Musandam's mountains

Musandam's mountains "Just remove all unnecessary thoughts." Vishnu Prasad, Six Senses' resident guru from Kerala, makes it sound so easy. As indeed it is when you have just walked barefoot at sunrise on the sandy beach , had a swim in the perfectly quiet bay, and enjoyed a cup of tea in your own peaceful villa and a personalised outdoor pranayama session at the yoga pavilion. Not to mention a gourmet tasting menu at Sense on the Edge, 293m above sea level, the night before.
It's only 8am, and as I lie back on my mat with the warm sun on my face it feels as though my day - and weekend - has peaked.
Yet it's barely even begun. Because as much as one can simply enjoy the resort, one of Six Senses' best assets is its location in the starkly beautiful - and empty - mountains of Musandam. After a breakfast of fresh carrot juice, juicy cut fruit and a fabulous shanklish-and-honey-filled manakeesh, we're picked up by the Dibba-based company Absolute Adventure.
Our guide Sebastien Le Bon, from Mauritius, is driving a giant but surprisingly agile bright yellow Chevrolet Tahoe and wastes no time in whisking us up through Wadi Khabbash Shamsi towards the Sabateyn plateau. In half an hour, we meet just one other vehicle.
There has been some rain recently, and the gorge is scattered with acacia, latab and cedar trees that draw water from deep underground. "The roots of these trees are often 45m deep," says Sebastien. He stops the 4x4 and we begin a climb up what he calls the "secret staircase". It's a hand-built path up to Al Hajjar, a mostly abandoned village 670m above sea level. "After the discovery of oil in Oman in the 1960s and 70s, many locals here got the opportunity to go to towns and get educated," he says. "Now the landowners hire Pakistanis to look after the land."
The land, barren as it is, supports herds of goats and features ancient terraces which are, amazingly, still used to grow wheat and barley in the winter months. There are a couple of small huts, goats and chickens, some outdoor clay ovens and, finally, a cemetery with petroglyph-type carvings on the simple headstones.
“These were for the richest or most important women of the village,” says Sebastien; in the eerie stillness, it’s strange to think of the place as a once-thriving farming community. We look across to Musandam’s highest point, Jebel Harim, before heading back down. We drive farther along the road to Sabateyn, which until 1975 had a population of 250, according to Sebastien. Now there are just 150 goats, although the owner, who moved to Fujairah, has now apparently moved back.
Overlooking the plateau at 1,200m, while eating a delicious gourmet lunch of salads, sandwiches, fresh juices and chocolate brownies provided by Six Senses, Sebastien explains that there are three main tribes in Musandam and seven different dialects. Among a jumble of rocks, goats and dry rock huts at Sabateyn, Sebastien shows us what he thinks are petroglyphs – striking images of camels hewn into the side of some rocks. According to local historians, these could be up to to 2,000 years old. Yet even that is nothing compared to the age of these mountains. Caused by a rift between two plates, the spectacular Sabateyn mountains still display sediment lines from when the rock was underwater some 300m years ago.
We pass a small group of picnicking Germans before beginning the hour-long descent back to Zighy Bay, the afternoon light casting shadows on the canyon walls and lulling us, after our lunch, almost to sleep.
“Today, we’re hiking from Jordan to Peru.” It’s 11am the following day and after a more leisurely breakfast and last-minute consultations about the weather, we’re joined again by Sebastien, who this time is at the helm of a speedboat. We zip out of Zighy Bay’s new marina and head north up the east coast of the Musandam Peninsula with Absolute Adventure’s trekking guide for the day, Ram Thapa. Appropriately, he’s from Nepal, and led treks through the Annapurnas before landing in Dibba eight years ago. Just north of Zighy Bay, we pass a huge white -limestone cave; apart from a few tiny settlements, the brooding mountains are empty until we get to the tiny fishing village of Aqaba, in an azure bay reminiscent of coastal Greece.