Omani Escapade 1

June 17th 2011 Day 1 : Forts, caves and a mountain

We made an early start at 5:15 am. We were keen to get to the border by 7ish as we were taking the longer yet scenic route through Al-ain..however getting into Oman is quite a confusing drive as we entered Buraimi and then again entered UAE.. apparently the border is scattered...some how after asking several people who all pointed in different directions, a kind soul at the petrol station provided the much need assistance in form of directions understandable by us.. and off we were to Buraimi (omani part)... 

Our aim was to spend the night in Nizwa and as we traversed from Buraimi to Nizwa we saw many interesting places and monuments..our first stopover was at a place called Ibri.. ibri was a small town and had a fort.. we were quite impressed to see a fort so well maintained ..but this is was nothing as compared to rest of them (apparently Oman has many forts and castles). We had missed the Friday market as we reached Ibri by around 1030ish...

 

Next we made our way towards Jabreen...this place also had a castle and it was very very beautifully maintained..even though we were late and it was closing time already, the guard was nice to let us wander around and leave at our convenience.. from here we moved towards  bahla..we had lunch in bahla but did not explore it as we wanted to get to Al hoota Caves ...the Al hoota caves contain stalagmites and stalactites .. also worth mentioning is that these formations sometimes resemble a posture or an animal and we were show a rock formation which looked like a lion, an elephant face, an old man sitting with his hands on his face, etc...Unfortunately  we were not allowed to take photographs there :(

From al hoota caves we made our way towards Bahla for lunch and then rested for half an hour before moving towards the Mountains of the Sun aka Jabal Shams.. this is the highest mountain range in Oman and overlooks the second largest canyon in the world Wadi Ghum.. 

the route to this mountain was through the beautifully preserved village called Al Hamra (it is said to be the oldest village in Oman where time has literally stood still)...The route to Jabal Shams was not for the faint hearted and a 4WD would have made the inclined slopes more easier to traverse through ...however we heaved along with our saloon car and though the road was in very good condition for most of the road, the slope of the road was quite another story...however once we went up we forgot to see the km on the odometer and at one point were confused to go ahead as we seemed to be headed downhill..thinking that we missed the top we reversed and took a detour off road and were at the periphery of the range ... it was a breath taking view and though there was not enough place to turn the car comfortably we still managed to make it downhill... along the way up and down we saw many areas which were flatten and there were 2 goal nets on either side..soccer is the favourite game there and we could find many many patches of land levelled for  playing soccer...

As we retraced our route to go back to nizwa, the evening was coming down on us ... we all were tired and headed towards nizwa to find a place for the night.. we stayed in a place called tanuf residency which had basic amenities..we went to pizza hut for a bite and then fell asleep like logs...

June 18th 2011 Day 2 : Daggers, pots, Jins, shells and aphrodisiac confection

We woke next morning and hunted around for a south Indian restaurant and had some wholesome breakfast... from here we went to explore Niwza... Nizwa had a fort and souq area near the fort which was quite interesting.. Niwza had an old world’s charm about it as it was just opening up as we reached..Nizwa is known for its silver craftsmanship ...we took a round of the city and finally decided to get some souveniors .. 

we saw an omani dagger worth 2000 OR ..it was the shop owner’s grandfathers and the handle of the dagger  was made from rhinos horn...after that we decided to see the fort and make our way towards bahla and tanuf before heading out to muscat.. 

the fort was not as beautiful as the Jabreen castle yet held our attention as the views from the fort were very nice.. we could see the city in directions infinitely till the mountains...

From here we moved to Tanuf to the water manufacturing plant..alas we could only see the plant from outside and not inside ..the best part of this trip was that there were always date trees lining the streets and sometimes they were low enough to pluck the dates... we did not know who was the owner of the tree but nonetheless it was fun ..

 from here we moved to Bahla and we saw the Bahla fort from the outside as we had enough of forts already ...Bahla is famous for its potteries ..it is a vase shaped rounded pot which is hung from an iron handle by hand made rope.. it is rumoured that Bahla is full of magic and these pots hold jins..after hunting for some potteries and not finding the traditional we made our way back to nizwa and picked up the same from the souq there..

From there we proceeded towards Muscat...and from there we moved towards Sohar ..on the way we passed a fishing village in Barka and pulled over to soak up some sun and collect some shells ..it was a deserted beach and it was after many many years i got back to collecting shells.. found some new kinds of shells instead of the regular white ones..it was a fun moment for fatema and zahid too as they splashed waves on each other... after that we went looking for omani halva ... as drove around we noticed an extraordinary amount of women’s tailoring shops ..these shops were consecutive and not scattered and sometime four or five similar shops would be together.. 

we drove towards sohar and finally hatta and entered UAE.. heading towards dubai and looking forward to the next trip..