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featuring the mountains above BANDER JISSA
“Somewhere along the way someone must have run out of money, ideas or the will required to see things through”

A long time ago, construction of what could have been a walking and cycling path was started: bulldozers must have battered the mountain slopes, an army of labourers would have hunched over as they laid kilometres of tiles over the limestone. A camp of portable cabins sprang up on the plateau above, concrete viewpoints were splashed over the best corners. But somewhere along the way someone must have run out of money, ideas or the will required to see things through. And that was, perhaps, the best thing that could ever have happened.

For the abandoned walkway is your gateway to an entire landscape of hiking opportunities, mountain slopes of wildflowers and thorns scratching their way through the bone-dry rock. And all this just a couple of minutes above the first curves of the road that connects Wadi Kabir and the al Bustan village to Bander Jissa and Qantab. All you have to do is get off at the first parking lot on the left – if coming from the city – and walk up. You have a couple of possibilities when you get to the top, when you pause for breath at the beginnings of level ground and the patch of flat earth on your right.

The first option involves climbing the low hill on your right: walk high across its right-hand slope, above the paved path below. This is a bit difficult if you’re scared of heights, but it soon irons itself out and you can then romp over the undulations of rock, enjoying the views of Wadi Kabir and the Bustan far below.

The other option is to get off the paved path and jump over to the dirt track in front of you. It will take you, over perhaps ten minutes and a few kilometres, up and down the highlands and then plop you down on the road that leads to Yitti from the innards of Hamriya.

ANONYMITY
The other side
But your best option is also the toughest, because it involves following the paved track that sticks to the edges of the plateau on your left, right until it ends at a viewpoint that looks over Qantab village and Bander Jissa. This is where things get interesting; for it is here that you abandon the luxury of pavement and walk down the gorge in front, up the other side.

It is here that you will be well and truly alone, for no weekend camper, evening walker or day tourist ever ventures so far off the beaten track – even if it is shouting distance above the road that ferries hundreds every day to its better-known attractions at its three dead ends.

There are gazelle droppings here, scratches in the dry undergrowth and holes that lead to burrows. You are not alone, but you will be away from your own kind. On your left are the settlements on the coast, ahead is Yitti and somewhere between the slopes on your right is the Yitti road. Ahead, over the hilltops, construction crews are blasting through a hill. There is the dull thump of metal against rock. It might be naive to think things will be the same in the future, but for now you have an entire mountain to yourself, and the half-baked skeleton of a paved path.

There are two ways you can get to the dirt track that overlooks Muscat, from the road that leads to Qantab or the one that goes to Yitti:

From the Qantab road
Zero your odometer at the Sheraton Oman Hotel traffic lights
2km: Roundabout at Wadi Kabir
6km: Turn off right for Qantab
6.5km Turn right for the parking lot and cycle path

From Ruwi
Zero your odometer at Muscat Bakery roundabout on Rex Road
2.5km Turn left at Hamriya roundabout
3.1km Turn right for the road to Yitti
7.2km Turn left on to the dirt path