Guide Ali points out the village of Sayq, whose terraced gardens spill down the face of a wadi in Oman. Photo / Jim Eagles
Guide Ali points out the village of Sayq, whose terraced gardens spill down the face of a wadi in Oman. Photo / Jim Eagles
In several of Oman's tiny villages, some clinging to the sides of cliffs, Jim Eagles finds plenty of hospitality from friendly locals.
The village of Al Aqur seemed to me to be hanging precariously on to existence at the very end of the earth, yet the moment we reached the bottom of the steep access trail an old man with a brown turban and only one good eye was asking if we wanted coffee.
It was further proof that the Arab tradition of hospitality is alive and well in the lonely rural villages of Oman.
To get here had involved driving the scariest road I have ever seen, from the coastal fishing village of Tiwi up the Wadi Tiwi, a grand canyon with walls 1500m high, carved by the wet season floods that roar regularly through these mountains of soft, unstable brown rock.
The road which winds its way up the sides of the wadi (valley) obviously gets obliterated by the torrents of water that carve the wadi deeper every year and is then patched up with broken rock and the odd bit of concrete.
The result is a roller-coaster ride which makes a recent visit to Rainbow's End with two fearless grandsons seem chicken feed by comparison. But it's actually quite typical of what it's like travelling in the spectacular mountainous regions of the country, where most villages seek to stay close to water and most of the water is at the bottom of these steep ravines.
In the course of my nine-day Oman Adventure with World Expeditions I visited several wadi, all of them different, and all spectacular.
At Wadi Al Arbeieen, for instance, a hot dusty drive through craggy mountains ended at a peaceful traditional village - which we were asked not to visit - but we were allowed to swim in a glorious natural pool of cool turquoise water.
By contrast, at Wadi Bani Khalid the locals have made a similar pool the focal point of a tourist complex selling souvenirs and deep-fried food.
The village of Sayq is perched precariously on the edge of another wadi, its impressive terraced gardens sloping halfway down the cliff face.
And at Wadi Al Shab the gardens were scattered along the bottom of the canyon linked by a walking track from the nearby town and watered by an impressive falaj system.
But the most memorable, from my perspective anyway, was Al Aqur, partly for its hospitality but mainly because of the challenging drive to get there.
At times we were driving up and down slopes which I swear were at 45 degrees, round corners so sharp we must have been in danger of rear-ending ourselves, on a road which was single lane at best with a 500m drop on one side and a crumbling cliff on the other.
The brilliantly blue waters of a pool at Wadi Al Arbeieen. Photo / Jim Eagles
Occasionally along the way we passed lonely villages, just clusters of three to four houses, one with at least two homes which were not much more than piles of mud, several with massive boulders newly arrived in their walled yards.
The spirit of the people who live here was typified by the sight of one boulder the size of a truck, newly deposited by the roadside, which an enterprising local had converted into one wall of a garage made of poles, palm fronds and sheets of polythene for his Toyota pick-up.
Eventually we reached a small flat area halfway down a cliff face which turned out to be the start of a track which slithered its way down to Al Aqur at the bottom of the wadi.
As we clambered down the path we passed several houses built precariously on the occasional ledges, clinging to the rock, several showing signs of recent repairs, but all with fantastic views into the wadi and most with defiantly ornate and colourful doors.
On the other side of the wadi we could see terraced gardens, painstakingly built up with earth and held in place by rock walls, where plantations of greenery flourished under the sheltering fronds of date palms.
Along the bottom of the canyon, alongside the now tranquil river, a complex falaj irrigation system carried water to the gardens.
When we finally got to the end of the trail a very fit looking old man with a cloth wrapped round his waist was washing himself in the falaj.
We wandered for a while along the banks of the river, admiring the work that had gone into the gardens and the construction of the irrigation system, and marvelling at the way the houses had been able to cling, for centuries I imagine, to what was obviously a highly unstable cliff face.
Most impressive of all, however, was the way these villagers obviously accepted that most years all this work would be destroyed by the rains and they would have to set to and rebuild it.
A small family group was clustered cheerfully under the cool of a big old tree in front of one of the more impressive houses.
Upon our arrival the women and children vanished and the one-eyed man asked if we would like coffee.
My clumsy "shukran" and a few more polished words from our guide had him nodding and smiling. He vanished into the house and emerged with a coffee pot and four small china cups.
I squatted down before him and sipped the black steaming brew. It was so good and strong, and wonderfully flavoured in the Arab way with cardamom, that I asked for a second cup, which seemed to please him. I wondered if he guessed that I was hoping it would give me the energy to make the climb back up.
CHECKLIST
Getting there: Etihad Airways and Air New Zealand operate a codeshare partnership from Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, via Australia, to Abu Dhabi. Transtasman flights are with Air New Zealand. Etihad flies from Sydney and Melbourne nonstop to Abu Dhabi, then onto Oman.
