done 18,000km to date — and most of that’s just been in the Sharqiya! What I thought would take half a year is going to take me at least five.”

An hour later, we would be off the bikes, eating egg sandwiches at the first filling station out of Wadi Tayyin, an Al Maha on the right. Turn right from here and the dirt track will lead you hours into another wadi, until you go deep into the belly of the Eastern Hajar. Follow the tracks up the mountain and you can climb up to the top, where some of the greatest cave systems in the world lie buried. But the Majlis al Jinn would have to wait for another time, for the road this side has fallen apart. If not, you could cross over to the other side of the mountain, to Tiwi and Fins and the Arabian Sea. But for now, there was nowhere to go but forward, towards the highway where we would part.

“The sultanate has two gifts: space and time. Oman is opportunity, and challenge. It could also be terrifying. Such open concepts need you to act, not react to external factors. Outside influences don’t dictate what you do here, like consumerism or urbanisation. They take away from the essence of life. Oman sets you free.”