Anantara Al Jabal Al Akhdar Review: The Arabian Canyon

Al Jabal Al Akhdar — the Green Mountain — rises from the Hajar range’s central massif to two thousand metres above the Omani plateau, high enough that the altitude cools the air to temperatures that the coastal cities never experience and that produce, on the mountain’s cultivated terraces, the Damask roses and the pomegranates and the walnuts and the apricots that make the Jabal Al Akhdar’s agricultural villages the most productive highland farming community in Arabia. The mountain’s specific ecology exists because the altitude intercepts the moisture that the Indian Ocean’s monsoon carries north, and the terraces that the villages have carved into the mountain’s face over centuries to capture this moisture are the highest expression of the agricultural intelligence that the arid landscape’s inhabitants have developed in their negotiations with the desert’s terms.

The Anantara Al Jabal Al Akhdar Resort is on the canyon’s rim — a cliff edge above a canyon whose drop is three hundred metres to the valley floor below — at an altitude of two thousand metres that makes it one of the highest five-star resort properties in the world. The infinity pool on the cliff edge, the canyon visible from every room that faces the correct direction, and the Diana’s Point terrace — named for the Princess of Wales who stood here in 1986 and looked across the canyon at the mountains beyond in the specific manner of someone who knew she was looking at something that deserved to be remembered — constitute a resort whose primary amenity is the view and whose architecture serves that view with the disciplined intelligence that the view’s quality warrants.

The Canyon View

The canyon below the Anantara is not the Grand Canyon — it is not the Grand Canyon’s scale, and the comparison serves neither. What it is is an Arabian canyon of considerable depth and considerable beauty, whose specific geological character — the Hajar limestone’s banding, the layer colours, the terraces of the ancient villages visible on the opposite wall — produces the specific visual experience of looking across a significant space at a significant landscape that the great mountain resorts of the world are built around. The morning light on the canyon’s western wall arrives before the sun reaches the resort’s terrace and illuminates the rock in the specific warm tones of the low-angle Arabian sun that the Gulf’s latitude and the clear desert air produce at an intensity that no coastal property can replicate. The evening light reverses the illumination across the canyon, and the cocktail on Diana’s Point terrace at sunset constitutes the experience that no brochure photograph successfully communicates because the colour and the warmth of the air and the smell of the mountain herbs in the specific coolness of the altitude all contribute to an experience that the photograph can only record two of the five components of.

The Damask Rose Season

The Damask rose harvest at Al Jabal Al Akhdar happens in April and May — the brief window when the roses planted in the mountain terraces by the village women flower in the specific profusion that the mountain’s altitude and its spring temperatures produce. The rose water distillery in the village of Al Ayn — forty minutes by 4WD from the resort along the mountain track — processes the harvest using copper stills whose design has not changed since the Ottoman period, and the specific smell of the fresh rose water being drawn from the still in the April morning is the most concentrated floral experience that Arabia produces. The Anantara’s concierge arranges the village visit during the harvest window; outside of April and May, the distillery is open but the harvest’s specific quality — the flowers, the steam, the condensation running down the copper — is not present.

The Via Ferrata

The via ferrata — the fixed iron route that descends the canyon’s cliff face from the resort’s level to the canyon floor below — is the most specifically adventurous activity available from any Middle Eastern luxury resort and the experience that most clearly distinguishes a stay at the Anantara from a stay at the comparable altitude resorts whose landscape is beautiful but whose activity programme is spa and golf. The via ferrata requires no prior climbing experience — the fixed routes and the guide’s instruction manage the descent safely — and produces the specific quality of a physical experience whose context (the Arabian canyon, the altitude, the specific age and scale of the rock) is exactly what it looks like from the terrace above, which is extraordinary.

The Access

The mountain road to Al Jabal Al Akhdar requires a 4WD vehicle — the government checkpoint at the mountain’s base confirms the vehicle’s certification before allowing access, and the resort’s transfer service operates 4WD vehicles from Muscat and from the nearest city of Nizwa. The road is the road it is because the mountain is two thousand metres and the gradient is what the mountain’s height requires in the distance the road has to cover. It is a good road by mountain standards. It takes approximately two hours from Muscat, forty minutes from Nizwa. The altitude’s effect on guests arriving from sea level is minor — a slight headache in some guests on the first evening, resolved by the morning. The temperature difference between the coast and the mountain is twelve to eighteen degrees Celsius, which makes the packing advice (a layer for the evenings, a warm layer for the early mornings at the canyon’s edge) more practically relevant than it would be for a sea-level resort in the same country.

Practical Details

115 rooms and villas. Full-board and room-only rates. Rates from approximately $400-$600 per night. The 4WD transfer from Muscat International Airport arranged through the resort. The via ferrata bookable through the activities desk — available year-round, weather permitting. The rose water distillery visit April through May only.