Teacherinegypt: May 4, 2012

A friend asked me if I wanted to go hiking with a group on Jabal Al Akhdhar mountain. I was up early Thursday morning and packed for trip. The foot of the mountain is about an hour and a half from Muscat. Because of its elevation the climate is coolers than in Muscat, so many people come there for the hot summer months. The mountain also gets more rain than Muscat and it is known for its fruit especially pomegranates and roses. We met our guides at the bottom of the mountain, for only 4X4 vehicles are allowed up. There were 6 in our group, 3 Canadians, 1 Australian, 1 UK and one from Switzerland. Our two guides were Omani. We drove up the twisty steep road to the village where we started out hike. We carried water in our back packs and the donkeys from the village carried out other supplies. The donkeys were led and coaxed down the path by young fellows from the village. I thought I was going on a ‘hike’ well we went on a HIKE, down the rugged sloped of the mountain on rocky paths clinging to the side of the mountain. The gorge we walked down is similar to the Grand Canyon. With every foot step carefully considered we hiked down about 1000 meters for 2 hours 15minutes. At the bottom of the gorge/wadi the was a stream and by it an old village built into the cliff on the side of the gorge, something like Navaho Villages in the US. By now we were exhausted and hot and very sore. We dropped off our bags at the old hut where we would stay the night and continued on way down on a cruel staircase (the kind I have nightmare about) to where the villagers had built a dam to save the water for irrigation of the crops they grow on the small flood plain by the banks of the wadi. We had brought our swimsuits so has a nice refreshing swim in the cool water (similar to early July in Nova Scotia). We hiked back up and our guides made supper. We ate it on top of the building where we were to sleep. The cliffs were towering above us on both sides and I was hoping the rocks were attached tightly to their resting places. Accommodations were very primitive, sleeping bag on a cement floor in a sweltering hot room. Some of us took our sleeping bags and slept on the roof. Awesome scenery, the moon, stars, almost total silence except for the water running below and in the morning the towering cliffs. Didn’t get a lot of sleep since we were on gravel without much cushioning. In the morning after breakfast on the roof we started back. The route that was extremely difficult going down was unbelievably brutal on the way up and took almost twice as long. I’m walking like a person with two broken legs, thighs, and calves are beyond sore.