"Old" Oman

There's no doubt I'm wishing I had longer in Oman than I'm going to have!  Another fabulous day of exploring - with a bit of a "twist".  On one hand you could say it was disappointing while on the other hand I experienced something I'd never experience at home.

I woke up this morning and honestly thought - "wow - a truly overcast day!"  It was still warm (aka "hot"), but really I couldn't see the sun.  Turns out that it wasn't overcast at all, rather we were experiencing a bit of a desert sand storm and it was simply hazy and "dusty".  Now this was really incredible, because I was on the other side of a large mountain range from where the desert actually was - and the hazy and dust we were experiencing was actually only what made it over/through the mountains.  Again the photos were taken while I was driving but hopefully you'll get a bit of an idea.

So whereas that was kind of cool, what was a bit disappointing is that today is when I went to see Jebel Shams (Mountain of the Sun) - Oman's highest mountain at 3075m - and the canyon (also called Jebel Shams) which lies alongside it and is known as the Grand Canyon of Arabia.  It has vertical cliffs of nearly 2 kms - and although my photos don't do it justice, especially with the haze, I hope it gives you a bit of an idea.

You can tell I was up fairly high though - it's probably the only time while I'm in the Gulf that I'll experience a temperature like this.  These were taken at the top, and then at the bottom, of Jebel Shams:

The rest of the day was spent exploring what I'll call "old" Oman - and it was absolutely fabulous!  You've seen photos of the forts and castles that are a part of Oman's history, well houses and villages were around then too, and today I visited a few of these historical sites.

At the lowest end of Jebel Shams there is the village of Wadi Ghul, and beside the current village you can see all the remains of the old and now vacant village, as well as some great views of the terrace farming they do there.

After that I went to a village called Al Hamra for a walk through the date plantations there:

and then 5 kms up the mountain above Al Hamra is a village called Misfah.   Misfah has some amazing old stone houses, many of which people are still living in today ... and today the ones that are being lived in are all equipped with electricity.

The last photo above shows the house owner still using clay pots to cool their water.

Another stop at a village called Tanuf to look at the ruins there:

Then to Birkat Al Mauz - and again, more date plantations and more old buildings:

And when I say "old", I do truly mean old.  All of these areas and sites date back to the mid-16th century and some even earlier.  So whereas Kas (my driver/tour guide) was apologizing that they hadn't been maintained better, and he thought for sure I was getting tired of seeing old buildings, I was trying to tell him how awesome I thought it was that his country even had buildings from that time period, and that they were in as good a condition as they were.  Unlike some of the forts and castles, none of the villages I saw today have had any active restoration work done on them.  So it was really interesting to see how the Omani people lived so many years ago - and also to see how many of the very, very, old buildings are still being lived in today ... with the addition of some modern conveniences.

At the end of the day is was back to "modern" Oman - and Oman's version of "Big Ben".