We began our tour for today by first visiting the Sultan Qaboos mosque before leaving Muscat.
Now we were cruising along the highway to our next destination: the town of NizwaThis was our driver-slash-guide, Majid, who was pretty laid back and fun 🙂Oman’s mountainous landscape is quite a sightIn fact, by evening we would be even higher up the mountainsAn hour later, we had reached Nizwa souqI believe there is an fee of 500 baisa (₹82/$2.6/€1) to enter Nizwa Fort but Majid took care of that for usThere is the souq part (souq = ‘market’ in Arabic)We headed straight towards the fort
The main towerOur driver said he’ll wait outside and told us we had 30 mins to spend insideI went up these steps to get a better lookReminds me of Prince of Persia for some reasonThe fort was built in the 1650sWe went insideAnd went straight to the main towerSigh, more steps to climbA panorama of Nizwa from the front of the fortFrom the sideThere was no wind. No wind, no flag.Back down from the tower, we went to the Exhibits Hall nextIt mostly housed clothing, jewelry and other artifacts from a bygone eraIt was like a small museum
We went in hereA model of the fort complexOld storesAnd we were back out againWe walked back and just checked out a few of the shops along the wayNo shortage of souvenir shops hereLots of pots hereThe souqThis is the indoor fresh marketWe walked back to our carTook one final panorama before leaving Nizwa souqThe next stop on the tour was at Jabreen castle in BahlaEntry to Jabreen castle is 500 baisa as wellJabreen castle was built in the 17th century by Imam Bel’arab bin Sultan Al YarubiThe Imam’s tombImagine what daily life was like out here in the dessert — a hundred years agoJabreen castle has 5 levelsThis room is called the Sun and Moon room, and has natural ventilation (obviously)I went up to the rooftop where I stumbled into Dency, the woman at Oman Tourism India who organized our trip. She was here assisting a photographer from India who was assigned to take photographs of some of the places we were visiting.Jabreen castle is just outside Bahla townNothing but palm tress, sand and… nothing else all aroundGot enough wind for me to take this photo on my Sony Xperia Z1 phoneIt was time for me to go back down
Jabreen castle was renovated in the 1980sThese old pots and vessels still remainWe left Jabreen castle as two groups, along with Dency and her jeepWe rode up a small hill for a viewpointThat’s Bahla townAnd that’s Bahla fort, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We couldn’t go there due to lack of time.We were all hungry and it was now time for lunchOptions were limited in this town and we were kind of late for lunch, so the drivers took us hereThe eatery was small, but the mandi biriyani they served was pretty decent. I ordered mutton and the meat was so tasty that I ate more meat than rice.
After a satisfying meal, we set off for our next destination — Al Hamra Village in Jebel Akhdar. After that, we would stop at the mountain village of Misfah before ending our journey at Jebel Shams, the highest peak in the Gulf region. All that in the next post!
Divakaran
10/05/2015Nice. Looking forward to your next post.