"Well at last we get another Omani experience." Leila's attempt at spin didn't really work. We had been sitting in a very chaotic traffic jam for about an hour. It is 8.15 in the morning and I (about an hour and a half ago when we left the Airbnb) was disproportionately excited about going to an Omani goat and cattle market. I didn't wish to disillusion Leila, but am very much of the opinion that sitting in a traffic jam with dodgy parking on each side of the road is a fairly international experience.
Fortunately it was worth it, after some slightly creative parking we finally made it to the organised chaos that is the Friday goat and cattle market at Nizwa. The centrepiece of the market looked like a bandstand where men in Dishdashers stood facing outwards. Round the band stand (but still in the shade of its roof) another line of men stood, and the animal was paraded between the two lines of people, in a man-made ring. I never quite worked out how the transactions were carried out, but an energetic young bull soon proved that there were no barriers involved, as it careered away from its handler scattering people in all directions. The women seemed to be control of looking after the animals outside of the ring. They were all in traditional dressed in brightly coloured dresses and scarves with elaborate face masks covering everything but the eyes and chin.
Having seen the live animal market we then walked through the dead animal market (which smelt rather worse- especially in the case of the fish hall.) Nizwa souq was beautiful, a maze of tidy tunnels and patterned tiles. Frankincense was being burnt in most of the craft shops where you could pick up your ceremonial sword, gun, and most importantly Eley cartridges.
Emerging from the souk we stumbled on the fort, which was both impressive and again impressively tidy (on closer inspection it appeared that this was partly due to it being rebuilt after the RAF bombed it in order to suppress an uprising in the mid 20th century.) The highlight was definitely seeing the man traps where you could fall to your death. Or where, when the castle was besieged, the soldiers could poor boiling date juice all over their attackers.
Picking up a picnic lunch from the local Lulus hypermarket we then headed up to the mountains for the afternoon. Piecing together information from our map app, Edd's directions, and a vague passage in a guide book we found our way to a spectacular lunch spot at the top of the mountain above the al hoota caves. (Avoiding quite a few kamikarzee goats on the way up...)
We then drove to Misfat al Abryeen, which a small village of rambling traditional mud houses that were partly hewn out of the rocks, and quite a few more goats. Highlights included not managing to fall into the falaj- this is the village's water supply which carries water in a stone drain from an aquifer above the village through it ( filling various washing tanks along the way) before depositing it in certain date plantations; and watching two boys on a donkey easily negotiate a set of very steep steps I had just stumbled down.
We tried to go to the al hoota caves but very sadly the gates were shut. The (rather long) road trip continued to our guest house in the desert south of Nizwa (quite a long way south as it turned out.) It was this point that on arrival the hotel manager (who bore a slight resemblance to basil fawlty in his manner) happily informed us that we should definitely go to the al hoota caves tomorrow as they were just opening after a six month refurbishment, and the first 100 visitors could go for free...
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