Up the mountains

Turning my attention from water to rocks, I went on a 4WD trip up the mountains on the second day of my Musandam trip last weekend.

The incredibly dry, dusty rough mountains rise to 1800 metres above sea level here. It seems as hostile an environment to live in as you can imagine - despite its majestic air which seems to speak of pride and silent might, and the spectacular views rivalling the Grand Canyon. Going up there other than by car would be unbearable for most Europeans with the dust and heat reflected and intensified by the barren rocks.

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Nonetheless, old dwellings and graves speak of a culture going back at least four thousand years. In earlier days, people would use donkeys to carry loads up the mountain - even today, you will meet a number of those animals trotting alongside or in the middle of the road. And the Jebel Ali bedouins, who love the mountains, used to build small houses out of big blocks of rough stone, four feet above and four below the ground, as a shelter in winter (in the picture below, you can see me sitting in front of one of those so-called "lock houses" - they come with a simple but effective mechanism for locking the door, dating back about 2000 years).

I also saw a number of simple one-storey stone houses, with tiny windows to keep the heat out, some built leaning into the sides of the mountain; many of them are deserted now, as are a number of terraces where vegetables used to be grown. For many people, life and farming here has become to burdensome, while others still live here because this is their life. And it certainly helps that no matter where, the Omani government provides fresh water and electricity.

And if you go back even more in time, you would have found this area teeming with life. But also in a much different shape. This stretch of land has once been ocean floor, of which millions of fossils are ample proof today. Through the movement of the tectonic plates on which the continents sit, the land was pushed up and is even still moving today: the whole area moves at 1 cm per year towards Iran.

I was lucky that I had a tour guide all to myself - so he took me to places that are beyond the usual route of the trip, which normally ends in about 1500 meters altitude - where the air is noticeably clearer and cooler. And he pointed out some of the 150 million years old fossils for me - mussels, starfish, crabs. If you happen to have a copy of the July / August 1997 issue of the National Geographic, you will find a story about the area and the fossils for which "my" guide had shown the researchers around. So you can imagine he knew a lot. And I even found a few smaller fossils to take home as one of my best souvenirs so far.

Now, if only the air had been a bit clearer, the view would have been even more stunning! I had chosen to do the mountain trip only as a sort of afterthought, because I wanted to see a bit more of the area when I'm there. It turned out to be a great experience!

If you want to learn more, here's an article about the Mountains of Musandam. And you can find official information on Musandam here.