The Last Blue Mountain

by James Chilton

  The Keren Hotel in Asmara was not the best but it had the faded charm of happier days. Built by an Italian at the turn of the century, its dining room walls were peeling off a layer of raspberry colourwash to reveal the previous mustard ochre. There was much rococo plaster work, mostly of satyrs and bunches of grapes. Leaving the hotel early on a Sunday morning I needed a taxi and this was a problem. The Ethiopian Orthodox church has just begun their two hour services, the Muslims had been called to prayer and the Catholics were at mass. The porter had a badge on his lapel which read ‘Hall Porter on Practice Duties’ but his initiative deserved a row of medals. Pausing only to bring me a croissant and a cappuccino, he called his father who drove a bakery van and I rode out to the airport amid the sweet smell of doughnuts and brioche.

  At the departure gate I put my last birr in the box marked ‘Contributions to the Children of the Martyrs’. It will undoubtedly reach them and they certainly needed it but I have never found a country where common cause and universal endeavour has been so apparent, so uncontaminated and so worthwhile.

  Oman

  January 2000

  ‘We travel not to escape life but so that life does not escape us’

  – written on a hostel wall in Amsterdam

  As corrugated and rutted as a crocodile’s back, the mountains of Jebal al Akhda lie across northern Oman, jagged, lifeless and cruel as though in retribution for the cataclysmic thrust that brought them from deep within the earth’s mantle. But from the air, in the dawn light and with a mist that wrapped the wadis and lower slopes like gathered tulle, their aggressiveness seemed tamed.

  Seed Airport was so lacking in formality with its absence of customs, immigration or form filling and so pleasantly efficient with luggage off-loaded and waiting by the clean, cool bus that this novelty of international arrival seemed like an invitation to visit a neighbour’s new-built house.

  The road to Bilad Said – at 9,186 ft (2,800m) the highest mountain village in Oman – ranks amongst the most dramatic in the world. Forget the Karakorum Highway and put to one side the corkscrew track down from Cusco to Maldonado, this route has the steepest gradients, the sharpest bends, the roughest terrain and the narrowest defiles. No snow-capped mountains, not a torrent of white water in sight but a switchback that curls, doubles back, wraps around and cuts through the highest mountains of the Arabian Peninsula. A geologist’s textbook passes by in bewildering variety; shale like stacked sheets of veneer, splintered rock heaped like crushed bark in great ramparts, a sheer wall of 2,300 ft (1,300m) in glistening oolite. Around another bend and then into sinuous shapes like coiled entrails that meld into courses of red sandstone, finishing with black rock imprinted with the underwater ferns and waving grasses of a Jurassic sea. Bus-sized boulders, veined like northern faggots with a net of white quartz, are superseded by granite slabs one moment, mica dust another; then a delightful interlude of a cool oasis of date palms with cheering children of the mountain bedouins before the road plunges to the bottom of a ravine and claws its way up the far side. Below the dispassionate peak of Jebel Akhda, Snake Canyon has opened a deep wound between grey and red granite in a sinister slash 400 ft (120m) deep. Rumpled, crushed and stretched in the tectonic conflicts of a hundred million years, the rocks appear thrust out of the earth’s womb in convulsive agony. Thesiger came this way describing: ‘A chaos of twisted ribbon rock, the debris of successive cataclysms, spewed forth molten to scald the surface of the earth’. Just as my stomach muscles had been tensioned to a point where they could only snap and my heart had quickened to the pace of a Tonto drummer, there appeared the little village of Bilad Said. Calm and contented with terraced viridian patches of wheat and alfalfa, its serried features clung to the rock face with the nonchalance earned by 1,000 years of undisturbed exclusivity. Then, when the eye could not encompass that vertical scale any further, the heart could not bear any further shots of adrenaline and the lungs had been stretched to gasping in the thin air, it was time for a second helping on the return journey.

  The beehive tombs at Al Alyn have stood sentinel along a stony ridge since 4000 BC and were silhouetted in the setting sun against the great rock face of Jebel Mischt as we camped below on a dry wadi bed amongst tamarisk and acacia. Six beehive tents of 2000 AD sprang up and the Landcruiser roof racks exploded with coloured bedrolls, patterned blankets and striped sheets. Ali, our local guide, factotum, jack-of-all-trades, bustler and hustler, was everywhere, rattling off orders in Arabic and English and no doubt cursing to himself in Hindi. He placed tents, organised the dining area, directed the cooking, supervised fires and chopped the garlic. Mohammed carried bedrolls, eight at a time, Ibrahim peeled potatoes and scattered groceries over the sand, lit a fire, cut his finger and spilt the sauce. Sayed tended the pots, put up the tables, filled the lamps and unfolded the chairs. Heide Beal, calm at the operation centre, chatted to her guests and directed her team with an efficiency that was the product of practice, Swiss precision and team loyalty. Hurricane lamps lit the tent entrances and marked the corners of the matted dining area while a fire crackled under a pot and smoke and steam rose to a tropical sky of indigo velvet, studded with stars of astonishing brightness. The day’s journey was recalled, an autopsy performed of each wrong turn or missed sign and each wonder discussed; whisky was sipped, then gulped, laughter rose then fell, embers shed their glow, there was a curse from a toe caught on a peg, the zip of a tent flap, a weary goodnight and under the vigil of the tombs, silence enveloped the wadi like a shroud.

  Mohammed, our driver with the orange turban, brown eyes to shame a Jersey cow and a smile to capture any heart, had invited us all to his home. He was a desert bedouin living on the edge of the Wahiba Sands – a sea of sinuous dunes scattered with euphorbia and protopsis trees. As we left the stony desert, the boundary of the Wahiba was suddenly upon us and the flat, grey gravel turned to great waves of tawny sand. Here were camels, the bedu, the tracks of Thesiger, the exploits of Lawrence, the romance of Beau Geste; this was what we had come for. The track required as much skill as crossing a frozen lake and we skidded along from side to side passing an occasional hobbled camel and a bedouin encampment. After several miles, Mohammed pointed to a huddle of ramshackled huts in the distance and perched on the eastern slope of a dune; his smile broadened in anticipation. Flicking the Landcruiser into low gear and high ratio we roared up the slope churning sand like a side-paddled steamer. Home was an enclosure of palm fronds stitched together with fibrous strands. There were two rooms – for a kitchen and a bedroom and more palm fronds roofed a matted area. Sacks of barley for the animals and rice for the family lay in a corner, a pile of old tyres shielded a sick sheep from the wind and a great studded dowry chest filled another corner. Six tame rabbits scurried around – pets now, the pot will claim them later – and there were five, shy, clean, healthy children with beautiful teeth, dark eyes shining like ripe dates and skin as smooth and perfect as polished crème de marfil marble. We removed our shoes (being careful not to point our bare soles at our hosts), ate grapes and dates crushed with turmeric and drank weak coffee spiced with cardamom from tiny china cups. The smallest children kept close to their mother, peeping around the kitchen door at these aliens and giggling with the excitement of it all. I dished out lollipops to eager hands and then we left them to their endless horizons, swirling winds, driven sand and open skies.

  The livestock markets of Barnard Castle or Banbury could take a tip or two from the animal auction at Nizwa. There is no less shouting, arm waving or bargaining but here it is the seller that sets the price. In the dappled shade of acacia trees of great age, a circular sandy track of about 100 ft (30m) in diameter, forms the viewing ring. At the hub and on the outer boundary, squat or loiter the buyers and spectators. Universally clad in dishdashas of a white dazzle that Persil PR men have only dreamt of, men outnumber women a hundred to one, the latter in colours to rival a rainbow and with layers of fabric that sparkle with metallic threads. Goats, some with kids that can barel
y walk, are led or dragged around the circle while their owner shouts out the price required. After a couple of circuits he drops his price until a bargain is reached, riyals change hands and the beast and bleating kid are lead off to be lifted into a pickup truck or the back seat of a car and comforted by a bundle of alfalfa to munch on. Sheep get similar treatment but calves are sold from trucks brought 600 miles (960 kms) from the south by dark skinned, scornful, black-turbaned cattle drovers from Salalah. I asked Heide, our tireless guide, if I could photograph them. “Not if you value your life,” she replied. Behind the lens, not only etiquette but survival itself has to be carefully checked here.

  Leaving the parched interior, the moisture of the coast was as welcome as a cool beer on a desert dune but at the Sur Beach Hotel there was disappointment. “So very sorry sir, I forget. It is Friday and with regrets, no beer before 2 pm.” The Pakistani waiter was obsequious in his apologies, having already offered me a choice of three German lagers. Perhaps because it was Friday, I sat alone in the huge domed first floor dining room, watching the azure Arabian Sea lather the beach in a tumble of surf while a team from India and beyond hovered around their only customer.

  Sur had little of merit or interest, although the extravagant villas of the nouveau and trés riche provided some diversion, but in the old part of the town there is Oman’s only dhow shipyard; a sad reflection on a nation whose sea-faring skills had enabled it to colonise Zanzibar and sail at will over the Indian Ocean. Nevertheless, a couple of dozen dhows were being built or repaired, propped up on a beach littered with the off-cuts of a thousand previous ships. Spars and ribs are roughly shaped with an adze and teak planks from India fixed with six inch nails as thick as a finger, their heads recessed into the timber and sealed with what looked and felt like pink chewing gum. Like the bones of beached whales, previous generations of these marine adventurers lay discarded on the grey sand usurped by fibre-glass, aluminium and outboard motors from Yamaha. Behind were the decaying homes of shipwrights, ship-owners, brokers and fishermen. All these homes had been abandoned leaving behind intricately carved but sturdy doors weathered and bleached with salt, latticed upper windows with creaking shutters and crumbling mud brick walls flayed of their protective plaster and lime wash. But a few new shoots of regeneration sprouted where houses had been restored for weekend homes. It will not be long before the last dhow will be anchored in concrete for conversion to a coffee house and the debris of the beach cleared for jet skis and ice-cream sellers.

  In the soft shadows of early morning the high dunes on the coastal edge of the Wahiba Sands curve in seductive sweeps of silver sand, some honed by the wind to a knife edge, others rounded and voluptuous. Driving in sand soft enough to cover your ankles as you walk requires a special skill that the bedu have become particularly adept at and seemingly none more than Sayed and his brother Ahmed. However deep the tyres in the sand, however bellied the fuel tank on a ridge, Sayed ‘the specialist’ extricated any vehicle. Speed and momentum were essential and as Sayed flicked down, through five gears, selecting four wheel drive in high ratio then low, the 4½ litre engine roared then screamed, the rev counter hit maximum and we hit the bottom of slopes at 60 mph before riding to the ridge where we hit the roof too. White-knuckled on the grab handles, anxiety turned to exhilaration as the wheel spun full lock left and right, sandaled feet moved between clutch, accelerator and brake with lightning co-ordination. Scattered sand flew high enough to obscure the windows as we raced up a slope oblivious as to what lay beyond. Twice we almost rolled, a dozen times every muscle was tightened taut to exhaustion and 100 times every nerve was stretched to its limit. And then, viewing another drop and another crest, Sayed let out a whoop and nerves and muscles were extended to cracking point once more.

  We had given a lift to a bedu woman and as we dropped her off in a spot unmarked by any feature and clear to all horizons, she raised her right arm and with a hand tattooed with henna and with fingers extended, she gave a graceful flick of the wrist that seemed to indicate in a single gesture, “Thank you, goodbye and now go.”

  ‘The boys’ were giggling loudly at breakfast and Ali, crouched over a pan of eight frying eggs, looked less than his usual effervescent self. Apparently Ahmed, knowing that Ali would climb the dune for his early morning constitutional, had positioned himself behind the crest naked but with a face painted with powdered milk. Just as Ali reached for his flies, Ahmed rose up arms outstretched, against the rising sun and grotesquely masked. In our tents at the foot of the dune, we had heard the shouts of panic, the cries of rage and then the laughter as Ali fell backwards down the slope terrified that the demon Jigu had come to claim him.

  It is disconcerting to sit on a thunderbox with one side open to a deserted and distant horizon looking at a vulture looking at you. There is little else that comes quite so close to humiliation and helplessness as being hobbled by your trousers, at a time that a very large bird with a beak designed for tearing flesh may well be celebrating its good fortune in finding enough food for a week tethered and semi-naked, already partially prepared for dinner. With the intention of redirecting any salubrious thoughts it may have had as to whether a start should be made on my eyes or my heart, I threw my left shoe at it and it grumpily flew away. I had arrived once at Leeds railway station on a rainy February night tired and hungry to find that the chip and pie shop had closed a few minutes earlier, so I knew how the bird felt.

  From Muscat in the north to Salalah in the south, 628 miles (1,028 kms) of flat tarmac dribbles across the flat, open gravel plains of central Oman:

  ‘...boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretched far away.’

  Midway, if you turn towards the sea, there is a track whose potholes are filled with sand as fine as talcum powder and which crosses the Jidat al Hararis. At the edge of this escarpment, the bouldered way leads down to the Huqf Depression. Saline pools, white rimmed with the crystal crust of salt still being leached from the ancient sea bed, added a forlorn and lifeless emphasis. We camped here to the displeasure of seven brown-necked ravens whose home it seemed to be, in a spot scorched by the sun, polished by the wind and with the earth’s bare bones lying around us. Apart from the ravens, there were also sand grouse, bustard, wild donkeys, gazelle of balletic daintiness, hares with huge ears, hedgehogs, small pale foxes and scurrying lizards, all seemingly placed here by uncaring fate to adapt as best they could.

  But above all it is the Arabian Oryx that has made this dry and desolate place its own exclusive domain. Its sturdy but elegant body has a fine head from which grow two horns of rapier precision and extraordinary length. It is even more capable of surviving without water than a camel. Its hide is a colour that paint salesmen call ‘Buttermilk’ and is marked by a black triangle on its forehead, two black eyes and black legs. Those properly brought up on the stories of that Edwardian vet Dr Doolittle, will remember the Pushmepullyou. Leaving aside awkward questions of physiology, that novel beast was simply two oryx for the price of one. Why a creature of such intelligence and exquisite features should wish to live in these desolate surroundings defies sense and evolutionary theory. Shot almost to extinction, revived by foreign zoos from the requirement for stock and then poached again to the limit of viability, they are now being nurtured under the patronage of HRH Sultan Qaboos. With only about 400 in a sanctuary the size of Belgium, the chances of finding one were less than slim. However, we had underestimated the skill of the bedu rangers and to our intense excitement a group of six – a male and five cows – were found within a two hour drive with the additional bonus of a three day old calf.

  In the evening, under the stars, a quarter moon and the light of a blazing fire our bedu team danced in celebration of our success. Sayed was lead drummer on a plastic jerry can, Mohammed accompanied on washing-up bowls, Ahmed waved a stick and whooped, Ibrahim yelped and kicked the sand and Ali, the impresario, shouted encouragement as his feet beat out the rhythm on a truck’s bonnet.

  A few days later i
n Muscat, leaving the extravagance of the Hyatt hotel, our airport departure coincided with the arrival of the President of the Maldives. Four helicopters hovered around two huge Hercules cargo planes that had brought in the President’s entourage and whatever the Maldive Islands could offer to a land whose rocks and desert have seen tens of millions of years go by and whose culture, several thousands. As I climbed the aeroplane steps with a knapsack of frankincense and myrrh, I wondered how many coconuts you could get into a Maldive cargo plane.

  Antartica

  January 2001

  ‘I have not been everywhere but it’s on my list’ – Susan Sontag

  The Piaf sound-alike was still there at Sao Paulo Airport. Hidden from view but vocally calming the late boarders and informing the packaged, criss-crossing, sweating travellers. We had last met a year ago when she guided me to Campo Grande and the Pantanal; now, a little hoarser it seemed, she guided us towards Santiago.

  With the South American backbone of the Andes forming her eastern flank, Santiago sprawled over a plain with the River Maipo, grey and turbulent with summer’s melting snows, rushing through an urban forest of glass façades. Apartment buildings dripped little gardens from multi-layers of balconies and the streets were lined with sycamore, mimosa and palms. Herds of yellow buses thundered along downtown high rise ravines where skyscraper banks jostled for domination. Streetside booths were bright with Christmas wrappings and Jingle Bells, in Spanish, blared from shop doorways.

  The 17th century church of San Francisco, built of great blocks of masonry, now stands beside a central urban artery. Its parquet floor has been worn into ridges by the feet of the penitent who still seek solace in its cool interior, light candles and attach messages of gratitude around the altars of favourite saints. Elsewhere, a few grand buildings from colonial times remain: the opera house, the cathedral and several museums but nothing domestic or vernacular. At least nothing seen on a day’s visit before heat and weary feet drove us back to the 19-storied Hyatt with its ocean-sized pool.