More travels Eid Al fitr 2009

More travels Eid Al fitr 2009 Thursday September 24

Mahdah GPS 24°23'57.72"N 55°58'11.39"E

As Sudiyah - GPS: N24 33.173 E 56 07.539

On Wednesday September 23, Andrew went to a 3 day birthday party!! I know it sounds crazy I have to say the parents of the kids must be brave. Well I was worried that Ashley was going to feel less than special so I planed a trip for us on Thursday just for Ashley. Sadly the off road book made the trip seem a lot better than the reality of the matter.

Well we went off to explore the pools of As Sudiyah , the first stop on our trip was to Mahadah Oasis 24°23'57.72"N 55°58'11.39"E. I had been to Mahadah Oasis with the Emirates Natural History Group earlier and though I would manage my way around the Oasis but unfortunately it had been a long time and I did not quite remember the route we had taken. But on the positive note Tita and Ashley got to see the mosque and the working sundial. They seem to still use the sundial to allocate the water that comes into the oasis. Also we heard some men washing – clothes? – in the falaj which has a built up wall to keep them from view. This was interesting as I did not think it was used for washing anymore. Well we did some exploring of the oasis but gave up after a few false starts. We did get to see some stuff that was nice but not the ancient village made of rock and mud brick that lie in the foothills near the oasis. I wrote Brien and got directions to the back of the oasis but I would still explore it before I thought of bringing the family back there. But it does have some potential.

On to As Sudiyah 24°33'10.01"N 56° 9'11.65"E Well the travel book gave pictures of water and I expected to see pools!! After hunting for the oasis and then finding the flaja, I was able to track it back to the “pools” but sadly the pools were very shallow and hardly a place I would say was swimable. One thing that was nice about the area is that it had a great back drop of mountains. It also had some natural oasis up the wadi some. I went up to see if I would find any more pools. I did not find any more pools but in the natural oasis I found a couple of traps that were handmade. I am not sure what they were trying to trap. I did find one that had been sprung but did not want to open it up.

Well we did a bit of a dip in the pool and made the trip back home without any incident.