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Published: February 10th 2024
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We enjoyed a much needed day off on Thursday, enjoying the luxury of the Alila hotel, with its stunning views over the mountains. It sits on a promontory of rock with deep gorges on either side, and has been built from local stone to blend into the landscape. We did the one hour nature walk but opted not to do the 5km walk in the local area!
Friday required a 7am start so we could visit the cattle market at Nizwa. In fact, all the animals being paraded around the small ring were goats, big ones on lengths of green twine and small ones held in the arms of their sellers. There was no auction, interested purchasers simply asked to inspect the animal then offered a price. Once we’d seen enough goats we didn't bother to see the sale of sheep and cows that followed. We headed into the castle area, to the souks selling dates, spices, halwa and tourist tat. We limited ourselves to buying some dates and black mustard seeds, and moved on for a tour of the castle. As we entered there was a traditional warrior dance by group of Omanis just beginning. Like all the other
Omani forts we’ve visited it has been almost entirely rebuilt, so while it gives you a good idea of what the original looked like, the individual rooms are less than compelling.
After that, it was a 3 hour drive to visit a very scenic wadi. Except that when we got to within 5km, we found the road was closed following a landslide. Damm! We turned around and retraced our steps, stopping at a popular local restaurant for lunch. It was heaving with people, as this is a 3 day holiday weekend when people go back to their villages. Rather than a big open space with tables, chipboard partitions had been built to create a series of separate dining areas. The ones around the edge had tables and chairs, the ones in the middle were for those who wanted to sit on the floor in a circle in big family groups. No prizes for guessing which we chose! We enjoyed camel meat and chicken with pilau rice, once more in massive quantities that we could not possibly finish.
From lunch it was a short drive into the desert to our desert camp for the night. Hisham amused himself by
showing his slalom capabilities in the sand, thrashing along at between 45 and 65mph. Great fun but not good for Sara's queasiness. The camp is a far cry from the one we stayed at in Morocco. That was deep in the dunes, accessed by camel, and comprising just a handful of tents. This one has ‘tents’ that are proper building with air conditioning, and just a canvas roof to justify the term tent. Certainly much more comfortable but also much less atmospheric.
We relaxed with a cup of tea before taking a short 4WD drive to the top of the nearest sand dune to watch the sunset. We were reminded how hard it is to walk uphill in deep sand, and passed some time watching 4WD owners trying to drive their vehicles up to the top. While the camp drivers made it look easy, these novices definitely did not, and more often than not ground to a halt half way up the slope and had to reverse back down ignominiously to hoots of derision.
After an otherwise good night’s sleep we were woken at 6.00am by what sounded like a generator starting up right outside our tent. Sleep
proved impossible so we dressed and set off to see if there would be a good sunrise. The source of the noise revealed itself to be two hot air balloons firing up their gas burners ahead of taking off. They were about 400 yards away but the sound echoed off the dunes on either side of us. We clambered half up the nearest dune, but the day lightened without sight of the orange orb of the sun rising. After breakfast we went for our free camel ride, which disappointingly turned out to be a bare 5 minutes, with the camels led by two little boys of about eight.
After a morning’s relaxation, it was time to drive to Muscat airport for our flight to Salalah.
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