It was a sunny day of March 2020 when I headed with family and friends to a mountain near the village of Maabit to check a new sinkhole, unaware of the great discovery that we would eventually make.
Khamis al Subhi, a friend from Tanuf, guided us to the entrance of the sinkhole that he found by chance while walking in the area.
There were six of us, My wife Marta, my daughter in law Sally, my son Kevin, in addition to Khamis and his cousin.
The entrance of the sinkhole, measuring some 40 cm in diameter, is located on the left bank of the wadi.
Dressed in my caving equipment, I used a boulder as a natural anchor to fix my 70 metres long rope which I then threw in the dark hole. I squeezed myself into the narrow entrance that led to a flat surface. Soon after, Kevin joined me with a drill and anchors.
I was all set up. Upon directing my light at the big dark hole opening below my feet, I felt my heart beating faster.
While I began my slow descent into the sinkhole, the darkness gradually started submerging me. Using my headlight, I could admire the majestic funnel shaped vertical tube dug by water over thousands of years.
When I finally reached the bottom of the pit, I was relieved to see that my rope was long enough to reach the ground. My heartbeat was now slowing down.
I landed on an oval surface of around 5 metres in diameter. Further ahead, the sinkhole dropped another 20 metres below, but I decided not to go further and rather return with a team of professional cavers to continue the exploration. Around 15 minutes later, I had climbed back up to the surface.
Two years later, my tingling curiosity brought me back to the Maabit sinkhole. This time I was accompanied by a French team of professional cavers ready to push further into Kittat Khamis.
The team comprised a French scientist friend of mine and adventure enthusiasts who had first visited Oman in 2019. They wanted to come back to the Sultanate of Oman for a second “adventure trip”. It was the perfect occasion to resume the exploration of the Maabit sinkhole.
The French team landed in Muscat on February 1 and, after spending a week of caving in Salalah, they headed for Maabit.
Our exploration of Kittat Khamis began on February 12. We were a group of 16 cavers whose ages ranged between 24 and 71 years old from Oman, Lebanon, France and Venezuela. We divided tasks between us: Some were in charge of setting the anchors, or carrying the ropes while others recorded the data needed to map the sinkhole, and documented everything through pictures.
The team descended 120 metres underground into the sinkhole before reaching a sump, confirming we had discovered a cave, which we spent three hours exploring and documenting.
