01 April 2006
High in Oman's Jebel Hajar mountains, Amar Grover braves hair-raising drops for a glimpse of the region's turbulent history
It was just as we began climbing in earnest up the shoulders of Jebel Akhdar, the "Green Mountain", that the car's owner said he could no longer drive. There was very little green, either, but rather great swirls of strata in a multitude of shades between light fawn and dark brown. Shafts of sunlight pierced fat grey-bottomed clouds and panned across the mountains like a theatrical spotlight. The only colour I hadn't foreseen was that draining from our driver's face; he paled, smiled nervously and gave me the wheel.
The mountain seemed to fall away from us on three sides. Its gravity-defying road little more than a gravel track with a kerb of rocks and boulders - appeared to have been pushed up the slopes by an optimist or a madman. And now we three optimists were hellbent on taking it, seeking only to reach the obscure yet magnificently sited village of Wajmah, to which visitors, mad or otherwise, are infrequent.
Jebel Akhdar is a particularly lofty section of the Jebel Hajar range, north-west Oman's rugged backbone that stretches for more than 600km in a gentle arc from the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf to near Sur by the Arabian Sea. It looks largely impenetrable. Yet closer too, its staunch folds and crags lend an intricate topography riven by snaking wadis that are often dry but sporadically prone to flash floods. Aside from a handful of asphalt roads that wind into the UAE and down to Oman's far south, it is here in the Hajar's wadis and ridges that you might justify the four in four-wheel-drive.
We had begun at Muscat, speeding up the coast to Barka and then turning inland across the Batinah Plain towards Nakhl, behind which mountains rise dark and ominous through the haze. Oman has around 1,000 forts, castles and watchtowers and the best lie within an eagle's sight of the Hajar. Nakhl's picturesque 17th-century fort tops a 200-metre-high outcrop in the midst of groves of date palms. It is a neat confection of square bastions and rounded towers clenched with crenellations and pierced by loopholes. A few cannons poke above the parapets while the national flag stands proud against a clear sky.
Restored by the government in the 1990s, using traditional materials and period furnishings, it gives you a sense of, rather than an intimate feel for, the life of the wali, or governor, and his entourage. There are several simple living quarters and elegant majlis, or reception rooms. There is even a small prison, for the Batinah has often been restless and desirable and local skirmishes were common.
Further west, where it laps against the Hajar's foothills, lies Rustaq. Former medieval capital and still a busy town, its imposing fort is among Oman's oldest. Smothering ancient Persian ruins and rebuilt or added to many times, much of today's form dates from around 1650. It boasts four particularly solid towers with enigmatic names such as the Epic and the Devil's.
I strolled around its flaking perimeter walls, lined with bastions, before entering. Venerable black cannon were parked in the outer courtyard. Further gateways with heavy wooden doors and pointed studs coaxed one into a warren-like complex of armouries, a hole-in-the-floor prison, a mosque and several majlis with patterned ceilings. As one-time base of conservative tribal rebels who jealously guarded their independence from the more liberal Sultan at Muscat, Rustaq saw action in the civil unrest of the 1950s.
Just as those rebels' redoubt proved to be high in the Jebel Akhdar, so vestiges of that fading traditional, if not tribal, life endure there too. We headed beyond Rustaq for the turn-off that funnels into Wadi A'Sahtan, one gateway into the heart of the Hajar. The first hint that one was entering a relative land of plenty came with a scattering of palm-log beehives. In hamlets and villages, dilapidated stone huts and hovels stood near modern concrete houses whose bright walls sprouted satellite dishes. At Tabaqah we glimpsed a crumbling fort perched on the edge of a friable bank.
Omanis love to picnic and we passed groups of pick-ups clustered around shade, mats spread out among the pebbles of bleached riverbeds. It was in the A'Sahtan Bowl, a pronounced widening of the otherwise narrow wadi, that our tyre hissed with all the venom of a sharp puncture. Some locals driving by leapt out and took charge, loosening our over-tightened wheelnuts with their crowbar. We were guests, they implied, and so it was most unseemly for us to be scrabbling about in the dust with upturned rumps - or something like that.
Near Amq, the country became more open with panoramic views of the Akhdar's austere ramparts massed against the skyline. Wadi A'Sahtan was originally called Wadi Amq after its oldest village but the name was changed to honour a local dignitary.
The "green" of Jebel Akhdar is said to derive from the tint of its sought-after limestone though its patchy greenery also stems from the height of its peaks, localised rainfall and more temperate climate. It is known for rose oil, distilled from petals, and for its citruses, plums and pomegranates, grown in terraced orchards that ladder the gentler hillsides.
On the tough 5km gradient to Wajmah, however, survival rather than food is the priority. It is a route that requires commitment and concentration, for there is little turning back unless you're up for a 10-point turn. Nor do you really want to face oncoming cars. Having cursed a lot, churned some dust and whitened our hair, the final stretch actually inched downhill into the village.
Barely 40 years ago, a journey like this - indeed almost any travel in Oman - would have entailed a ghafir, or guide, to smooth the way through arcane tribal etiquette and tensions. For good or ill, modern Oman has moved on unflinchingly and these days one can simply turn up and, with a modicum of respect and common sense, explore.
The children were shy, the youths gently curious and most of the elders rather amused. After tiny cups of sweet, thick coffee our self-appointed ghafir, a polite and charming young man, led us through a little knot of lanes and stairs. The simple two-storey houses almost all had green window frames or shutters and many were plastered with buff gypsum. Below spread orchards and palm groves watered by aflaj, intricate narrow channels that have nourished agriculture in Oman and Persia for centuries. Palm logs had also been hollowed and used as aqueducts to bridge gullies and ravines, though, as our guide explained, Wajmah's springs are not quite as bountiful as before.
Above us loomed a brooding escarpment from which loose rocks occasionally hurtle. And higher still soared some of the loftiest of the Hajar's peaks, which nudge 10,000ft-11,000ft. With luck you might see vultures and Arabian tahrs, or wild goats, though the Hajar's fauna is under increasing pressure from modernisation (leopards, for instance, disappeared in the 1970s). We paused beside clumps of oleander beyond which paths contoured the slopes and meandered into the wilds. One could, he said, hike over the mountains and down to Nizwa, Oman's so-called "Pearl of Islam", which a hardy Wilfred Thesiger bypassed in the late 1940s because of its then-fanatical mullahs - another time, with more time.
Now feeling like veterans, the profound descent back to A'Sahtan seemed a mere jaunt. Near Al Jafr village the track slipped through a deep cleft gouged by the wadi and then rose and dipped through a series of bluffs. We joined Wadi Bani Awf and turned south again towards the high peaks, a particularly forbidding stretch of dark cliffs and precipices soaring above stark gorges and canyons.
Near Zammah the track is forced to cross a side wadi by detouring down and round, so to gain a kilometre you drive perhaps three. Our objective was Bilad Sayt, a growing village occupying a low spur cradled by boulder-strewn hills enclosed by immense crags. It has fields as well as orchards. And its youngsters play football on a cement pitch.
Visitors are less of a novelty now than at Wajmah and we were left to wander freely before heading back down Bani Awf and on to Nakhl. One reason for the increased traffic is that it is no longer quite such a dead end. An exhilarating road has recently been cut right across the Akhdar towards Nizwa via nearby Hat and Wadi Ghul. It has plenty more of those eye-popping gradients and views to match. On foot or on all fours, I shall be back for more.
By Amar Grover
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