Muscat
Yesterday we arrived in the Omani capital Muscat after attempting to arrive instead in another city called Nizwa (long story, not worth telling). Muscat is OK – infinitely more interesting than Doha, but without the magic of Sana’a. Overall, Muscat is probably the most liveable city in the Gulf because it has all the facilities of the oil cities but retains at least some old-world character and charm.
Muscat is really several suburbs put together. Today we walked from one of these, Mutrah, to another, Muscat itself, which was pleasant enough. Mutrah is the tourist hub of Muscat with hotels and restaurants on the corniche and a famous souq that is supposed to be great but is actually just a covered alleyway full of tourist souvenirs that has none of the enchantment of the bazaars in Old Sana’a. More interesting was the morning fish market, which sort of rendered useless our trip a week or so back to Al-Hudayda in Yemen to see something very similar.
Anyway, the corniche. Doha’s corniche is proclaimed as the most beautiful in the Gulf, but really that’s only because the water is a nice colour; there’s nothing to actually do on Doha’s corniche (there used to be two things to do – go to Palm Tree Island and eat at the Al-Bandar restaurant complex – but both have been destroyed). In Mutrah you can admire the old houses, drink fruit juice at one of the cafes, feed the seagulls (don’t laugh; we did that today), shop in the souq etc. The walk to Muscat proper was about 3km and quite nice in the early morning. The Walled City of Muscat is where the ruler of Oman, Sultan Qaboos, lives. His palace and the area around it is quite a surreal place – sort of like British New Delhi, with imposing buildings, huge open spaces, and perfectly manicured lawns and gardens. There are a couple of old forts in Muscat as well but they’re closed to the public as (I think) they’re still being used by the military.
Tomorrow we might head back to Nizwa or along the coast road to Sur, where there are some hiking opportunities. We’ll probably only be in Oman for another week or so, and then we’ll hopefully be able to change our flight to Africa to move it forward by a couple of weeks, insha’allah.
(Note: when it seems like all of your entries end with insha’allah, this is probably not a good sign…)
Tags: Arabia, Oman
Nick