// OMAN

ne misstep and I ’ ll be swallowed whole . A pale path , slim as a grass snake , wriggles around the rim of the canyon . I plant my foot firmly into the rocky rubble and peer gingerly over the edge . The ground yawns away from me and my stomach tumbles into the abyss 1,640 feet below . It ’ s almost too much for the eye to take in . A thousand salt-and-peppered layers of light and dark sediment eroded by seasonal rain over millennia into endless ridges and ravines . All sense of scale is lost until something winged flickers into view . An Egyptian eagle , its black wingtips splayed wide like fingers and its white back flashing against the gun-metal gray sky , entirely dwarfed by the mammoth gulf of the valley .

This is the Balcony Trek through Wadi Ghul — Oman ’ s equivalent of the Grand Canyon . Known as the Switzerland of the Middle East , Oman is an extremely safe sultanate that is very easy and secure to visit . It ’ s very friendly and warm towards tourists , it ’ s a beautiful country — and this trail is undoubtedly one of its most unforgettable treks .

Hidden among the Al-Hajar Mountains in the northeast , Wadi Ghul spreads from the foot of Jebel Shams — the country ’ s highest peak and known poetically as the Mountain of the Sun because it ’ s the first point to receive the dawn light in Oman .

A two-and-a-half mile , four-hour roundtrip hike that wobbles between 18,000 and 20,400 feet elevation , the Balcony Trek is waymarked with red- yellow- and whitestriped flags painted at intervals on the rocks . Wadi Ghul ’ s not nicknamed ‘ Monster Valley ’ for nothing . Stone middens piled up on the edge of the escarpment warn you to watch your footing . Goats appear on the far hillsides like shaggy ghostly spirits , before vanishing upon next glance . Even the needle-sharp thorns on the acacia trees and razor-blade-armed cacti sprouting from the crevices seem to scream ‘ Do Not Enter .’

We hike , single file , into the belly of the beast ; tight-roping on two feet as we pick our way over boulders and beneath overhangs that arch over us like almighty ocean waves .

And then , unfathomably , man-made structures start to appear . The remnants of a mosque , corrals for goats , mud-

Clockwise from top : Inside a cavern in the Jebel Shams ; a desert cactus plant ; a goat at Jebel Shams

images : getty

24 // pos t c a rds