Jebel Hafeet

The UAE's second-highest peak — a 1,249-metre limestone massif with a switchback road that is one of the finest drives in the Gulf.

Jebel Hafeet is the highest point in Abu Dhabi emirate and the second-highest in the UAE overall, reaching 1,249 metres at its summit. By any standard it is a modest mountain, but in the context of a landscape that is otherwise almost entirely flat, the effect is extraordinary. The mountain rises almost sheer from the desert to the south and southwest of Al Ain, forming the natural boundary between the UAE and Oman.

The summit road is paved the entire way and accessible by car, taxi, or bicycle (the road is popular with cyclists on cooler winter mornings). The drive takes around 20 minutes from the base, winding up through increasingly dramatic limestone scenery. At the top, a hotel and café sit beside a viewpoint platform from which, on a clear day, you can see across the desert plain to the salt flats and dunes of the Empty Quarter to the southwest. The mountain itself is almost entirely barren — pale grey limestone with occasional scrub vegetation in sheltered gullies.

At the base of the mountain on the eastern side, the Mercure Grand Jebel Hafeet hotel has outdoor hot springs fed by natural warm groundwater. The pools are nothing spectacular, but a soak after a long day of sightseeing is genuinely restorative, and the setting against the cliff face is unusual. Check in advance whether the springs are open to non-guests.

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A story
Jebel Hafeet rises out of a flat gravel plain with a sudden drama that makes it look almost artificial — a folded limestone ridge worn smooth by millions of years of wind and occasional rain. The road to the summit was built in the 1960s and winds up through 11 kilometres of tight switchbacks, each bend revealing a wider view across the desert floor toward the distant Hajar Mountains in Oman. Come up in the late afternoon and you will watch the shadow of the mountain crawl across the plain below as the sun drops, turning the rock from blinding white to deep amber before the lights of Al Ain flicker on.