Wadi Bani Awf

The canyon walls close in until there's barely room for the vehicle. Rock scrapes against metal. The road — if you can call it that — is a ledge cut into the cliff face with nothing but air below. This is not a drive for the nervous. This is Wadi Bani Awf — Oman's most thrilling mountain crossing.

Wadi Bani Awf is a deep canyon system in the western Hajar Mountains that contains both one of Oman's most adrenaline-inducing road journeys and its premier canyoneering route. The road through the wadi connects the coast to the interior via a single-lane track carved into the canyon wall, with sections so narrow that wing mirrors brush the rock on both sides. The canyon narrows in places to create natural choke points where the geological drama is at its most intense. Snake Canyon, a tributary gorge, is one of the Middle East's most renowned canyoneering routes — a multi-hour descent involving swimming through pools, scrambling over boulders, and rappelling over dry falls. The wadi historically served as the only mountain crossing between the Batinah coast and the interior, used by donkey caravans before the modern roads were built.