As a novelist I always try to find the connection between places and their names, so when I come across a place with an obscure name, it sparks my curiosity and I try to find out more.
Such was the case for an island in Musandam that the British named Telegraph (known to the locals as Maklab) and the surrounding inlet, they named Elphinstone.
It was a short cruise from Ras Al Khaimah in the east of the UAE to Musandam in the north of Oman. The boat sped through the water as dolphins danced around us to Elphinstone Inlet, surrounded by mountains with their endless trenches.
Suddenly, a small rock surfaced in the middle of the water, perhaps the top of a mountain that emerged from the bottom of the sea. It looked to us like an island with rocky shores.
No one has written about this inlet except for bits and pieces in the British archives, so any geographical theory is conceivable. Albert Einstein once said: "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."
Elphinstone Inlet is some 16 kilometres long, surrounded by rocky cliffs reaching 3,000 meters. The area is called also known as Ruus Al Jibal (peaks of the mountains), which is almost absent in Arabic sources, as no details can be found.
The unique natural area speaks to visitors who come to marvel at its majestic mountains, wandering without boredom, stunned at how the English were unfair when they described its people as 'uncivilised like their mountains.'