Jebel Shams

We are driving down from Jebel Shams, the grand canyon of Arabia, and I already want to go back. The scale is indescribable, the beauty incomparable- but in an attempt, when I looked down from the ledge I got dizzy from the height and pattern of the walls. The landscape makes me think of Mars with its huge canyon and endless rocky desert. Geology I think would be much more interesting if taught in a setting like this. This is the highest mountain in Arabia, and is supposedly called the mountain of the Sun because when the sun rises, it hits this mountain first. What I would really like to do is hike in this area. There are just so many places to go, but it just doesn’t work in a group like ours. The next time I visit Oman for sure!
This is part of our “rural homestay” section- though we are neither in a rural setting nor in a home! Another SIT student and I are staying in a 3 rm apartment with 6 other college students- all guys of course. We are in the interior of Oman, the religious heartland, Nizwa. (aren’t the names cool?) I think my Arabic is improving, I can now create sentences with vocab and grammar that I know. I fell sorry for the kids who came here without interest in Arabic- because while it is frustrating sometimes, I very much enjoy the feeling of asking a proper questions every once in a while.
The remainder of the day was ablet o maintain the greatness. We went to an old village where mostly farmers lived. To me it seemed ancient in that everything was made of handmade bricks and mortar, and it looked like semi-restored ruins. But the reality is that everything built before 1970, the nicer buildings that is, was built like this. Anyway, they had an aflaj, which was awesome, one that ran through the city for drinking and bathing, and it continued on for farming use. The amount of time and effort that went in to building these, for me is almost incomprehensible.
We hiked along the farming aflaj for about an hour, traveling very very slightly uphill the whole way as the water was flowing against us. Sarah and I climbed the hill to visit a tower and there sat a local man and his boy- who seemed happy to see that we had made the same effort to get there as they did. I think they were passively keeping an eye on their flock of goats. Then on they way back I hiked up to an intact one that I could climb and go into- that was sweet.
Oh, what I forgot to mention about Jebel Shams was that Sarah and I walked to a promontory and there after climbing a very thin ledge (along the edge of the canyon of course) we found a cave made for two. From there we just wished it would rain cause not only were we under cover, but from there we had a view of the whole canyon and would be able to see all of the wadis that fed this canyon in action!
Later today we all went to the old fort of the Immam which was really fun. There were secret rooms, passageways, fail cells, towers, windows, portholes, courtyards, you name it (well something you’d expect in a castle that is) this place had it all. My favorite part was the jail cell, just a tiny room with a microwave-size entrance along the floor of one room- it was filled with dirt and completely pitch black. Also, standing on the top of the battlements was pretty sweet too. The last place we went to was the site of a bombed out and abandoned village from the ‘60s when Oman had two internal conflicts. The strangest part, and I have seen this elsewhere in Oman, just not the quantity here, was the dust on the ground was finer and lighter than white flour- just like I’d imagine moondust is like. I had a great time first stepping then jumping with both feet- creating clouds and strong shoeprints. Perhaps this is what quicksand is like if wet?