There is a ridge in the Omani interior where stone beehive towers still stand in a line against the sky, and they are about five thousand years old. The Bat area, near the oasis town of Ibri on the edge of the Hajar mountains, holds some of the best preserved remains of the Bronze Age in the Arabian peninsula, along with the nearby sites of Al-Khutm and Al-Ayn. The beehive tombs were built in the third millennium BC, in the so-called Umm an-Nar period, from stacked, dressed stones, and the settlement towers beside them watched over a landscape of wadis and date palms.
The people who built them were part of a trading world. Oman was then known to the Sumerians as Magan, a source of copper that was shipped to Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, and the settlements along the mountains grew rich in the process. Standing among the tombs at dusk, with the stones glowing and the mountains beyond, it is not hard to see why they chose these ridges. The area is also tied to the falaj system, the ancient channels that bring water from mountain springs to the fields, and which still operate in many oases. UNESCO listed the sites in 1988.
The riding here is mostly straight, hot and spacious. The road from Nizwa towards Ibri crosses desert plains with the Hajar range as a constant backdrop, and the light at the beginning and end of the day is magnificent. Summer temperatures can pass forty-five degrees, and riding in the middle of the day is both foolish and tiring, so plan for the winter months, from November to March, when the days are warm and the nights cool. Sand can blow across the road, and camels sometimes appear without warning.
Ibri is a substantial town of about a hundred thousand people, with fuel, supermarkets and many small cafes, and the last place to make sure that you have water and a full tank. Beyond the main road, services are thin, and the tracks to the sites are rough in places. Drink a lot, wear light, long sleeves, and accept an offer of dates and coffee if one comes.