Mosques, Forts, And Cave Diving In Oman
We have been doing so much traveling over the past few months that I have to pick and choose which trips I write about. Some short ones I need to skip because I just don’t have enough time. The big ones I always cover, but some I have to postpone because another had been surprising for better or worse, and our recent trip to Oman for the 2023 MEACO Conference, this year being held in Muscat, was the type that causes that to happen, in this case for the better.
This wouldn’t be our first time visiting Oman, we traveled there back in February 2012, the same time as our first wedding anniversary and several years before I started this blog, however, on that particular trip before a conference in the UAE we spent three nights on a tour mostly in the desert with our guide, Mohammed, visiting bedouins (nomadic desert tribes), staying in huts, and riding camels, but only spending the first night in the nation’s capital.
Luckily I recently remembered I had a folder of photos from that little anniversary expedition so here are some of the desert highlights:
So we had already seen that side of the country and ridden the smelly, itchy, uncomfortable camels, now it was time for the city life and spending the following four nights in Muscat:
Muscat is the capital and most populated city in Oman. It is the seat of the Governorate of Muscat. According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the total population of Muscat Governorate was 1.72 million as of September 2022. The metropolitan area spans approximately 3,500 km2 (1,400 sq mi) and includes six provinces called wilayats, making it the largest city in the Arabian Peninsula by area. Known since the early 1st century AD as an important trading port between the west and the east, Muscat was ruled by various indigenous tribes as well as foreign powers such as the Persians, the Portuguese Empire and the Ottoman Empire at various points in its history. A regional military power in the 18th century, Muscat’s influence extended as far as East Africa and Zanzibar. As an important port-town in the Gulf of Oman, Muscat attracted foreign tradesmen and settlers such as the Persians, Balochs and Sindhis. Since the accession of Qaboos bin Said as Sultan of Oman in 1970, Muscat has experienced rapid infrastructural development that has led to the growth of a vibrant economy and a multi-ethnic society.
I could happily eat this every morning
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Our flight to Muscat got in early in the morning after a four-hour layover in Dubai, but we were able to check into our hotel, the Crowne Plaza, grab a nightcap, and then hit the hay, and were up reasonably early to make the most of the incredibly enormous hotel breakfast buffet. Anna didn’t need to attend the conference until 2:00pm so it meant we had time to join some of the other attendees and spend the morning looking around Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Oman seems a lot more liberal than most Middle-Eastern countries, but naturally we were required to dress modestly in order to enter, the women having to cover their arms, legs, and wear a headscarf, while the only requirement for men was to wear pants.
This mosque was incredible, it’s beautiful and absolutely gigantic, but the most impressive features had to be the carpet in the prayer hall and the chandelier above it:
A major feature of the design of the interior is the prayer carpet which covers the floor of the prayer hall. It contains, 1,700,000,000 knots, weighs 21 tonnes and took four years to produce, and brings together the classical Persian Tabriz, Kashan and Isfahan design traditions. 28 colors in varying shades were used, the majority obtained from traditional vegetable dyes. It used to be the largest single-piece carpet in the world, but is now the second, after the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the UAE. This hand-woven carpet was produced by Iran Carpet Company (ICC) at the order of the Diwan of the Royal Court of Sultanate. The carpet measures over 70 by 60 metres (230 by 200 feet), and covers the 4,343 m2 (46,750 sq ft) area of the praying hall.
The chandelier above the praying hall is 14 metres (46 feet) tall and was manufactured by the Italian company Faustig. Since the mosque is 90 metres (300 feet) high, the chandelier looks proportional, but it used to be the world’s largest chandelier, before again being replaced in this respect by the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It weighs 8.5 tons, includes 600,000 crystals, 1,122 halogen bulbs complete with a dimming system, and includes a staircase for maintenance within the chandelier.
We were informed that the carpet was hand-knotted at a rate of a 30cm x 30cm (12″ x 12″) square per day!
It’s not just the prayer hall of the mosque that is stunning, the entire complex is pretty amazing as some of these photos will show you:
We returned back at the hotel with plenty of time for Anna to go to the conference and deliver the first of six talks she would be giving over the coming days, meaning I’d just be spending the afternoon kicking back, relaxing by the pool until everyone returned.
It was around 6:30pm when that happened so we all had a couple of quick drinks at the poolside bar before our 7:30pm dinner reservation, this time at Rozna, a colossal restaurant that specialises in traditional Omani food that we had been recommended by one by one of Anna’s former colleagues and Muscat native, Majid Al-shaaibi, who was also attending the conference. We knew this place was going to be huge, but we weren’t expecting a building that looked like a palace from the outside and an enormous open dining room inside that was surrounded by private rooms, some offering traditional floor seating, others with tables as well. There was a second level, as well as a mezzanine that also housed private rooms, it was just mind-blowing how big this place was!
Anna has a habit of getting me to make her tea or coffee when we’re at home and there was a gift shop immediately inside so I bought her a coffee cup with a heated base (which I’m sure she’ll never use) before sitting at a long table with some other conference attendees and chowed down on some great local dishes.
When dinner was done we retired back to the Belgian bar that was inexplicably in our hotel (along with a Thai restaurant) for some drinks with a pair of Mexican attendees of the conference.
Poolside at the Crowne Plaza, outside Rozna, exploring the inside, and then later in the Belgian bar:
Thursday, November 30, 2023
This would be Anna’s busiest day at the conference, as she had to give four separate presentations over the course of the day so after our awesome hotel breakfast, the bulk of my time would resemble the previous afternoon, because our hotel and the conference centre were nowhere near the main city so I had little choice. I just sat by the pool, listening to music, doing a bit of reading, but this time also making a greater effort to avoid getting sunburnt. One interesting coincidence, however, was when I received a popup on my phone from BBC News saying that Shane MacGowan, best known as the lead singer of The Pogues, had died. I had been listening to a ‘Liked Songs’ mix on shuffle on Spotify and by sheer chance when I finished reading the article, the Pogues’ track Dirty Old Town played on my mix. I love that song, but the timing was definitely a bit creepy!
Later in the afternoon when all was completed, Anna told me to walk over to the neighbouring JW Marriott Hotel a couple of hundred metres down the road to meet up with her Singaporean colleague, Jod, who was staying there while everyone else had opted for our hotel, while he waited for the others to return from the conference centre. I met him in the hotel’s pub, Butter Buns, and besides the two us it was absolutely dead, yet the service was painfully slow. When the others showed up it got even slower, apparently it was their first night of operation, but we managed to convince Jod and the other’s to make the short walk down to the hotel the rest of us were staying at and hang out there for a bit, again back at the poolside bar until it was time to eat.
When we came to Oman in 2012 we celebrated our first wedding anniversary by having dinner at The Restaurant at The Chedi and absolutely loved it so Anna wanted to bring the others there. When we arrived it was as beautiful as we remembered, or in my case as beautiful as the photos we took last time, and although much like the previous night I can’t recall what we at, the food was great too.
We weren’t going to go back to Butter Buns after dinner, and the Belgian bar in our hotel was having a really loud party so we opted for drinks and a shisha poolside again, served to us by a guy who looked suspiciously like Vin Diesel. It was yet another great evening on this trip, although Anna did have an embarrassing moment that could happen to anyone who is jet-lagged, had a long day, and had had a couple of drinks when she got the sign wrong for the toilets and entered the men’s. Those signs here are a little tricky, at first with all respect it honestly looks like the front and back of a single person.
A look back at Thursday night’s dinner and drinks:
Friday, December 1, 2023
Anna and her colleagues, Andrew and Shamira, who had arrived the previous day, had the entire day off and we had to make the most of it so we took a 10.00am tour to possibly Oman’s top tourist destination, Wadi Shab, a picturesque narrow valley and spring, for a trek and a swim. We would be hiking in areas that were covered in water and the shoes we were wearing wouldn’t be able to cut it in that terrain. There was the option of renting suitable shoes at the site, but the chances of me finding a pair in my size were pretty much nil, plus we would need some sunscreen as well so our driver dropped us off at a nearby mall to buy some from a department store along the way on our two-hour journey. Friday is a holy day for Muslims so there wasn’t a whole lot of action in the mall, but never fear, we would counter that the following day.
Once back in the car we took the freeway, weaving through the mountainous desert landscape until we reached the coast and soon arrived at our destination. When we pulled up at the carpark behind a sparkling sinkhole that was directly beside the ocean and at the base of a fort with a donkey grazing nearby we changed into something a little more suitable in the toilets. Our driver paid a man to take us in a small boat over a pond to where we’d be beginning our hike, and then waited in the car for us until our return. The going was quite easy to begin with as we passed birds in swampland with trees all around us, but it wasn’t long until the cliff faces closed in and the terrain became significantly more rocky, requiring our hands and feet to climb, but the scenery was incredible. We continued on beside a crystal clear stream, passing springs and caves until we reached a point where we would no longer be continuing on land. Here we would need to ditch anything that wasn’t swimwear, put my phone in a protective, waterproof cover that Andrew had brought with him if I wanted to continue taking photos, and continue on our way. I can’t really swim so I donned a life vest I had rented and it was almost all in deep water from there.
The landscape had been spectacular on our trek so far:
We had now reached where we wanted to be, the entrance to an underground cave. Entering would be difficult due to how narrow it was, some areas my head not able to fit between the walls, but we could hear the voices of those already inside talking and cheering, and once we had entered too it seemed like an entirely different world. It was a surprisingly large area inside with a waterfall at one end and it it turned out that the cheering we had heard was for people cave diving from the rocks at the falls. To get to the diving point you needed to climb some ropes hanging from the top while getting your footing on the cave wall beneath the water, extend your legs, and then use upper body strength to pull yourself up. Most people just got to first or second point and jumped from there, however, there was one guy who seemed like he was there everyday for everyone else’s safety that took it to the next level and jumped from the highest point possible. Naturally, just like in the Arctic Anna took the plunge and I wanted to this time too, plus I had no excuses not to, or so I thought. The water was warm, I had footwear on for grip, and I was wearing a life vest so I was ready to go, the only problem was climbing up; maybe it’s due to having particularly long limbs and a high centre of gravity or perhaps it was just a lack of upper body strength, maybe even a combination of all three, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t get up there, even when following the directions of the guy who seemed to be a professional. The water was too deep for someone to be able to push me up so I thought the guy was going to lead me to another climbing spot, but in reality he just showed me how the cave went all of the way around the back of the waterfall.
Before long we had had our time in the cave and it was time to head back out into the blazing sun, but I managed to capture a video of us entering and floating around inside while watching people jump from the waterfall, then our exit, plus a second video of Anna’s not-so-graceful jump:
Now back outside we trekked back from where we had come, but in parts it seemed a little more difficult this time, because we would be walking downstream so many of the rocks had a lot of algae on the side where we would need to try to catch our footing, at one stage me slipping and my leg buckling under me, straining my knee, and then later my legs slipping out from under me altogether, leaving me laying on my back with my legs in the air, but it was worth everything for what we had seen that afternoon, including some bugs we encountered on the way back.
Our entire roundtrip hike and swim had taken about three hours, but we weren’t done, as next on the list was Bimmah Sinkhole:
Hawiyyat Najm, known as Bimmah Sinkhole in English, is a water-filled depression, structurally a sinkhole, in the limestone of eastern Muscat Governorate in the Sultanate of Oman, very close to the Al Sharqiyah region just off the highway to Sur, few kilometers before Tiwi.
A lake of turquoise waters, it is 50 m by 70 m wide and approximately 20 m deep. It is only about 600 m away from the sea, between the coastal towns of Ḑibāb and Bamah (Bimmah). The sinkhole was formed by a collapse of the surface layer due to dissolution of the underlying limestone. However, locals used to believe this sinkhole in the shape of a water well was created by a meteorite, hence the Arabic name HawiyyatNajm which means “the deep well of the (falling) star”.
Bimmah Sinkhole ranges in depth from only a few feet to over 300+ feet in the deepest part.
Our driver was beginning to get a bit worried, as the sun sets at around 5:30pm at this time of year and he thought we may get there too late to enter, but that wouldn’t be a problem. What was a little odd, however, was that I was instantly struck by deja vu upon our arrival, but it turned out that we had visited this exact location on our previous time here. Yet again, it is incredible to see, even if it does inexplicably have a “no jumping” sign at the top. We made our way down what felt like thousands of steps and wandered around inside the sinkhole, although not going for a swim this time.
Once done we made the two-hour drive back to the hotel, me somehow falling asleep in the car, something I struggle to even do in a bed, and when we arrived we had another shisha and a drink or two, however, Anna was a bit tired from the hiking and swimming, plus she had to do her final talk in the morning. I wasn’t after my nap so I continued in the Belgium bar for an extra drink or two, encountering an Omani biker gang inside, something I’d never expected to even exist. I saw the back of their jackets, but can’t remember what they were called, however, they had a patch at the bottom that clearly stated “Oman”.
Bugs, sinkholes, and bikers:
Saturday, December 2, 2023
Our last full day was upon us and yet we still hadn’t explored much of the city of Muscat so once Anna had given her final presentation of the conference, that’s what the four of us set out to do with the first stop being Muttrah Souq, a 200-year old market right on the harbour that served as part of the trade routes to India and China. We had also visited this area of the city on our first trip and the souq had been a bustling marketplace that time, but for some reason on this particular day there wasn’t a whole lot of action. The stalls were open, selling spices, carpets, perfumes, and household items, but there weren’t many people around to give the market any kind of atmosphere so we went down a side alley to the main road and continued on to another site we had visited on the previous occasion, Muttrah Fort:
Muttrah Fort is a historic fort in wilayat Muttrah in Governate of Muscat. The fort sits on a dominating position on the hills of Al Hajar mountains overlooking the natural harbor of Muttrah “The Sultan Qaboos Port”, which would have made it quite an impregnable position to defend Muttrah from attacks while also allowing observation of the surrounding territory from its watchtowers.
The fort is thought to have been built originally in 1507 AD, only to be modified and upgraded with towers and stronger walls by the Portuguese during their occupation of Oman in the 1560s.
Considering the hike we had been on the previous day, it was a little extra tiring on the legs to get all the way to the top, but once up there the scenery was amazing; to the front you had the port and to the rear the mountains with more forts overlooking the city, while inside there were old cannons still facing the waterfront, as well as a cafe so we could rest our burning legs.
Wandering around Muttrah Souq and the view from Muttrah Fort, plus some other scenes around this area of Muscat:
We had seen the old part of the city, now it was time to wander through something more modern, which meant a newer, larger mall, plus it was Saturday so hopefully there would be more people around. We jumped in a taxi and had a really funny driver who made extremely animated hand gestures while speaking as he drove, but at one point he managed to perfectly take a rather long curve in the road without his hands or knees touching the steering wheel and it was then that I felt the need to cut him off and let him know that maybe he should get his car a wheel alignment. He laughed and agreed and then continued chatting wildly until we reached the mall.
Malls around the world tend to have a lot of similar shops, but one thing that’s interesting in the Middle East is that they usually tend to have a lot of high-end lingerie stores as well and where we were was no exception with an entire row of shops consisting of expensive women’s underwear, including an enormous Victoria’s Secret store. Most of the other stores were either luxury items or stuff we could get back home, but there’s one that’s always fun to peruse when in a different country — The supermarket. This particular supermarket had huge sections of meat and seafood, but in the centre there was a giant deli counter that sold similar stuff to what I had been eating for breakfast, but almost any type of pickle and cheese you could possibly imagine. This area had me starting to drool a little and I kept trying to come up with ideas of how bring back multiple plastic containers of foodstuffs without it breaking and filling my luggage with oil and brine, but I kept coming up empty so I just accepted that it was best not to bother. We also noticed was that you could buy things in enormous portions, such as a block of cheese about as long as Anna’s forearm and then that’s when I spotted them. There were 3.2 kg (7 lb) jars of jalapeños and pickles, however, the only thing available in glass jars of that size as opposed to plastic were carrot-stuffed olives. I love olives, but I figured it was unfeasible to transport home a jar that large until Anna finally convinced me that if I wrap it in some clothes and rearrange my luggage so it’s packed securely, there probably won’t be any issues getting it back to Singapore. Okay, three kilos of olives it is! Anna bought some stuff too and I continued to lug my massive jar around in a fashion that made it appear as if I was going to present it to somebody until it was time to move on.
It was now late in the afternoon and apparently a good spot for catching the sunset is from the W Hotel so that’s where the four of us and my olives went. We took a seat in the outdoor area with some drinks, but unfortunately the sunset was obscured by walls and trees when in the main grounds of the hotel so it was a little underwhelming. On the other hand, we couldn’t be too picky about dinner, because Shamira and Andrew were flying out in a few hours and we were lucky enough to find a great restaurant at the hotel for a final dinner before they had to leave.
After our meal we returned to our hotel and saw the pair off before spending one more night on the deck with some more drinks and a shisha from the Vin Diesel lookalike, later joined later by our new Mexican friends to close out the night.
The last of our Omani adventure:
We left the following day without a hitch, had a four-hour layover in Dubai, and were home later the following morning, Anna catching a two-hour nap in our own bed before work.
As I mentioned at the beginning, I have barely any recollection of our first trip to Oman, but these four days were fantastic. I do recall our guide on that previous trip being really funny and friendly and it turns out he wasn’t an exception, the people here are just really nice. On top of that, the food is great, and the scenery is stunning, both in the city and the desert.
And as for my olives now:
All done
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