Oman 5: The drive to Nizwa, and the beginning of 3 nights in the Wahiba Sands Desert

   I need four components in order to write this blog.  I need a powered laptop to process photos and shrink them down to upload easier, the internet, and I need to have experiences worth writing about.  This has probably been my longest interim between blog posts thus far.  At first, I was lacking content to write about.  Then, I stayed in the desert for 3 nights.  The desert camp ran on solar power for lights and only had a small generator for charging phones.  The laptop died and there was no way to recharge it, so that was that.  Then, I had to get to my next hotel, go through 5 days of photos, and then write this.

  Our next destination was the city of Nizwa.  On the drive down, I kept the camera around my shoulder and occasionally stopped to take pictures of the wonderful view.

  Back on flat ground, we caught sight of two goats sitting in a gazebo.  I absolutely loved this.

  The first stop of the day was to the Bahla Fort.  Miles discovered a small cat and decided that he would stay with the cat and I should walk around the fort.  I did so.

  There is an inner fort/castle, which was particularly magnificent.  

There was no way I was climbing up there after the balcony hike.

  Just ten minutes down the road was Jabreen Castle.  Miles stayed with me as we walked around inside. 

  I noticed a slight discrepancy between the jail for men and the jail for women.

  This women's prayer area was through a small doorway near the entrance to the castle.

  It was a short drive to the town of Nizwa.  On the way, we passed what looked like a magnificent mosque.  I looked it up on Maps after we had reached our destination and planned to visit it on the way to the Wahiba Sands Desert.  The mosque was named the Sultan Qaboos Mosque in Nizwa, and it got rave reviews.  I could not find a site for it but reviews said that it would be open every day.  Unfortunately, we arrived at 11:20 when we later departed Nizwa, and were told that it was closed to visitors at that time.  I should have asked the hotel workers to confirm the time.

The only picture I was able to get.

  Nizwa turned out to be the most disappointing location of the trip.  The old town has a fort, a reportedly better souq than Muscat, and an old town.  The hotel itself was pretty nice, but the old town was more of the abandoned variety, with heavy random construction throughout.  The first night I tried visiting the souq, which was a disjointed set of clustered buildings.  None of them had much on display and many of the shops were closed.  I could not find a shop on Maps that had a dishdasha.  I ended up spending time on my laptop, near the pool, as I could not find much to do, although I did visit a cute ice cream shop across from our hotel.

View from the patio of our room, to the pool and hotel.

  The next day I walked five minutes away to see the Nizwa Fort.  It was the most expensive tourist site to visit of the trip.  There was a tall, round portion, that you could climb to the top, and a few buildings with a view of the Al Qala'a Mosque across the street which did not allow visitors.

  I visited the adjacent garden, which had positive reviews, but was in actuality just some weeds and a tied up cow and goats in a cage, neither of which made me pleased.  I tried the Souq again, and entered the large building in the center, which focused around food.  It was largely empty of people, with many vendors missing from their booths.  By wandering the alleys, I came across the tailor shop street, which had shpo after shop of tailors.  I felt that there would not be time for them to make me a dishdasha, since I would leave the following day.  Perhaps if I had discovered them on the first day I would have given it a try.  I continued on to a coffee shop, which served flat white and had a nice view up on what appeared to be part of a city wall.  I tried visiting the Al Shahba Shopping Centre, as an alternative to the Souq, but it was just half closed stores and half jewelry stores.

  I was happy to leave Nizwa.  We tried the mosque, but were turned away.  We journeyed two hours to a meeting spot, where we parked our car and were transported across the dunes to the Bedouin Rustic Camp.

  We would be here for two nights.  We were given the option to take a tent or a room in the building.  We instantly felt the intense heat inside the tank and chose the building.  Our first act of business was to walk toward the dunes before sunset.  Between us and the Dunes we found a large herd of goats.  The baby goats attached themselves to Miles.  The herd began to move on, but three goats in particular kept following Miles as he and I continued toward the dunes.  Miles felt bad and decided to lead the goats back, and then went to our room.  I continued onward.

  It was incredibly windy at the top, which made taking out the cameras rather difficult.  I tried to minimize the time that I brought them out.

    According to the schedule board, dancing was at 6:30.  I had no intention of participating, but I showed up to watch.  That first night there were two younger couples.  The camp has a whole wardrobe of Bedouin clothes, which they use to dress up the guests and teach them two dances.  One of the dances feature men(father and son in this instance) with mock bendable swords, which they used to attack each other while using their sandals as a shield.  This is part of a dance that generally has spectators dancing while holding hands and going around the mock fighters.

  Next was dinner, followed by time in front of a campfire.  The first night, the twenty three year old son of the owner hosted the campfire.  He spoke about how the Bedouin people were 10,000 in 1970 and had dwindled to 500.  He spoke about the ways that camels helped in the old life, as well as how they still benefit them to this day.  In the old days, they helped as a way to transport people to Mecca.  Body parts of the camel were used for everything from socks to dew collectors to a writing board.  Camel urine and milk were used as medical remedies.  He spoke as well, about how smart camels are and that camels form a strong bond to the humans and have been known to cry with joy when they return after being away for a while.  In modern days, camels are used in highly profitable camel races, which are popular in the region, as well as for tourist purposes.

  He also told the story of how his father, when younger and poorer, came across two English tourists and offered to help them cross the desert, despite knowing only half of the way.  On the first night, while one of the tourists tried to film the camels, the camel mistook the noise the camera made as indication of food.  The father stepped in an slapped the camel, which made it irate.  The camel charged the father, who ran to a nearby tree and circled the tree in a desperate attempt to escape harm.  He eventually discarded his dishdasha, which the camel confused for the human himself.  Once he stamped out the dishdasha, he calmed down.

  Then, he opened it up to questions.  Others were quiet, so I decided to ask a few.  I asked if young people were continuing to live the Bedouin lifestyle.  He explained that the vast majority are going to cities and going to University, including him and his siblings(6).  I asked about how young people met their relationship partners and discovered that it is almost entirely in person.  Couples have to be pretty secretive and cannot progress physically.  They do not have arranged marriage however.  Most people marry between the ages of twenty three and twenty seven.  

  He smoked tobacco in a pipe, and explained that this is not allowed by Islam, though it is much more accepted than alcohol consumption.  I commented that the goats around the country are not tagged, and asked him to explain the system.  He said that they wander on their own, but come home for food like dates.  He might have also described a type of burning/branding to mark, but I am not quite sure I understood that entirely correctly.  I asked him what the Omani people think of the influx of tourists.  He said that Oman, in fact, had booming tourism in 2019, but it has only rebounded by forty percent since Covid.  He said that tourism means that people think Oman is beautiful and it is good for business, so the Omanis like it.
  We used usb battery powered miniature fans to help sleep that night.