Wahiba – Surface Surveys

The Wahiba Sands are a desert region located in the country of Oman and named after the Bani Wahiba tribe. The sands cover an area of 7,765 square miles that extend 180 kilometers north to south and 80 kilometers wide east to west.

The desert was formed during the Quaternary period resulting from south-west blowing monsoons and the northern Shamal trade winds coming in from the east.

Today, the sands are home to the Bedouin and offer a glimpse into a traditional way of life that is fast disappearing as modern conveniences limit the need for a nomadic existence.

The sands remain one of the unique, increasingly scarce, silent places where mobile phones don’t work, and where there is little evidence of human activity beyond the local Bedouin community.

Wahiba is one of six individual studies in a series of protected desert physiographies titled Surface Surveys.  Each survey embodies the planet’s natural, essential expression, and underscores the ethereal nature of wild lands in our current, anthropocentric age.