Mysterious carvings in Al Widd

After asking my friend Marhoun from Halhal whether he came across any rock carvings in the mountains near his village, he called me last February.

“Khaled, my uncle told me that he saw some carvings near the abandoned village of Al Widd,” he said excitedly on the phone.

I packed my bag with some food, drinks, and all the lenses for my camera, formatted the SD memory card, and hit the road to Wadi Halhal, a branch of Wadi Bani Kharus, a one-and-a-half-hour drive from Muscat.

Marhoun was already waiting to guide me to the place where his uncle saw the carvings.

I had met Marhoun back in 2009 when I visited the village of Al Widd for the first time.

The hike to Al Widd was very strenuous. The abandoned hamlet was situated at almost 700 m above Halhal.

There are many trails going up the mountain, but Marhoun chose the steepest one as it is the shortest. The ascent was tough for my old age, but not for Marhoun, who could be my son’s age!

The temperatures were not high compared to my first visit in August 2009.

We stopped midway to have something to drink. There I saw some old structures, that, according to my young local friend, were inhabited way before his great-grandparents were born. 

Two hours later we could see the well-maintained gardens of Al Widd, which looked like a green spot in the mountain

We reached the terraces around noon. Apricot and peach trees were in blossom. The pink flowers of the apricot trees made a magnificent contrast with the blue skies.  We left our bags with food in the shade of a lime tree, and I took only my camera and lenses and headed to the place where the petroglyphs are supposed to be.

Marhoun said that according to his uncle, the carvings are situated on the ledge of a waterfall near the hamlet.

The approach was very difficult as the terrain was quite unstable.

We separated and started looking for the “mysterious engravings” on the boulders in the wadi bed just above the waterfall.

“KHALED!”  yelled Marhoun, so excited. “They’re here, Alhamdulillah,” he said happily.

I joined him very slowly as the carvings were located on the edge of a 100 + metres free fall. The carvings depicted human-like drawings as well as animals and some letters that I could not decipher. I was so excited about the discovery and took plenty of pictures of these enigmatic figures and letters.

We went back to the terraces, where we had something to eat before starting our long descent to Halhal. We took another trail to check another site with some other inscriptions. The last part of the hike was quite difficult, and we had to progress extremely slowly because any mistake could be fatal. We reached Halhal just before dark. I thanked Marhoun for his help and drove back to Muscat. All the way to our house in Al Mawaleh I was wondering “who these people were and how many years ago did they carve the mysterious drawings?”