Away from the Gulf’s
glamor
By
Janet
Bagnall
Under a clear blue sky, the narrow
dirt road climbs straight up the barren rock of Jebel Harim, the
highest peak in Oman’s northern Hajar mountain range. Look down and you
can see the sparkling turquoise waters of the Arabian Sea. With our
air-conditioned Hummer just centimetres from the road’s edge, it was a
beautiful but terrifying sight. Turning
to
look landward was not more reassuring. The road was seriously steep.
Concentrate instead on the driver? Scariest option of all. Our elegant
Omani guide was so used to ferrying tourists up and down Jebel Harim, a
dizzying 2,087 metres above sea level, that he felt little need to keep
even one hand on the steering wheel. This was part of
a mountain “safari” in the Musandam peninsula, the northern a tip of a
peninsula that stretches into the Gulf of Hormuz and is cut off from
the rest of Oman by the United Arab Emirates. For
much of the last century, this isolated, rocky land was closed to the
outside world. Sixty years ago, the British explorer Wilfred Thesiger
wrote of travelling in disguise through Oman, one of the first
Europeans to dare travel in a land where foreigners were not
welcome. Read more...
|
