High On The Mountain Top

[solabeirtan]

A visit to the rose farms near the Saudi Arabian city of Taif,

ended with a startling and memorable encounter at an airport.

By Matthew Teller / BBC

East of Mecca, Saudi Highway 15 scoots across the sweltering Tihama plain. Switchbacks as tight as the coils of a desert viper climb 6,000ft (1,800m) to Al-Hada Mountain, the Mountain of Tranquillity.

 

The Prophet Muhammad came this way 1,392 years ago, resting in the highland city of Taif and sampling the local grapes.

 

Today, Taif is the focus of Saudi Arabia's multi-billion-pound domestic tourism industry.

 

There are luxury hotels, holiday apartments and family picnic spots. And since Ottoman times, farms all around Taif have cultivated the damask rose, a pink, 30-petalled beauty.

 

By sunrise at this time of year, Saleh Al-Nimri is out in his fields with a team of workers, picking as many as 40,000 roses in a morning. "If we leave the rose until noon," he told me, "all its perfume will evaporate."

 

That perfume of Arabia is indescribable - robust, spicy and dizzyingly complex. It is, almost literally, a world away from the clear simplicity of an English rose.

 

the most interesting part ....

 

 

40,000 roses can be picked in one morning by Saleh Al-Nimri and team...

"....But the premium product is the slender film of rose oil left floating on top, which sells for an astonishing £40,000 a pint ($40,000 a litre). It is only available in vials half the size of your finger. The scent of it knocks you out."

[treehugger]

I've always stopped.

[solabeirtan]

I've always stopped.

You have visited there ? Did you read the article, about the Rose Oil @ apx. $60,000 / pint ?