The White City: Muscat — The road liss traveled

As I’ve mentioned, in backpacking circles, most people don’t have great things to say about some of the places I’ve just been, but everyone, and I do mean everyone has had great things to say about Oman. Doing a roadtrip around the country is the thing I’d REALLY been looking forward to most on this 15 day trip. The big city is stuff is fine/whatever. I’m not that much of a city guy, just small doses, getting out into the country is where all the fun and adventure is at! From the photos I’ve seen, Oman is a surprising stunning looking country compared to some of it’s Gulf counterparts. And there’s less ethical concerns as Oman is sometimes called the Switzerland of the Middle East as they stay out of everyone’s business and often act as mediators. So I was very excited to be heading there.

Muscat has quite a different feel from the other cities I’ve been to! For one thing, it’s got quite a bit smaller population, 1.7 million compared the 4 million of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. There’s only 5 million people in the whole country, (and over 50% are actual Omani). The interesting thing about Muscat is there are basically no skyscrapers. The rule for almost all buildings is that they are capped at five stories! How crazy is that? And most buildings are mandated to be painted white to keep a consistent cultural, traditional aesthetic. The lack up building upwards means the city is super spread out, so it makes it somewhat difficult deciding where to stay, because everything is so far away from each other and the bus system is not good.

One of the things I wanted to do was a one day island snorkeling trip, and the marina for that is also very close to the airport, there’s a bus there, and there’s also one of the very few hostels around, so that’s where I decided to stay. Al Mouj it’s called. Although the specific marina part is the most expensive part of town, so I stayed a bit outside of that, but it was still a very nice neighborhoods, not really many tourists, mostly locals and expats, with some fancy pants houses that looked something like this…

pretty typical styling, they love having everything walled off

But the marina, they’re going more luxury apartments overlooking the water for people with their boats/yachts and building it up a lot

Al Mouj Marina - not my photo. It’s very posh though. They might be more lenient on the 5 story rule here…

I think Muscat is also a pretty much a one day and done city, but with the addition of the boat trip I would have a full two days in Muscat. I was up bright and early for the 8am start to the snorkel trip. I was a bit surprised at how crowded the boat was and how international the crowd was! Everyone was tourists! It seemed like so far on this trip I had met very few actual, 100% tourists, so many people seemed to be there for work related purposes, so this was a nice change of pace.

It was about an hour to get out to the Daymaniyat Islands, which is cluster of islands, and they were very pretty. Well, the water around them was very pretty, the islands were mostly brown and rocky outcroppings. We did two snorkel spots with an ‘beach’ break in between, and a very nice lunch set up with pita and kebabs and hummus and labneh and vegetables and lots of stuff. I think some people were just there for the lunch! Then we got in round two of snorkeling. It was good, lots of turtles the first trip and then a few black tipped reef sharks on the second. No underwater photos though…

Then I had some time to hang out at the hostel, definitely an interesting crew. The wifi there was very good, so a few of the people were digital nomads, living on the cheap. Most were not from western countries, someone from Sudan, Egypt, Morocco, Russia, an Estonian girl learning Arabic, etc. Not much interest in road tripping though.

sunset at the nearest beach which involved a good 30 minutes of walking around construction sites.

People use many of the beaches to free camp and 4x4, in stark contrast to UAE and Qatar

oooh there’s the sunset. You’ll notice how much of Oman is just open space, dirt, nothing

Lamb dish. Actually from an Iraqi restaurant, but you eat a lot of lamb in Oman

The next morning I took the bus out to the Sultan Qaboos mosque, which involved walking 35 minutes to the bus stop, waiting 20 minutes, the actual bus ride, and then another 20 minute walk to Muscat’s biggest tourist attraction. WTF, they can’t drop you off there? Needless to say taking the bus in Muscat sucks. I’m not even sure why I do it when it’s not that expensive to take a ride share app. For the love of the game I guess. Logistical problem solving? I like walking?

When I was walking out the door I realized I forgot to wear pants, but it was hot outside and I’d be walking around and every mosque I’ve ever been to if you don’t have the proper attire they will give you some sort of cover up for free or for a small fee, like a sarong, so no biggie. Ha!

Well when I got there I found out that I could not enter the mosque unless I rented their full length traditional dress, the dishdasha. Oh man I was NOT very jazzed about this. I’ll tape a piece of fabric over my calves or something. But what choice did I have? So I very begrudgingly paid the stupid $15 or whatever to rent it, and had to try on three to get one to fit right, probably on account of my big bulging muscles. The material is just not very flexible. I did neglect to wear the traditional cap though cap, but it hindsight I probably should have just committed to the whole bit.

So finally I was on my way into the mosque feeling quite silly. But at least the mosque was mostly empty and peaceful. And as you guys know I hate taking photos of myself, but I guess I might as well get a photo with this thing on hahaha. I found a Korean guy taking timer selfies with a tripod, so I asked him, and of course he did the very Asian thing of having me pose in like 10 different ways! Okay, okay okay. So that was an interesting experience at the mosque. Beautiful place btw. It helps for photos that I got there right when it opened. Also I’m sure this is very relevant future advice for for many readers, DO NOT try to run in a dishdasha! I tried to jog up some stairs and there is just not enough room in the fabric and nearly wiped out.

gotta get that looking away side pose with the sun shining on my face lol

Then I had some time to kill before getting back to the airport to pick up my rental car. I normally don’t rent cars, as I like my scooters and places with public transportation, but in Oman it’s basically a necessity, and most people recommend getting a 4x4 or AWD for the mountain roads or driving on sand, so that’s what I did. Not cheap! Especially for just one person. But my cousin’s husband is pretty high up at Enterprise, and can give friends and family discounts, and wouldn’t you know it, there’s an Enterprise at the Muscat Airport! So that knocked around 1/3 of the price off, so thanks Pat! I would be getting a 2025 Hyundai Tucson AWD. Nice!

I wouldn’t start the road trip that day, but I wanted to check out the famous Muttrah Souk, which is on the far end of town, so maybe 35 minutes driving with no traffic, and basically impossible to get to by public transportation, so the car was very useful. Although I’m not used to new cars, so it was a little intimidating for me with the bells and whistles, I was afraid to touch anything. And the Forward Neutral Reverse is a rotating knob, which I very much did not like. The driving was smooth though.

The edge of the city approaching. And taking photos driving, like a boss….

Anyway, the Muttrah Souk is at the far south end of town where they can’t build anymore because you run into the mountains. Oman is very mountainous. There’s also a bit of hiking around and fort that overlooks the bay and the mountains around here. The fort was actually built by the Portuguese in the 1580’s as it has a very advantageous military position overlooking the entrance to the bay. Portugal ruled Oman for about 150 years in the 15 and 1600’s apparently. There’s nothing special about the fort but it is a good spot to watch the sunset!

The Muttrah Souk is Oman’s oldest and some say it’s the oldest marketplace in the world, so that’s quite the selling point, even if it did start to feel like I was getting souk fatigue. And I really do love that souk smell when you’re walking around, you really know you’re in an Arabic country. Its fun, it’s different. And I like the little alleyways when you get away from the main section of the souk. But I didn’t linger for too long because I always feel bad walking around getting called over to various shops and not planning on buying anything.

Back at the hostel I was talking again with the Sudanese Dutch guy (mostly Dutch) named Wail and he was interested in joining for the very first part of the roadtrip, so sure, of course! I have a whole 5 seater car to myself. And he speaks Arabic, which is awesome and super helpful. I wanted to start early, so we’d up at 6am to start at 6:30, for what would hopefully be the highlight of this whole trip, a one week road trip around the supposedly beautiful country of Oman.