The first foray outside Muscat

After rolling out of bed a little groggily from having watched a rather disheartening English Rugby World Cup finals loss to South Africa on our first night, we all went over to the Grand Mosque in Muscat.

It is a fairly newly built mosque, only being constructed in the 1990’s, but it is a fantastic structure. The marble floors and outer cloistered walkways give a feeling of coolness and openness to the entire structure, with large open spaces in between the ablution rooms and the main building. Each walkway is different, with one looking like the overturned hull of a boat, only in marble instead of wood.

As nice as the outside was it was nothing in comparison to the main men’s prayer hall. It is a soaring, awe-inspiring place filled with marble pillars and archways around the walls, an intricately sewn carpet all created as one expansive piece and a chandelier larger than any I had ever seen before filled the ceramic covered dome. It was truly amazing, though we unfortunately only had five minutes there because the mosque was closing to non-Muslims for the day. We plan to make a return trip later on when we have far more time to truly see the space.


After dropping Adeline off at home, the three of us headed for Al-Hazm and A’ Rustaq, about 90 minutes outside of Muscat. It was a flat, fairly boring drive along the coastal plain at first, but as we approached Rustaq especially, the mountains loomed on the horizon. Al-Hazm is a 17^th century fort with a beautiful wooden door that is 300 years old.

This was however the extent of the fort that we could see because they are currently undertaking massive refurbishment projects in an effort to increase the tourism access. This is actually a countrywide effort and I wouldn’t be surprised if we suffer a similar fate later in the trip.

We had a pleasant picnic in the shade of a particularly vindictive acacia tree and then headed into the foothills to Rustaq. This fort was open and completely empty, which allowed us the rare tourist experience of having an entire fortress to ourselves. Built over the falaj irrigation system to allow access to fresh water in the fort, this was an important outpost for guarding the coastal plain from the interior tribal raids in previous centuries.


Many of the Omani doors have a smaller one within them such as this one. An Omani told us this was to ensure all visitors had to bow in reverance to the wali (governor) upon entrance, thereby making sure their egos were checked at the door.

With numerous towers and intricate systems of archer’s slits, cannon and slots for dumping hot oil on invaders, it must have been an endeavour to breach its defences.

It was truly majestic to wander out of the dark stairwells onto the sun-drenched ramparts and take in the towering craggy heights on three sides.