There's a place in Oman where you stand on the edge of an abyss more than a thousand metres deep and find yourself speechless: Jebel Shams, the country's highest mountain, and its colossal canyon, which many call the 'Grand Canyon of Arabia'. It's no brochure exaggeration: the sheer walls of Wadi Nakhr plunge into the void on a scale that makes you feel tiny, and peering over them — carefully — is one of the most striking experiences the country has to offer. Up top, the air is cool, the silence immense and the views endless.
The gem is the Balcony Walk: a trail that follows a natural ledge carved into the canyon wall, tracing the edge of the abyss to an abandoned village. It's one of the most famous hikes in Arabia, not too difficult but spectacular, with the drop always at your side. And you don't need to be a mountaineer to enjoy the mountain: just reaching the viewpoints on the rim is enough to be struck by its beauty. At night, far from everything, the sky fills with stars and the cold reminds you just how high up you are.
This guide covers the practical side: why you need a 4x4 to get up, what the Balcony Walk is like and what precautions to take, where to look out over the canyon, where to sleep up top (simple camps and the odd hotel), what to bring (warm clothes, always — it's cold up there), and how to combine Jebel Shams with Al Hamra, Misfat al-Abriyeen, Nizwa and the rest of the Hajar Mountains. Jebel Shams is the highest, wildest and most dizzying face of Oman: a place to feel small in the face of vastness.
Jebel Shams, 'the Mountain of the Sun' (so called because it's one of the first places in the country to catch the sunrise and one of the last to lose the light), is the roof of Oman, at almost 3000 metres. Its great canyon, Wadi Nakhr / Wadi Ghul, was carved over millions of years by water cutting through the limestone of the Hajar Mountains, rocks that tens of millions of years ago lay under the sea and were lifted up by movements of the Earth's crust. On its heights and at the bottom of the canyon there were, and to some extent still are, small stone villages whose inhabitants lived off goat herding and minimal farming in extremely harsh conditions, and who became known for weaving rugs from dyed wool, which they now sell to visitors on the edge of the abyss. Like the rest of the mountainous interior, the area lived in great isolation until Oman's modernisation after 1970, which brought roads, services and, later, the nature tourism that now comes up to peer into the canyon and walk the Balcony Walk. We tell that story of mountain, canyon, shepherds and weavers on our history page.
Read the full history ↓Oman's great mountain range, the Hajar, with the Green Mountain of Jebel Akhdar and its rose terraces, Jebel Shams looking out over the 'Grand Canyon of Arabia', and stone villages watered by ancient falaj channels, the historical refuge of the Ibadi imamate.
Read the history of The Hajar Mountains →They depart from Al Hamra, 14 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Every country has its highest point, its roof, and Oman's is Jebel Shams: nearly 3000 metres of rock in the heart of the Hajar Mountains, the highest ground in the whole south-east of the Arabian Peninsula. Its name, 'the Mountain of the Sun', has a lovely explanation: because of its height, it is one of the first places in the country to catch the light at dawn and one of the last to lose it at dusk. The sun bathes it while everything else is still in shadow, and leaves it only after night has already fallen below.
But Jebel Shams is not famous for its height alone. It is famous for what that height hides: a colossal canyon, Wadi Nakhr (also called Wadi Ghul), whose almost vertical walls drop more than a thousand metres. It is one of the deepest canyons in the world, and its nickname says it all: the 'Grand Canyon of Arabia'. Looking down into that abyss from the rim, or following its wall along the Balcony Walk trail, is the mountain's great experience and one of the most striking in all of Oman.
In short, the Mountain of the Sun is a place of superlatives: the highest, the coldest, the one with the most dizzying views. It is a world of altitude, rock and clean air that contrasts sharply with the desert and the coast, and it shows another side of Oman, the wildest and most awe-inspiring. To understand it, you have to start with how such a landscape was formed.
The Grand Canyon of Arabia was not made by people or by some sudden cataclysm. It was made by the endless patience of water and time. The Hajar Mountains, whose summit is Jebel Shams, are made largely of limestone and of material that settled on the floor of an ancient sea tens of millions of years ago. As the plates of the Earth's crust collided and pressed against each other, they lifted and folded those seabeds until they became the mountains we see today. That is why geologists find marine fossils in the rock up here: proof that the roof of Oman was once under the ocean.
Once the mountains had risen, the water got to work. Rain, scarce as it is, and occasional floods wore away the rock for millions of years, opening cracks, deepening channels and slowly carving the huge gorge of Wadi Nakhr. Limestone also dissolves slowly in water, which sped up the formation of canyons, caves and sheer walls. The result is the abyss of more than a thousand metres that takes your breath away today.
Knowing this geological story changes the way you look at the canyon. It is not just a pretty landscape: it is an open book of the Earth's history, where the layers of rock read like the pages of an immense stretch of time, and where water, so scarce on the surface of Arabia, turns out to be the great sculptor of the land. The Hajar Mountains are in fact one of the best places in the world to study this kind of geological process, and they draw scientists from all over.
Inhospitable as it looks, Jebel Shams was never empty. On its heights, at the bottom of the canyon and on its slopes there were, and to some extent still are, small stone villages whose people developed an extraordinarily hard way of life. Surrounded by rock, cold nights, scarce water and very little farmable land, these communities lived mainly by herding goats, animals able to make the most of the mountain's sparse vegetation, and by minimal farming on small terraces watered by springs, where a few palm trees, fruit trees and subsistence crops grew.
The abandoned village of As Sab, at the end of the Balcony Walk, tucked under a rock overhang in the middle of the canyon wall, is the most impressive witness to that life on the edge: people who lived literally hanging over the abyss, relying on a spring and a scrap of land to survive. Wadi Ghul, at the mouth of the canyon, has another evocative ruined village. They are windows onto a past of almost unimaginable effort.
One particular tradition of these mountain communities was weaving woollen rugs. With dyed wool from their sheep and goats, families wove rugs and hangings by hand, which were at once everyday objects, a source of income and a form of cultural expression. That craft lives on today in the rugs the locals lay out on the canyon rim to sell to visitors: a thread that links today's tourism directly to the traditional life of these mountains. Buying one really is taking home a piece of that history.
Like the rest of Oman's mountainous interior, the Jebel Shams region lived in deep isolation for centuries. The Hajar Mountains were a formidable barrier, and the interior long kept an identity of its own, tied to the religious imamate that often challenged the authority of the sultan on the coast. The villages up here were almost closed worlds, connected to the outside only by footpaths and mule tracks, with a subsistence economy and very little contact with what was happening below.
That isolation began to break down, as in the rest of the country, from 1970 onwards, with the 'renaissance' driven by Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Modernisation brought roads, basic services, schools and healthcare to regions that had never had them. Building roads and tracks that made it possible to drive to the canyon area was key: it turned a practically inaccessible place into a destination within reach of anyone with a good 4x4. Many families from the harshest villages moved into newer, more comfortable homes, leaving behind the old stone villages we now see in ruins.
Modernisation also meant, at some point, a military installation on the very summit of Jebel Shams (now a restricted area), taking advantage of the strategic position of the country's highest point. So in just a few decades the Mountain of the Sun went from being an isolated refuge of shepherds and weavers to a connected place, partly militarised at its peak and, above all, opened to the world by an unexpected route: nature tourism.
In recent decades, Jebel Shams has become one of Oman's most sought-after natural destinations. Its Grand Canyon, cool climate, dizzying views and famous Balcony Walk draw travellers from all over the world who come up to peer into the abyss, walk the ledge along the wall, watch sunset and sunrise over the canyon and sleep in the camps on the rim under a sky full of stars. It is the alpine, wild face of a country many people associate only with the desert.
That tourism brought a new economy to the mountain. Simple places to stay sprang up on the canyon rim, along with local guides for the hikes and a market for traditional rugs and crafts that used to have few buyers. For the communities in the area, whose traditional life of herding and subsistence farming had become unsustainable, tourism is now an important source of income and a reason to stay and to value their heritage. It is a profound change from the hardship of the past.
As with any beautiful and fragile place, the challenge is to enjoy it with respect. Looking into a canyon with no railings calls for caution; the Balcony Walk demands care near the edges; and the mountain environment asks you not to leave litter and to respect local communities, buying their products and valuing their culture. In all its vastness, Jebel Shams sums up much of what makes Oman unique: the power of nature, the mark of a very hard and persistent human life, and the transformation of a country that, in barely two generations, opened even its highest and most hidden corners to the world. Standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon of Arabia, feeling the cool wind and the void at your feet, is one of the purest ways to feel that grandeur.
