A dose of the country

This afternoon we returned from our four day trip around part of Oman. We left school Wednesday afternoon, divided into ten jeeps. Our destination was Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountain), a range towards the eastern part of the country. As we started climbing the mountain along heavily maintained windy roads through wudian (canyons where water runs when it rains) it started to rain. I tentatively rolled down my window and was rewarded with cool mountain air, a feeling I’d last had driving up to New Hampshire at the beginning of June. A few days before we arrived in Oman there was a terrible cyclone named Fet that destroyed much of the coast and the areas with wudian, and the few I’ve visited have all had serious rebuilding amongst rubble and traces of roads. The ascent of the mountain was reminiscent of this, but it was much cleaner. I can’t imagine how expensive those roads were to build.

Our hotel was at the top of the mountain. We hung out for the rest of the evening and got up early the next morning to “visit families.” We weren’t sure what this meant but apparently the administration or tour company had made contacts with locals to take us around and feed us lunch in their homes. Most of the day was spent traversing the side of the mountain which was completely terraced farms. An older age of Omanis constructed a seriously ingenious network of “filaj” or irrigation channels from either a naturally occurring spring, rainfall, or both, it wasn’t clear. These channels snake their way down the mountain and through the terraces, where the villages cultivate pomegranate, corn, roses, and grapes, among the things I remember. In the valley, where the filaj eventually empty, there are nakheel (date tree) groves. I have had a sort of terrace fetish since a family vacation to Italy over four years ago, and adding two years of farm work to that made for some giddiness. I would love to spend a year or so living in one of these villages and farming pomegranates on a mountainside… And this is the beginning of the trip and the reasons why living in the Omani country would be amazing.

Here’s a picture of the mountainside as seen from walking along the filaj.

My group (five or so of us) ate at our guide’s house. Omani houses generally have a “majlis al-rijal” where the man of the house hosts guests, while the women sit in the “majlis al-hareem” inside. It’s that Arab hospitality. However, I raised the argumentative point to some friends that hosting strangers in a side room isolated from the living space isn’t actually hospitality at all. I was disagreed with, but I’d love to argue my point more if any readers are feeling contrary.

In the afternoon we drove to the desert and spent the evening at a desert camp. It was super similar to my Siwan experiences, beginning with a roller-coaster jeep ride through sand dunes and ending under the stars. Except this desert camp had a pool and fully catered eating area. Siwa felt more “authentic,” although of course this is an imperialistic term created by orientalists to inform their expectations. Friggin hippies. The next morning we made our way to a “camp resort” on the sea via a Boom factory. A boom is a type of large, beautiful wooden boat. The camp resort was a short but beautiful stretch of sandy beach with a restaurant bar on it and a series of A/Ced straw huts… figure that one out. We spent the rest of the day relaxing, swimming, playing cards, and fishing. One of the teachers who came with us is a pretty bad-ass wilderness kind of guy, so before we knew it he had killed a crab or snail and used the meat as bait on a hook and line he’d either brought or found. I took a couple tries at throwing the line and reeling it in, and on my third try I caught a bright blue and yellow fish! It’s a fun feeling. (Disclaimer to PETA: The fish lives to bite bait another day.)

That night we piled into our jeeps around 9pm and headed to the Turtle Reserve. We got into smaller groups and walked in the dark out to the water, which is difficult to do in sand. The guides had red flashlights and led us up to a crater in the beach where a huge green turtle had dug in and was slowly dropping her sticky shiny eggs. After a while she buried them, and later on she was headed back into the surf. It’s a very very slow process and per turtle only happens once every 35 years or so, but this is the egg-laying season I guess. It was a very zen experience, or very boring experience, depending on how one approaches the world or one’s mood. It was a very zen experience.

Today we headed to a huge wadi, this time a towering narrow one with a river in the bottom. We hiked up it for about a half hour and found some BEAUTIFUL swimming and cliff-jumping. It ended in a cave booming with a waterfall. A rope led up the waterfall to a higher pool outside and another waterfall and more cliff-jumping. But the scariest cliff was in the cave itself, from whose walls one could crash into the turquoise below. One student described it as “the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen” and another as “that was the scariest thing I’ve ever done!” The cave of superlatives. It was a wonderful place.

Eventually we made it back to our hotel in Muscat and an administrator informed us that the bus will pick us up at 9am tomorrow as opposed to 7:30. Alhamdilulah. It’ll be an even shorter week than expected because Tuesday after school I’m joining some friends on a midnight bus to Salalah in the south of Oman (12-hour ride) where there is allegedly the kharif, or monsoon season. This means temperate weather and greenery inshallah.

And así we pass the halfway point.