Nizwa Fort and 4x4 in the Mountains

A gathering of merchants.

The Nizwa souk

Where you could buy guns for target practice.

Authentic old artifacts

Nizwa Fort

The interior of the large circular guard tower.

The view from it.

Tower and minuret

Aymen, our excellent driver.

An abandoned ancient stone built town. 

Typical houses today.

Off-roading through a wadi

A irrigation water trough from the mountains.

An old guard watch post.

Reall off-roading up the mountain.

To the view called the balcony.

A very hairy cute inquisitive goat.

Another abandoned town, this one was mudbrick.

Some pictures of the interior of the town.

Tuesday, February 24th.

We left this morning in a convoy of six 4x4 Toyota Land Cruisers and drove to the massive Nizwa Fort which was the home of the last Imam, Ghalib bin Ali al-Hinai, who ruled over Nizwa which was in the interior of Oman. Muscat, on the coast, was ruled by Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Very simply put the British backed the Sultan of Muscat and together they defeated the Imam in the 1950’s. Then the name of ‘Muscat and Oman’ was changed to the Sultanate of Oman and the country became ruled by a Sultan, who is a muslim monarch, rather than an elected religious leader. The fort was massive with 10 ft thick walls and an enormous round tower from which the Imam could defend his territory and repulse the Portuguese colonizers in the 1600’s.  Masoud gave us the history of the fort as he led us through it. After that we had some free time in the local souk, which was older and felt more authentic and historic than some of the others we had seen recently. Then we went back to the HUGE Hypermarket for some lunch supplies.

Next we drove up into the Hajer Mountains. I was traveling with Jane and Cam and we had a great conversation with our driver Aymen, a 34 year-old Omani who spoke excellent English with an Indian accent as he had been to university there. He was very informative and had a great sense of humour.  

We stopped for a scenic lookout at a wadi across which we could see a 200 year old abandoned village. All of the houses were made of stone. Then we heard that the rest of the 4x4’s had driven down into the wadi so we followed along a very stoney, bumpy, ever narrowing road. I wondered where we’d ever have space to turn around again… but finally we found the others parked in a wider area. We had a chance then to eat our lunch and explore the area. Then we continued our mountain adventure and drove further up and far enough that my ears popped three times. We eventually reached the summit near Jebel Shams, Oman’s highest mountain where we could see the formation called the balcony. There we could peer down into the Oman ‘Grand Canyon’, primarily known as the Wadi Ghul which is a 1000 metre deep gorge.

On the way back we stopped to see the 400 year old large abandoned village of Birkat Al Mouz on the edge of a large oasis full of date trees. We wandered through the village marveling at the complexity of the crumbling mudbrick houses (very different from the stone houses we saw earlier),  carved into the mountainside in the foothills of the Jebel Akhdar. Then it was back to the hotel in time to get organized before our 7 o’clock buffet dinner. I ate with Cam, Jane and Marsha and we enjoyed a drink with dinner. I spent the evening catching up some more.