Final Day of Exploring Oman

Tuesday night when I checked into my hotel, I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the lobby and the room looked, as this hotel was less expensive than the one in Ruwi/Muscat. The Ruwi Hotel wasn’t bad, although the carpet could have used some shampooing.

I sat and typed out the text for my blog and went over my plans for the next day, and about 1:00am turned in. I peeled back the cover to do my final check to make sure the bed sheets looked clean. I quickly found a body hair, which led to another, and another, and another. Gross. I decided to pull back the comforter and lay on top of the sheets, but there was a big ball of long hair. Grosser! So I threw back on all my clothes, and slept on top of all the blankets.

Elevator Lobby at Hotel Safari-seemed nice enough

The next morning, I went in the bathroom to get ready, when I turned on the water, only a trickle came out and that quickly diminished to nothing. The water was turned off! I had used it the night before with no problem, but now there was none. Great. I guess I’m not showering today, good thing I was planning on trekking through abandoned villages.

After some time in the local internet café (since my hotel also did not have high speed internet), I hit the Nizwa souk to pick up the obligatory silver Omani Khanjar. Nizwa souk was much smaller than Muttrah, but organized by what you are purchasing. Most of the souk is actually set aside for food. There was a Meat Souk, Fish Souk, Fruits and Vegetables Souk, Goat Market, and Date (the fruit, not the relationship, although that would be neat) Souk. I think these are busier on the weekends, as they were pretty quite today. (The goat souk was empty when I went by.)

Nizwa Souk

The first archeological site I planned to see was the Nizwa fort, which is right in the middle of the city. This fort was very deceptive from the outside. Nestled in the middle of the city with many modern buildings around, it and the souk wrapped right around the bottom of it, its difficult to

Living Room in Nizwa Fort

truly sense the size. Once inside however, upon exploring the various rooms it seemed to go on forever. Each meeting room, lounge, bedroom was much larger than any I had seen in the other forts. I estimated there were 30 rooms in the fort, but on my way out I checked the map and there were actually more than 60! Trekking up and down the stairs from area to area was exhausting, especially the long climb to the top of the main fortress tower.

Tower of Nizwa Fort

Signs on the walls highlighted many of the ingenious defense aspects of the tower, including trapdoors in the stairwell that would be opened in case the enemy breached the tower, that would send them plummeting to their death. Carefully placed “death holes” in the floors of the upper levels, just over doorways in the lower levels, where boiling date honey would be poured on attackers if they made it that far. Many and various interesting ways to kill your attacking enemy!

Hallway in Nizwa Fort

Another amazing aspect about Nizwa fort was the multitude of enormous grasshoppers all over the place. These things were 3-4 inches long. Later while driving, one hit my windshield. It was like hitting a small bird.

Nizwa, from on top of the fort

From this fort, I set out to see another fort. The Bahla fort. This is the oldest fort in Oman, and is registered with UNESCO as a world heritage site. My guide book said that in 2006 it was undergoing massive restoration and was closed. That is still the case today. It looks like they have made quite a bit of progress, but still have quite a ways to go on this massive structure. There were workers working on it as I wandered around it. According to my guidebook, this fort was built around 1000 B.C. (I have seen conflicting reports thought that dated it at 1000 years younger though. Nonetheless this thing is old! All I could do is walk around it, and explore some of the ruined homes near by.

Bahla Fort-Oldest Fort in Oman

I do have to mention, while I don’t know anything about fort restoration, and perhaps there isn’t any better option, but I don’t necessarily like they way Oman has restored these. In order to protect and strengthen them, it appears they have encased all the walls in concrete. This gives all the walls a flat concrete look. In the few spots where they have exposed the original walls, they looked like bricks/stones, as you would expect. But on the whole, the forts look like they are only 50 years old, because of the style of the restoration.

Following this I headed out to Wadi Ghul. This is at the foot of a Wadi that has an old ruined Cliffside village, and a new modern village across the wadi. To get to the village required a long drive into a gorge in the jebels. I then needed to turn off the main road onto a gravel road that took me to the bottom of the wadi. And drove on the washed out stones until I got to the point that I was worried about getting stuck. Now I was about 50 feet below the Cliffside villiage and had to find my way up. At the bottom was a lush garden with lots of trees for shade,

Garden in Wadi Ghul

and a running falaj to keep everything moist. The way up to the villiage was actually pretty simple, but my book made it confusing. So I ended up climbing up a steep rock embankment to end on a plateau partly up the cliff, with no where else to go. I found my way back down, and ran into some of the village children selling embroidered key chains. I bought two, on the condition they tell me how to get up to the old village, which they did.

Old Villiage of Ghul

The village itself was quite remarkable. Walls were large pieces of stone, (instead of the mud brick in so many of the other areas. The stone was interesting. It was red and black. And I stepped on a piece, and it shifted, and rang for 5 seconds. I thought there was a piece of metal under it. (The sound was like dropping a crow bar.) I picked it up and looked, but it was the rock that rang out. (Does that make this Iron ore or something like it?) There was a long main street that meandered in between the various houses, and I even found some two story houses. All with quite the view of the wadi far below.

Inside a Home in old Ghul

My last ruin for the day was the village of Tanuf. This one had an interesting story along with it. Forty years ago, Sultan Taimur (the current Sultan’s father, but not nearly as good natured---the current Sultan, Qaboos ousted his father in a pieceful coup, along with some western

Ruined Building in Tanuf (sorry for the camera strap)

assistance, which sparked the beginning of dramatic progress in Oman after centuries of war and oppression.) had some sort of an uprising against him started by someone from the village, so he ordered the city be bombed, which it was quite extensively. Interestingly, while I was there, a bulldozer was clearing a strip right through the middle of the old village apparently for a street to be laid.

Ruins at Tanuf

After another exhausting day, I had to head the almost 200 kilometers back to the Muscat-Seeb airport, and get ready for my flight to Dubai. On the way there though I stopped at a local hypermarket (Think of a cross between a Super Target and a miniature Westfield shopping center.) to do some more souvenir shopping.

My flight was at 12:30 am, which got me into the Dubai airport about 1:45. It was an absolute madhouse!!! Thousands of people everywhere. Eventually I made it out. My hotel was not far, but unfortunately my cab driver hadn’t heard of it and didn’t know exactly where it was, so he had to ask for directions a couple times, and call the hotel to find it.

Decent place. Nice clean sheets which is a definite plus! They even smelled clean. This was the hotel I was worried about as I booked in a pinch, (my first choice was damaged in the extensive flooding that occurred here 1 month ago) and it had mixed reviews. Seems to be catering to Russian tourists for some reason, but it is nice.

Its now Thursday morning in Dubai, and I’m exhausted after only a 4 and a half hours sleep, but am heading out to see the town.