Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
gardening takes place and where old men and young boys sell honey and fruit by the road-
side. Head for
Diana's Viewpoint
- named after the late Diana, Princess of Wales, who visited
this vertiginous vista - with its natural pavement of fossils and dizzying view of the ter-
races below. The viewpoint is en route to the dangling village of Al-Aqor.
Wadi Bani Habib
with its old ruined village and abundant walnut trees is also located on the lower plateau
and is a popular and picturesque place for a walk. For a longer hike, after allowing time to
adjust to the thin, high-altitude air, walk from Al-Aqor to Seeq around the edge of the
crescent. This is particularly rewarding during spring when the fragrant, pink roses from
which rosewater is made are in bloom.
The upper plateau is accessed via a right turn up the mountain near Jebel Akhdar Hotel.
Here you can picnic among magnificent mature
juniper trees
in a perfect campsite about
2km after the sultan's experimental farm. The farm, which is closed to the public, devel-
ops strains of vegetable and fruit suitable to the extreme Omani climate. From the camp-
site, hike through wild olive and fig trees to
sunset point
(a left turn before the school). A
vast mountain resort is under construction on the edge of the jebel, offering spectacular
views across the mountains.
You are only permitted to approach Jebel Akhdar by 4WD. There have been many fatal
accidents caused by people trying to make the long descent in a 2WD, using their brakes
rather than changing gears.
The only alternative to a 4WD is a walking trail through the terraced villages of Wadi
al-Muaydin to the Saiq Plateau. You'll need a guide and you should allow six hours from
Birkat al-Mawz at the bottom of the wadi to reach the plateau (12 hours return). Beware:
it's an unrelenting uphill slog!
ROSEWATER
If you are lucky enough to find yourself in the small village of Al-Ayn on Jebel Akhdar in April, then you will be
sure to have your nose assailed by the redolent Jebel Akhdar rose. Each rose has a maximum of 35 petals, but if
you spend time counting them, you may well be missing the point. The point in cultivating these beautiful briars
is not for the flower but for the aroma. For hundreds of years, the rose petals have been harvested here to produce
rosewater (
attar
in Arabic) - that all-important post-dinner courtesy, sprinkled on the hands of guests from
slender, silver vessels.
The yellowing bottles lined up in the sticky shed of a rosewater workshop suggest the petals have been boiled
and discarded. This in fact is not the case. While the exact production of the precious perfume is kept a family
secret, anyone on Jebel Akhdar will tell you the petals are not boiled but steamed over a fire with an arrangement
of apparatus that brings to mind home chemistry sets. But the alchemy, according to Nasser 'bin Jebel', whose
father's hands are ironically blackened each spring with rosewater production, is not so much in the process of
evaporation but in the process of picking. If you see people dancing through the roses before dawn, chances are
they are not calling on the genies of the jebel to assist the blooms, but plucking petals when the dew still lies on
the bushes and the oil is at its most intense.
