Writhing in stone is an entire seafloor worth of debris
We’re staring at millions of marine organisms 2,000m above the sea, after hiking straight up the mountain for five hours. Here, on the southern slopes of the Western Hajar, you can sit down and enjoy an aquarium like no other. Writhing in stone is an entire sea-floor worth of debris, a bank of fossilised life, a gallery that you can’t find in any guidebook.
Down the slope, you can see the highway as it passes through the Samail Gap, from Muscat to Nizwa, its cars like dots along a line. Above us, perhaps an hour from the road on top of the Jebel Akhdar, cars whiz past too, in
desperate escape from the heat below. But here, now, on this anonymous unknown slope, there is nothing apart from a cairn of stones marking a path, cracked rock upon more cracked rock, a crevasse disappearing into the darkness – and as many fossils as you can fit into a mountainside.
You don’t have to withstand five hours of uphill climb, of course. That’s just a side story. You could always get off the road on top of the mountain and set off on a good level path, making your way here in perhaps 45 minutes. And you don’t have to love dead sea creatures to enjoy the place: come
here for the stunning views instead, and the chance to walk an ancient path where today you are unlikely to find anyone else. That view doesn’t get better than from around the finger of rock that you will see from the road, called Qarn al Khudar, which also signals where to park. Here, while the rock above you points skywards, you can look down into the yawn of the mountain and across to the other side, the rock face riddled with tufts of vegetation.
Walk on past the finger, along a goat track among the pebbles. You will find yourself arcing left over slatted rock, and then across slopes on ancient steps, part of a network of trails that held the ancient villages together in social and economic alliance in the days before the modern road. Mountains have always been barriers
and gateways, and control and access over them were paramount.
The fossils beneath your feet are an added bonus, and you will discover them all over the jebel, from these uninhabited slopes to the steps around the village gardens, like those above Al Aqur. There, on a ledge overlooking a yawning canyon and the green terraces of the villages below, is a another treasure trove of fossils, just metres from the tarmac. And it is right here that, by the end of the year, you will find the second hotel in Jebel Akhdar.
Construction activity looking over fossils might fairly be
considered a disaster, but this is different. Rather than build on
the foundations of fossils, the hotel is being built around them,
making them the primary attraction, followed by a view that
stretches across the mountains. After almost 18 years in the Omani navy, Nabhan al Nabhani has returned to Jebel Akhdar with an idea for a boutique hotel with a light touch that will do justice to the mountain he calls home.
“Do you think my guests will want thick carpets and television?” he asks, sitting over fossil-bejewelled rock that will later be polished, near an infinity swimming pool that, filled to the brim, will look out over the canyon. The unfinished outer walls of the hotel will be laden with local mountain stone to minimise their visual effect on the landscape, and ceilings will be decorated with wooden slats imported from Zanzibar. Nabhan’s plans were formed years ago, when he saw that tourists to the jebel had little choice where to stay.
Nabhan and his brother Ibrahim applied for land from the Ministry of Tourism, and started working on their 6,000 square metres. When it opens at the end of the year, it will boast up to 38 rooms, private gardens where backyard fossils will be as much an attraction as the plants, and a new concept for tourism on the jebel. Accommodation will range from VIP suites to regular rooms, the
premium ones coming with gardens, bedrooms, a sitting room and pantry. Fossils have never before been bathed in such luxury.
Mountains rise and fall, of course, and land presently above water could have been lifted up as mountains formed, or may once have been submerged when sea levels rose. And so the best part about the fossils of the Hajar mountains isn’t their squiggly lines in the rock; it is the thought that what you are looking into was sea floor – a couple of thousand metres above sea level.
GPS
Park your car
N23 02.447 E57 42.853
Elevation: 2,083m
Viewpoint, Qarn al Khudar
N23 02.174 E57 43.092
Elevation: 2,043m
Donkey bed, possible camp
N23 01.723 E57 43.082
Elevation: 2,035m
Fossil bank
N23 01.594 E57 43.312
Elevation: 1,997m
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