Jebel Shams is the highest mountain in Oman, 3,009 metres of pale limestone in the northern Hajar, and the ground beside it drops almost a thousand metres into Wadi Ghul, the deepest gorge on the Arabian Peninsula. The summit itself is a closed military post, so the day is spent on the plateau at around 2,000 metres, along the lip of that drop. The plateau simply ends. There is no railing anywhere, the rim rock is loose, and from the edge the farms and palm gardens on the floor are scattered green specks a long way under you. The far wall is close enough to count its ledges, banded grey and cream; the stone still holds corals from the shallow sea it formed in. In the last hour of the day the sun comes at the gorge side-on and the line of shadow climbs the opposite wall; the warmth goes the moment it drops behind the ridge. At the viewpoints women and children meet the cars with striped black and red rugs, woven from the wool of the long-haired goats that graze these cliffs.
The walk is called the Balcony. From the hamlet of Al Khitaym a ledge cut into the canyon wall traces the cliff for a few kilometres, flat underfoot and unfenced, with the drop at your shoulder the whole way. Most people stay the night, pitching tents along the rim once the day-trippers have driven down. Winter nights on the plateau fall below freezing in a hard wind, and in summer Omani families come up precisely because the air stays cool while the lowlands pass 40°C. The light reaches you here before anywhere else in the country. At the end of the ledge stands As Sab, a hamlet under an enormous rock overhang, with a spring pool above it and terraces cut below. About fifteen families lived there, growing wheat, pomegranates, lemons and chilli and grinding their grain at a small stone mill. They left around 1970 for Ghul, at the mouth of the canyon, and you can walk into the houses they closed behind them.