Few things have changed over the last few centuries in Shidyt, a village so remote you cannot even see it till you’ve clambered an hour up the bare, sun-bleached rock of the mountain. Few things except for the drums of chemicals kept for the gardens, that is, and the dirt helipad that can ferry people �or limes.

Maybe a thousand years ago someone decided to set up house here, and generations thereafter scraped together enough soil from the surrounding slopes to build terraces and plant dates and limes.

And that’s why, when you squeeze a lime you picked at Shidyt into your bottle of tepid water at 1,400m, it represents, in a way, a triumph: of the five hour round-trip you just hiked, and of the humble Omani lime, still alive and kicking.

Pinaki Chakravarty
pinaki@apexstuff.com