In the mountains above Ruwi (or maybe Wadi Kabir to be more precise), there is a paved walking path. It is beautiful, paver, wide path. There is a paved parking lot for using this walking path. There is no paved road to the parking lot. In fact, to get to the parking lot, you will need a high clearance 4 wheel drive vehicle and steel nerves.
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| Panoramic view from the top |
Our fearless hiking leader found it because there are mountain biking trails up in this area. Her family enjoys going mountain biking. Meanwhile, neither of my boys has shown enough interest in biking long enough to learn to ride without training wheels. Back to the trails... She said that her husband has only encountered other bikers up there once when there was apparently some sort of competition going on. You can see these bike paths off the paved path as they are dirt trails.
When our hiking group went here, we did not drive all the way in to park in the parking lot, so we were able to get some exercise walking up to the trail. The views are really great from the top. To get to the trail, you drive through Hamriyah and take Yiti Street until the turn off on your left. I would suggest you navigate towards "Wadi Kabir Height Viewpoint." There is a large flat area at the turn off from Yiti Street where you can park and walk up. If you want exercise, walking in would be best as the path at the top is easy.
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| We're getting better at timing our jumping photos. |
From the path, you are surrounded by mountains. The really cool aspect is that there are completely different types of mountains depending upon whether you look inland or toward the sea. As you look toward the sea, you see darker rock mountains that were pushed up from the bottom of the sea. At the end of the range, there is the coolest mountain. See below picture because I'm not sure how to explain it.
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| Wadi Kabir below... Wadi Kabir means large valley in Arabic. |
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| From one end of the path, you can see the wadi, mountains, and some of the path in the distance. |
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| The path and the mountains stretching off in the distance. |
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| In this picture, you can see the darker mountains on the right and the lighter mountains beginning on the left. |
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| This is the mountain! It's like you can still see the original, flat land that was pushed up and is still sitting on top of the mountain. |
In some ways, I would like to go back to explore some more. We stopped before the end of the path because there was a sign off to the right about no trespassing. I just don't know if that sign was supposed to apply to us or if it was old. See my dilemma? I want to explore, but I don't want to get in trouble. I need to obey rules, but I don't know if this is even a rule that applies to me.
