Village Walk - Oman
This is an easy short trek through a village in the mountains of Oman called Misfat Al Abriyeen. It’s about 2 - 3 hours from Muscat in the mountain range that includes Oman’s highest peak - Jebel Shams.
The walk starts from a car park at the start of the village where a walking map is conveniently displayed.
The walk starts with a walk through the village itself. This is quite eye-opening as it is still a very much lived in village. The houses are one or two storeys high at most, quite small and close together. This means you have to walk down very narrow alleyways and under arches that have been there for hundreds of years.
The villagers seem very used to visitors and didn’t seem upset by us walking past their front doors. There was no hassle with people trying to force carpets on you either!
There are several routes that you can take once in the village itself. We chose W9 on the map. The route is signed by tri-colour painted symbols on walls & rocks. At times these can be hard to spot, but the locals are happy to help out if you get stuck!
The village starts at the top of a hill and spreads down the valley (known as the ‘wadi’ in arabic.) Once you’ve gone past the first initial houses, you go past the mosque with a fresh water supply outside. This is known as "sweet water" - and useful as a top up in hot weather conditions (although personally, I’d still purify it!)
The track then winds out of the village itself into the growing areas of the village. These terraces are irrigated by the fajal system introduced by the Persians hundreds of years ago. The track itself follows some of these waterways so you can see the water flowing alongside the fields.
The route eventually ends up at the end of the valley (wadi) in a heap of boulders. You’ll know you are there as there is one of the many shelters from the sun on your left, a fajal on your right and boulders ahead.
To return, we retraced our steps until we reached the village buildings. We then joined track W9E which starts just below the mosque. This takes you up the other side of the village where there are more date palms. You can see the dates themselves being dried on the edge of the track or the walls of the fajals.
The track then heads steeply downhill following steps and a iron handrail. At the bottom of the ravine you then climb up the other side of the hill from where you get a fantastic view of the village and the wadi. We were lucky with our timing so we had a great sunset at this point. From here it is a short walk up the past a few houses back to the car park.
A useful guide for finding this and other walks was the "Oman-Off Road" book published by Explorer. If you can get the "Oman Trekking" book by the same publishers, you’ll have more detailed and difficult treks.
