because the best stories are our own
Home: Middle East: Oman: Mountains: Hoota:
everything changes
She was thinner, with a mannered gauntness /
as she paused just inside the double /
glass doors to survey the room, silvery cape /
billowing dramatically behind her. What’s this,
T S Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922
Sometime between painting ceilings, Leonardo da Vinci said, “With time, and water, everything changes.” He would have got even more poetic if he’d delved deep under the Western Hajar. Here, where rock that was once ocean floor begins to build itself into Oman’s highest mountains, the Al Hoota cave system stands theatrically lit – and accessible to the tourist – for the first time.