Bimmah Sinkhole
Interesting facts
- Some locals reportedly also call the pit Bayt al-Afreet, the house of the demon, after stories of a creature lurking in its depths.
- Geologists read the pit as the fallen-in roof of a large cave, once a channel of underground water, rather than any kind of impact crater.
- The pool is widely believed to connect to the Gulf of Oman through a submerged cave passage, but no diver is known to have documented the route.
- The small fish in the pool are carp of the genus Garra, the same group used in fish-spa pedicures, which explains their habit of nibbling at skin.
- Claims about the depth of the water vary wildly, from tens of metres to a reputed 100 metres, and no published survey has settled the question.
- The sinkhole featured in a 2014 satellite study that used ASTER imagery to map limestone formations, caves, springs and depressions across parts of Oman.
Why it is worth it
On the stony coastal plain of eastern Oman, a few hundred metres from the Gulf of Oman, the ground simply opens. Bimmah Sinkhole — Hawiyyat Najm in Arabic — is a near-round pit some 50 by 70 metres across and about 20 metres deep, its pale limestone walls dropping to a pool of startlingly clear turquoise water. Seen from the rim, the colour looks almost artificial against the dun rock around it.
Geologists explain it plainly: the limestone beneath the surface was slowly dissolved by water until the roof of the cavity gave way and collapsed. Local people long had another explanation, and it survives in the name, which means roughly "the deep well of the falling star" — tradition held that a meteorite had struck here. The pool lies only about 600 metres from the shore, and its water is a brackish blend of fresh groundwater seeping from the limestone and seawater working its way through the rock. Small fish live in it and are known for nibbling at the feet of anyone who wades in.
The municipality turned the surroundings into Hawiyat Najm Park, fencing the rim and building a stairway down one side so that visitors can reach the ledges at the water's edge. The best moment is when the sun stands high enough to light the pool directly and the turquoise deepens to blue over the deeper water, with the rim reflected in the still surface. It is a small place, but few natural swimming holes anywhere are framed so cleanly.
Getting there
The sinkhole lies just off the coastal highway from Muscat to Sur, between the villages of Dibab and Bamah, a few kilometres before Tiwi. Qurayyat is about 30 km away. The nearest international airport is Muscat International (MCT), roughly 100 km to the northwest; the drive along the coast road is the usual way to arrive; the park has toilets.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Hawiyyat Najm, known as Bimmah Sinkhole in English, is a water-filled depression, structurally a sinkhole, in the limestone of eastern Muscat Governorate in the Sultanate of Oman, very close to the Al Sharqiyah region just off the highway to Sur, few kilometers before Tiwi.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
23.03606, 59.07114per Wikidata