Breakfast consisted of turkey sausages, bean casserole, Omani bread & omlet. Omani bread is like paper thin crepes, but with the rubbery texture of paratha – delicious. Just before we leave I go for a short camel ride – not recommended for those with sensitive (or non-sensitive) groin areas.
We head to the town of Niswa through more rocky countryside, with new dwellings dotting the flood plain (!), built by the government for low income families. There’s a whole story here about the impact of oil, infrastructure investment, migrant workers and Arabic culture.
Then it’s off to Sur, an important ship-building and fishing city, for centuries. We visit a shipbuilding site where Indian workers construct boats in exactly the same way as they did (again under the supervision of an Omani) with the only difference being that they now use nails instead of coconut fibre to hold it all together – just amazing.
We have lunch in a newly constructed restaurant, owned by an Egyptian with Indian staff, of roast chicken and saffron basmati rice.
Then it’s off for a swim. After an hour’s drive back up the coast and some dirt road, we arrive at Fin’s Beach. A white sandy beach with bluish water (from limestone run-off) with a few other tourists who have been there most of the day judging by their levels of pinkness. We can only swim in our gear away from Arabs’ view so as not to cause offence.
We then drive up Wadi Tiwi to see a huge rocky escarpment overshadowing small plots of date-growing palms – similar to Australian billabongs in the north, but different if that makes sense.
A bit further along we stop again to swim in Bimmah Sink Hole whish is 25-30 metres below the surface of the plateau. It’s refreshing, but the 100 or so steps back up heats us again. By the way, the daytime temperature is hovering between 36-38 degrees. We head off, and by late afternoon we arrive at Shangri La – not the real one, but a 5 star hotel complex with over 700 rooms spread over 3 separate buildings, with its own beaches and coves for swimming and water activities.
For a final treat we visit Old Muscat. Hope this doesn’t conjure up images of an old Omani town because that’s what it isn’t!. It has been almost completely demolished and new palaces build with grand approaches & some public buildings for state visitors such as the Queen of England & Australia who has visited at the invitation of the Sultan.
Finally we arrive at Al Mara Hotel in Muscat, for a shower & rest – Frances of course fits in another swim in the hotel pool.
We dined at an Omani restaurant, staffed by Indians, for some shrimp kabsa (like fried rice), saffron rice, salad and traditional Omani mutton shuwa. It looked like it was burnt in a fire and then lightly rolled in black dirt before serving. It tasted better than it looked – it had to!
(The method of preparing shuwa is elaborate. The meat is marinated with red pepper, turmeric, coriander, cumin, cardamom, garlic and vinegar and then wrapped in sacks made of dry banana or palm leaves. These sacks are then thrown into the smoldering oven, which is covered with a lid and sealed so that no smoke escapes. In some villages, the meat is cooked for 24 hours while in others it is believed that meat tastes better after 48 hours.)
Apologies if this rambles or doesn’t make much sense, but we’re buggered, and have a 3am start to fly back to Abu Dhabi before waiting a couple of hours for the flight to London.
