“Beauty has an address” is the tourist promotion of Oman, but from my experience when I traveled in beautiful Oman, it was very hard to find address in this country even in GPS navigator or Google map especially in the case of the beautiful archaeological site of Al Ayn which at the end I had to use Google Earth and memorized all route details in order to reach the place.
On the expanding four lanes highway to Ibri from Bahla, there was a junction in the middle of desert that has a small petrol station, I turn right to the small paved road with no signpost next to that petrol station and continued on this way, passing many dry rivers and villages until I saw stunning view of Jebel Misht, one of the most impressive mountain in Oman. The surrounding Hajar Mountains were equally picturesque and interestingly show layer of rocks moved by seismic force that if in Europe or in China may already listed by some types of UNESCO program. When I reached the village of Al Ayn, again no sign at all I just presumed by myself, the area was lovely with green gardens with some palm groves, and I started to see the stunning view of a row of magnificent beehive tombs on the high hill behind the village together with unbelievable beautiful Jebel Misht as the background. Again I saw the beehive tombs but there was no way for car to reach the place or tourist information center, something that happened all the time in Oman. I found small unpaved road to someone house across the dry river, at first there should be a hiking route from that house to beehive tomb, but no! that house’s wall blocked all the possible pathway to reach tombs. So I decided to park the car on the dry riverbed and walked on such river until I found the small hiking route to reach the tombs. The size of the beehive tombs was my biggest surprise, these tombs were quite big and they were very well preserved, hard to believe its antiquity of 3000 B.C. I took a lot of photographs hoping to capture their beauty with Jebel Misht.
Sadly that there was no any information center to tell the outstanding value of this place, everything seem to be a mystery that why this necropolis be here in the very isolated area of Oman, I had a lot of questions for this site but at the end I really enjoyed Al Ayn, this world heritage site in my opinion, was the most exotic one in Oman and probably one of the most memorable site. I also recommended visiting this “Beauty has no address” in the late afternoon, as the sunset will make Jebel Misht and surroundings including beehive tombs at their best with beautiful and romantic red and pink tones but beware a lot of bugs and insects from the dry river bed.