Freezing in Oman!

By Khaled H Abdul Malak — January 2008, Craig Turner, a friend of mine, called me to ask me to join him in a trip in Jabal Akhdhar to a place called The Black Top and do a hike following the track of the SAS troop  during the 1950s  in Jabal Akhdhar.
We planned a two days trip and left Muscat on a Thursday mid-day.  We took the highway to Nizwa and once we reached Tanuf we drove up the mountain on a very steep dirt road, crossing a few settlements on our way before reaching our destination near the village of Qiyut around 5 pm. We barely had time to set our camp before it was totally dark. We were seven people in total.
Our camping spot was at around 2,300m in altitude.

We lit a fire to prepare some soup and grill the meat sticks that Catherine (the only girl among the group) prepared for us.
After eating, everyone went to sleep.
The temperature early evening was below 10 degrees Celsius, so I decided to sleep on the back seat of my car.
I woke up in the middle of the night “FROZEN”. The thermometer inside was showing 2°C. I started the car and put on the heater. Once the temperature was acceptable I put off the engine and slept for a while, but I woke up when the temperature dropped again inside the vehicle.
I spent the whole night turning on and off the engine of the car till dawn when I decided to wake up, and have my coffee near the fireplace and wait until the daybreak. The light was superb and I took some beautiful pictures at sunrise.
Everyone was up around 6.30 am. We had breakfast and started our walk trying to follow the trail I traced on Google Earth and transferred on my GPS device.
We started by climbing the small mountain called The Black Top after its dark colour.
When we reached the peak we had a breathtaking 360 degrees view!
Al Awabi to the north, Nizwa to the south , Al Hamra to the West and Jabal Akhdhar to the East.
Craig said that when the sky is clear one could even see the sea in the horizon looking to the north.
We were walking on the ridge of the mountain overlooking Wadi Halhal from where the troops started their climb to the mountain. On the way we saw plenty of empty ammunition boxes as well as shrapnel.
From the edge of one cliff we could see as well the superb perched villages of Qabrut, Al Widd and Al Ghogha below.  I visited them a few years later.
After almost 3 hours of walking we decided to stop and have lunch in the shade of an old juniper tree. These trees are magnificent and according to a botanist I met lately in Muscat, the variety growing in Oman can live more than a thousand years.
What stunned me was the shape of their trunk and branches: totally twisted! Probably due to the strong wind?
After we had finished eating we started walking back to our camp that we reached early afternoon. We drove back to Muscat taking the road passing the col of Sharaf Alamein and Wadi Bani Awf.
One year later I came back to Qiyut with my family and friends, to share with them the unique panorama from the Black Top.