Oman Family Vacation Part 1: Al Jabal Al Akhdar

 Last week we took a family vacation to Oman. The country is truly a gem of the Middle East, and we are thankful for the opportunity we had to visit this beautiful place. Our flight was at 4am, but the boys were wide awake and ready for the trip. They were so excited at the airport, and they had fun sharing a seat on the airplane! 

                                                         

We arrived in Muscat, rented a vehicle, and started the journey to Al Jabal Al Akhdar (the Green Mountain). Unfortunately, we brought a stomach bug with us from Kuwait, and Ben was the first to get it. Poor little guy got sick a couple of times in Muscat airport, then several times heading up the mountain. One of the times was in the customs line, and this nice customs agent wanted to hold Ben and make sure he was ok. 

Al Jabal Al Akhdar is about 100 miles from Muscat. Once you get to the foothill of the mountain, you are required to have a 4WD vehicle.  

                                      

The roads on the mountain were paved over the last 10 years, and parts of the mountain have very steep incline/declines. This is the police checkpoint we stopped at to make we had the proper vehicle. And were were allowed to pass :).

                                      

One of the times we stopped to take care of Ben, this guy came up to say hello!

Our hotel was on the Saiq Plateau, at 6,500 feet elevation on Jabal Al Akhdar in the western Hajjar mountains, overlooking a canyon with several ancient villages and terraced farms.

We took it easy the first day and relaxed by the pool.

Ben was perking up as the day went on.

And Caleb...is always perky!

In the evening we explored the nearby village of Sayq. These mountain villages are located either on plateaus or valleys of the mountain. Until only a few years ago, these villages were only accessible by foot. The houses in the villages are built of stone. Some of the villages are completely abandoned, but many are still inhabited.  This village was a combination of homes and ruins. The village depends on water from another village, and it uses age-old farming techniques. The ruins of this village include the house of Imam Sai bin Sultan Al Ya'rubi, as well as a several old mosques. It is truly amazing to see people living in these intimate communities. My favorite thing about the villages was the beautifully colored doors. You will see a lot of doors throughout the posts!

And the doors made a great backdrop for two cute little boys!

This is the village mosque. The mosques in Oman are gorgeous. Many of them have beautifully pastel colored tile domes.

The locals were so friendly, and naturally curious about us. One thing we love about the Middle East is how much people welcome children. Just about every where we go, people want to hold or play with the boys. Oman was no different.

The Omanis are very kind and welcoming people. In the villages people only spoke Arabic, but outside English was spoken a lot. My poor and broken Arabic helped me either ask to take a picture, or realize people wanted their picture taken with us. It was remarkable to see old men like this, who probably lived in this village his entire life.

 We made it back to our hotel for sunset over the valley. It was a gorgeous site.

The next morning, we set out early to hike through a few more of the villages. We started in the village Al Aqur and hiked to the village Al Ain.

Al Ain is a small village known for its spring water, and for the natural stairs that link various levels of the village. From Al Ain you could see the Al Shareija Village, all the way down at the bottom of the valley. This is one of the larger villages on the mountain where many of the homes are still inhabited.

Oman is known for their impressive water distribution system for farming, called the falaj. The falaj system was introduced by the Persians in pre-Islamic times. It is a channel for water that leads from its source, usually an underground spring, to fields where irrigation is required. About 20% are open channels direct from springs, and about 80% are underground channels leading water from larger wells at the foot of the mountains where the water table is higher because of rainwater run-off.

The falaj is the collective property of the village or group of landowners, and each landowner pays for a certain number of minutes or hours of water a day. The villagers appoint someone called an 'arif' to monitor the fairness of the system, and they are also responsible for making repairs to the system. It was so impressive to see amidst a brown dessert, pockets of green, lush farms, that is only possible because of these sophisticated water sources.

This nice farmer was showing us the onions he was harvesting.

A lot of fruit is grown in the villages, to include pomegranate, grapes, walnut, peach, apricot, apples, and pears. This time of year, there were pomegranate trees everywhere!

Along the hike, we met some nice locals. The kids wanted to take pictures with us.

We came across this pretty mountain pond along the hike.

After hiking around the farms, we wandered through the village.

The views from this village were spectacular!

On the way back to the first village.

It was a great morning to be out hiking. The boys were troopers in the heat!

After a family nap, we went out to hike through an abandoned village at Wadi Bani Habib. This wadi (valley) is on a high exposed plateau. The ruins of this village are only accessible by foot. And so we set off for the hike.

View of the ruins from the other side of the wadi.

The valley floor was so lush and green. There were small farm plots, falajes, and many fruit trees.

We hiked up the rocky steps and looked at the village ruins. 

Then across the valley, we saw another abandoned village that we could not see when beginning the hike.

Back on the valley floor, getting ready to hike back up to the top.

We stopped along the way back to the hotel for a different sunset view.

The sun rises around 4:30am. I was not up quite that early, but soon after to get some early morning pictures.

We had a great time visiting Al Jabal Al Akhdar, next stop Muscat.