Finishing Up, Roadtrip Days 5-6-7 — The road liss traveled

BLEEP BLEEEP BLEEEP!! 5:30 am. Time to roll out of bed and hit the road. Jebel Shams sunrise at 6:45am and it takes about an hour to drive up there, go go go. Completely pitch black outside when I left. I was driving a little fast for being on windy mountain roads in the dark. But I lived. And made it up there with plenty of time to spare actually, as you have to wait for the sun to climb over the mountains a bit! I forgot about that part. I’m probably putting too much effort into these completely cloudless sunrises and sunsets… but with only a two week trip, I still have plenty of energy for it. No travel fatigue just quite yet. Although waking up for the sunrise almost every single day is maybe a bit much. Anyway the photography was pretty mediocre, although I had a goat pose for me, what a gentleman.

that little white line on the bottom right is the trail, looks more dangerous from up here

Goat delay. This was the shot, but I had the wrong lens on

Was that worth the 5:30 alarm? Hmm. Up next would be Oman’s most famous hike, the balcony walk, an 8km/5mile out and back hike that traverses the along the edge of the canyon, giving you some nice exposure. And as far as I could tell, I was the first person on it this morning. Which was great obviously, the more places I get all to myself, the better. And I’d beat the heat. The hike is pretty safe, you never really get close to the edge and views are great, plus there’s random goats hopping along the rocks. It’s a pretty snappy trek, and hour out, and hour back, plus however long for breaks. There were A LOT more people coming down on the trail as I was headed back up and out!

You never really feel all that close to edge, but still pretty dramatic views

Back to the nice coffeeshop to get my usual cappuccino and that would conclude my morning at Jebel Shams. A pretty good one. Back down the mountain and back to my guesthouse in Al Hamra. I’d have some daylight time to actually check out it’s abandoned village area, as my hotel was basically in the middle of it. Getting a bit same samey at this point though. The only thing of interest in the rubble was some of the metal doors still in place. A couple businesses were operating in it, so it wasn’t completely devoid of people. It would be cool if they could restore more of the very old buildings and actually use them, rather than have it be another ghost town. And there was a small museum, but it’s tour only, and I didn’t feel like doing that. I found a leafy outdoor café to eat some lunch and went back to the room to relax for a bit.

I was surprised how how green it was, lots of date palms around

I didn’t really have any plans until late afternoon when I’d visit Misfat Al Abriyeen, a traditional mountain village that’s a few hundred years old, though renovated quite a bit for tourists, and pedestrian only. It wasn’t far outside of Al Hamra. You maybe have to walk 500 meters from where you park to get to the entrance of the village. The village itself is actually tiny, you walk through the whole thing in 20 minutes tops, but the nice thing is the surrounding area is all palm trees and there are all these irrigation canals, the falaj system, that have been used for thousands of years to irrigate crops in the middle eastern desert climates. I then caught the sunset from one of the rooftop cafes, although the views weren’t particularly great or anything. Then it was back to the same shisha place and back to that same Yemeni restaurant because I liked it so much. Déjà vu.

Entrance to the coffeshop, beaming you up

The next morning I bought the hotel breakfast and the guy brought a big tray of food to my room, and I was like ‘I’ll eat on the rooftop,’and he told me it was fine to eat in the room. Uhh ok. So I brought my tray of food up to rooftop by myself, why wouldn’t you eat on the rooftop?! And there I met an Italian couple, who said the exact same thing! Although they were not in high spirits as they damaged their 2WD car on the Jebel Shams mountain road, yikes. So their trip was temporarily on hold as they had to wait and see what the mechanic would have to say about it. Ooof, that sucks. But that’s why you suck it up and get a 4x4 for this type of roadtrip!

morning view of the old town at the rooftop ‘restaurant’

Coincidentally, today (also my last full day) would be my most adventurous one with the car, and I was slightly nervous. I was heading into the snake canyon, which is strictly 4x4 only, you’re just not gonna make it with a 2wd car. Once you start going down into the canyon it’s all dirt/rock/gravel roads, and they’re steep and bumpy! And in some parts very dusty and sandy with bad traction. But now I was getting the hang of these roads, it was pretty fun, a nice challenge how to best navigate each section without banging around the car too much. And everything is easier than sand dunes! The only slightly tricky parts were narrow sections if someone was coming the other way.

As always, down at the bottom of the canyon were wadi hikes, two of them. One you’d need a guide and ropes to get you in and out of certain spots, the other was doable on foot. I obviously opted for the one without ropes, although in hindsight I do kind of wish I signed up with one of the tour companies for the adventure tour, it sounded quite fun and would have been a good way to meet more people. Outside of my buddy Wail, all I’d met were couples on this roadtrip. In hindsight I probably could have posted on the Oman FB group or something to see if anyone wanted to tag along, as I’m sure there’s some backpackers out there who don’t want to (or can’t) pay the car rental costs for just one person.

But anyway, my wadi hike was very nice as usual. Once again, nobody around, this one involved some rock scrambling, and eventually you get to a point where the hike ends and you have to swim. So I stashed my bag somewhere and started swimming through the canyon a bit. Although I didn’t make it too far because the on-land parts were just killing my bare feet on the rocks. I needed some water shoes! But swimming through these canyons is just so much fun.

This is where the trail ends and you have to swim

So that was basically the whole afternoon, driving dirt 4x4 roads through the mountains and doing my daily wadi hike + swim. Fantastic. It was a little tougher going up and out than coming down, you just have to be aggressive with accelerator. Pedal to the metal! But totally fine. I of course stopped at the coffeeshop with view when you get out of the canyon, and then it was onto Nizwa, the biggest city in the interior region, which has the most popular fort in the country, the aptly named Nizwa Fort; as well as an old town (of course) and a lively market/souk. And as usual the drive getting there was excellent!

I checked into a private room at a hostel/guesthouse and was off to see the fort for sunset. Although I did have a bit off time to check out the old town area that’s around Nizwa. Nizwa was the capital of Oman in the 6th and 7th centuries, right around the time of Islam being adopted, so it has some famous mosques, I’d get to the big one tomorrow. Prophet Mohamed sent Nizwa a handwritten letter in 630 AD asking them to convert to Islam, which they accepted, apparently.

The area isn’t very big, but people still drive these silly cars around

Onto the Nizwa Fort. It’s very impressive, the structure had been around a while, but was really turned into the fort it is today in the 1600’s, as Nizwa was the big trading hub back in the day, connecting Muscat and the southwestern region of Dhofar. It’s actually a fort connected to a castle, and the fort features a 40 meter tower that had all sorts of great defense systems, trap doors, canons, musket holders, as well as plenty of oil shoots aka murder holes to pour boiling hot date juice/oil on any possible invaders. Fun stuff. It’s interesting how useful those dates are!

And the Fort has even been put to use in recent times as well, when the interior forces of the Imamate were fighting the Muscat Sultanate + the British in the 50’s. The Sultanate would end up winning this one.

This fort is more expensive, but they have dance routines, singing, a food court, an art gallery etc.

The one way up into the tower is very narrow and winding for a reason, so they could pour boiling oil on you if needed

Just look at that shoe and outfit matching

Then it was book reading + shisha time, I was onto my middle eastern geo-politics book, which I was finding fascinating just because as I mentioned before, I’m pretty under-informed about the whole region in general. Proxy wars everywhere. But not by Good Guy Oman! Oman likes to stay out of everything.

Then back to the fort area to take a few night photos and see the souk. The main building was a more modern one with lots of glass display cases and bright fluorescent lighting. They sell lots of halwa (sweets) here, and the cool thing is that vendors let you sample their sweets for free! Nice, I hadn’t had Omani Halwa yet, which is a dense brown jelly cake-like thing, it’s sticky and gooey, you eat it with a spoon. There’s a bunch of different kinds. I tried them all, and I must admit the consistency is just not my thing. I don’t really care for gelatinous goop desserts all that much. Probably why I don’t like Chinese desserts much. I did like the tahini halwa though, which is made from sesame seed paste and topped with ground pistachios, with more of a cookie dough consistency. So that’s what bought. It’s heavy!

Then it was off to dinner on my last night, might as well have Oman’s national dish, Shuwa. Slow roasted, marinated, fall off the bone lamb or goat, served on spiced rice. Can’t go wrong with that! Delicious. This region does lamb so well.

I need to work on the food photography! This tastes better than it looks

The next day my flight to Phnom Penh (via Abu Dhabi) was at 6pm, so I had most of the day to get to the airport. It was less than two hours to Muscat on nice roads. So I stopped at the big mosque outside of Nizwa (wore pants this time) and there was basically nobody there. And then I got in another fun little wadi hike, but this one said no swimming. Booo

For this wadi hike you simply walk along the concrete irrigation channel (Aflaj). Easy!

1.5 hours on the highway later I was back in Muscat, I took the Tucson to the car wash, as apparently they’ll ding you $75 cleaning fee if you bring it back too dirty, which my car certainly was. I’d actually gone over my allotted 1200 kilometers, but they didn’t seem to care when I returned the car, so that was nice. I had plenty of time to spare, so it was off to the airport lounge to hang out and then onwards to my usual stomping grounds, Cambodia.

So that was my 7d/6n roadtrip around Oman. Highly highly recommended! Gorgeous country, super safe, super fun driving, very diverse, if you want an introduction to an Arabic country, Oman is it. One week felt just about perfect for seeing all the stuff I wanted to see on the roadtrip, although I could have always used one more day to spend somewhere on the coast to chill out at the end, as it was a pretty action packed trip, but you can always use one more day. Or maybe do the snorkeling trip on the last day instead of the first day. But anyway I was happy with my trip and itinerary, basically everything went according to plan, except maybe getting stuck in the sand for 5 minutes. Overall Oman gets 5 stars! Great country.