DavidandSara

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 ... read more

We met our guide Hashim and set off for the Sultan Qaboos Mosque, which for a long time was the largest mosque in the world before a larger one was built in Abu Dhabi. Hashim helped Sara wrap her headscarf in the prescribed manner, and we marvelled at the number of women having to rent long abbayas and headscarves because they’d turned up in strappy T shirts and miniskirts with nothing to cover their bare flesh. Some pointlessly got stroppy with the polite but firm female religious guardians. Many mosques are large but not visually very interesting, but this one is stunning. It’s set in extensive grounds with Islamic gardens featuring water channels, and has not one but five minarets to reflect the five guiding principles of Islam. The outside is polished sandstone and the inside ... read more

We took a leisurely trip on a dhow today, visiting the fjords on the Musandam coast. It felt a bit choppy as we set off but calmed down once in the shelter of the fjord, and even Sara did not feel sea sick. The mountains drop straight to the water’s edge, with very few areas that have any beach or flat space. The fjords were formed when the water level dropped, so on some of the cliffs you can still see the effects of water erosion from when there was sea at a much higher level. As we left Khasab port, a number of yellow speedboats, each with two or three people on board all heavily swathed, shot past towards the port. This is the small scale trade carried out by Iranians who cross in the ... read more

Winter sun and rugged natural beauty was what drew us to Oman. There’s plenty of the latter but the Thomas travel curse has struck again and we arrived to find we’d brought rain to the desert. ‘This never happens’ said the Omani customs official as he grinned apologetically. We flew in to Dubai, and had a very quick transit through the airport. We’ve never been through immigration so fast, and our cases were first onto the carousel. Our driver picked us up for the drive to the Musandam peninsula in Oman. Before long we were on a six lane highway through the desert, with very little to see. After almost no sleep on the plane, we closed our eyes and tried, unsuccessfully, to sleep. Eventually the dunes gave way to an industrial zone full of cement ... read more

We enjoyed a positive lie in this morning, only needing to get up at 6.30 for a 7.00am departure. After a cloudy start the sun came out and the day heated up. We drove to the bottom of the western shores of the St Lucia estuary, then crossed over and re-entered the park at the main gate to the eastern shores. The landscape was totally different to Manyoni. It’s flat, apart from a row of hills by the shoreline, which turned out to be massive sand dunes, covered in small trees and bushes. The vegetation is also sparser, and broken up by pools of water filled with rushes and water lilies. We drove past a couple of groups of hippos, the first basking in the water with just their ears and nostrils visible, but the second ... read more