January 2, 2024
After studying in Yemen in 2010, all I wanted was to return to the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen, for obvious reasons, is not possible.
In December 2023, I realized I had a few days in which I could take a vacation. With no plan in mind, I booked a ticket to Muscat, Oman, and I got a hotel for a few nights. If you know me, I have pretty intense anxiety, especially regarding travel. You might think, “But Hannah, you have studied and worked in a couple of countries!” And you would be correct.
However, when I went to Morocco and Yemen, I was studying at a school and everything was arranged for me–from airport pick-up to accommodations, I was set. The same goes for working in China and Uzbekistan. Just traveling? By myself? Terrifying.
I flew out of Samarkand and had a layover in Dubai. My first pit stop was Starbucks. I am basic, but sometimes, you just want something that tastes like home. Afterward, I went to my gate to wait for the flight to Muscat. It was very delayed. And delayed again. And again.
At one point, I met a woman in line and we checked in with each other to make sure we were in the right place because they were also trying to board a plane to Pakistan at the same gate. For her privacy, we will call her Alina. Alina was wondering what was taking so long, and I suggested that maybe air traffic control was having trouble finding a slot for us. Maybe? This is my note to never say things with your whole chest when you don’t know what you are talking about.
She started saying that she worked with airlines. The grimace started then. She mentioned that she was just flying on standby because that was free for her. And then it got worse. In our long wait, I finally got enough hints that I exclaimed, “Are you a pilot?!”
Eventually, she admitted she doesn’t like telling people she’s a pilot because they always ask how much money she makes, etc. She told me, “Most people want to ask about money. You? You’re like a child. You have fun questions.” I asked her what pilot school was like, which country had pilots she didn’t like working with (sorry Germany), how flight school loans work, how pilots are deemed unfit to fly and don’t have to pay those loans back, etc.
During our wait, Alina asked me how I was getting to my hotel after we landed. I said I was going to get a taxi, and she told me she could drive me. I knew that Muscat had been several smaller cities that were combined into one, and because of this, it was something like 35 miles long. So we checked and found our hotels were only about a mile apart.
Our seats on the plane were not together, so we agreed to meet up after we deplaned. We found an ATM, got the keys to her rental car, and we headed out. In the car, she asked if I was interested in having dinner with her. I told her I had a plan for dinner, and it was not to get Omani food. I was on a mission to go to a Yemeni restaurant, but she was welcome to join.
I’ll just give myself a little kudos here and tell you Alina loved it. Yemeni food is my favorite in the whole world. Not everyone likes the hulba, which is made with whipped fenugreek powder, but those people are wrong. At dinner, she said that she didn’t find me annoying, which I think is a European compliment. However, I find myself annoying, so I was hesitant to accept the offer that followed her proclamation.
She asked if I wanted to tour Muscat with her the next day and then go with her on a road trip around eastern Oman. I already had a hotel room that was non-refundable, and I genuinely was worried that she would find me annoying after a few days in a car together.
I said yes to the day tour and I told her I would have an answer about the rest after we explored together.
January 3, 2024
Stop 1: Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque
Alina picked me up from my hotel at around 9:00 AM and our first stop was the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Here are five facts about the mosque:
It was decided in 1992 that Muscat needed a new mosque, in 1993 there was a design competition, and in 1994 construction began. Construction took over six and a half years to complete.
The main prayer hall is 244’ x 244’, making this single room just under 60,000 square feet. Additionally, the distance between the floor and the peak of the central dome is just over 300 feet.
At any one time, the mosque can hold 20,000 worshippers.
The carpet in the main room is one piece. It was handwoven by 6,000 workers over four years and is made up of 1,700,000,000 knots, weighs 21 tonnes, and is 46,750 square feet.
The chandelier is 46 feet tall, weighs 8.5 tons, has 600,000 crystals, and 1,122 halogen light bulbs. It was the largest chandelier in the world until it was beaten out by a mosque in Abu Dhabi.
On a personal level, I have never seen anything so grand. Also? Engineers, man. How do you create spaces that large and that will support a chandelier with a staircase that weighs the same amount as a fully grown bull elephant?
Stop 2: Royal Opera House Muscat
I had very little interest in seeing an opera house. I tried to see an actual opera, but they were on a hiatus in deference to the war in Gaza. But Alina said we should still see the building; she was right. I paid for our tour since she was paying for the rental car, and we went inside.
Not only is the opera house stunning, but we also got to watch performers getting ready for a show. They had frozen the stage and were ice skating on it. There was even a motorcycle riding around? The cheapest seats at the opera house go at cost and do not make the opera house any money; the sultan said that the arts should be available to everyone.
Stop 3: Muttrah Souq on the Corniche
Alina isn’t a big fan of souqs, but they are normally my favorite place. I love going to markets in the Middle East because they are where I get to haggle and practice my Arabic. Walking through Muttrah though, you notice that it’s only for tourists, and most of the stalls are manned by Oman’s massive immigrant labor force from India and Bangladesh.
I have no problem with immigrant labor, but the ways in which workers are exploited across the Arabian Peninsula are pretty horrific. I made friends with two shop employees (we’ll be seeing them again), and I was aghast when they described their working conditions: seven days a week, before sun up and after sun down, and only a three-month vacation to return home to visit family every few years.
Here are five facts about Muttrah Souq:
Muttrah was the name of the densest settlement that then became a part of Muscat. As such, locals actually refer to the market, or souq, as Al Dhalam–The Darkness. It is indeed dark as the narrow, winding pathways never see the light of the sun.
Living in Uzbekistan, I always expect to hear that things are exceedingly ancient, but this souq is only about 200 years old. It was placed strategically to engage in the trade route that ran between China and India.
Before, many of the goods in the market were local–including Oman’s famed frankincense. Now, however, most of the goods are imported.
The market still looks old, but originally, the main building material would have been palm leaves. Now, it has been engineered to keep the hordes of tourists comfortable.
There is a small minority group living in this neighborhood that speaks an endangered Indo-European language known as Luwati. The Lawatiya migrated from modern-day Pakistan to Muscat between 1780 and 1880.
Stop 4: Muttrah Fort
The details on Muttrah Fort are a little hazy to me, but what it’s mostly known for by tourists is a panoramic view of the corniche. It’s a ton of stairs up to the top, but the view is your reward. What I can find about the fort is that it might have been built in 1507, but when the Portuguese occupied Oman, they reinforced the fort in the 1560s. I have no idea how there is a concrete date like 1507 with no other details.
Stop 5: The National Museum
This might be the second nicest museum I have ever been to. The best museum I have ever visited was also in Oman–we’ll get to it. We had to speed through before they closed, but it was still stunning. There is a huge picture of a frankincense tree in one section of the museum. I showed my frankincense tattoo–that I got to honor Yemen–its namesake. I also tripped twice on the stairs
Stop 6: A City Vista
Alina drove her little rental car down a gravel road and we watched the sun setting over the city. Even after one day, I already knew that I loved Oman, and getting to see Muscat this way was a feather in the cap of an already perfect day.
While we sat, I agreed to travel with Alina to see the other cities. That night, I organized most of my things to leave in the hotel with the “do not disturb” hanger on the door handle and packed my backpack for an adventure.
January 4, 2024
Again, Alina picked me up at around 9:00 AM and we first made our way to the ancient city of Nizwa. When we arrived, we sat at a little cafe in the souq and planned out our adventure. Alina knew that she wanted to stay near the “Grand Canyon of Oman”, also known as Wadi Ghul near Jabal Shams (Mountain of Sun), but that was her only plan.
I hopped online, found a hotel that also had glamping tents, and booked our stay. We agreed to share a room, which is crazy for me, because as an only child–I don’t share. And she was practically a stranger. I told her that since she had paid for the rental car, meals and hotel rooms were on me. She didn’t like this much, but financially, it was a fair trade.
Our only concern is that a lot of discussion boards on the internet said the roads weren’t passable in a car and that a four-wheel drive vehicle was required. We even got asked by the hotel if they would like them to meet us where the road turned to gravel. As a person who had done terrible things to her Camry, Passat, and Jetta, I wasn’t worried.
Before we left the souq, I just had to buy Omani halwa. Halwa just means “sweets”, but there are all types of halwa found across the Middle East. I was told that Omani halwa was more of a jelly-like consistency and was not to be missed. I daydream about it still and cannot wait to go back and get more.
We then set out to explore the Nizwa Fort. Nizwa Fort was built by Imam Sultan Bin Saif Al Ya’rubi in 1668. The fort, while built for defense, also acted as the government seat even in peace times. Sultan Bin Saif was the second ruler of the Yaruba dynasty and he died leaving no sons. He spent his life trying to remove the Portuguese invaders from Oman and the surrounding territories.
The fort was a massive undertaking that was 12 years in the making. The main body of the fort is a round area that rises almost 100 feet from the earth, is almost 120 feet across, and has its foundations buried another 100 feet below the earth. At one point, there were 24 canons lining the top of the tower.
The Omanis were masters of warfare. They included secret shafts (covered with removable wooden planks), fake doors, and holes through which one could pour boiling water or date syrup onto the heads of their enemies. These are aptly called “murder holes”. They built the fort over an underground river to sustain them through times of siege.
After some ice cream and watching awkward tourists ask poor Omanis who were just chillin’ to be in their photos, it was time to head to Jabal Shams.
The trip up to the hotel gave me some of the most stunning vistas of the sun setting over the Al Hajar Mountains. Alina, not having a lot of steep gravel roads in her corner of Europe, was pretty stressed, but I knew the car would make it. Compared to Arizona, that road was a piece of cake. I tried to share some of my calm, but I mostly took a thousand pictures out the car window.
When we arrived at the hotel, the front desk guy was pretty surprised by us. He asked if we had really just booked our hotel that morning. I don’t think he’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of fellow. They gave some advice on the best trail to take in the morning, explained how dinner worked, told us when check-out time was, and then led us to our tent.
It was definitely not a tent where you rough it. There was a mini-split and a full bathroom, but I will say that it was cold. I hadn’t expected to get up into the mountains of Oman and I was deeply underdressed. I thought I might freeze on the way over to dinner.
Dinner was served buffet style with all the guests in a mess hall. One fun thing about Oman is that the food is heavily influenced by Indian cuisine since there has been so much trade between them. We had a nice, mostly Indian food dinner, before crawling into bed to get some sleep for our hike in the morning.
January 5, 2024
I had told Alina that I like to hike, but I think I lied (if I ever write about Tajikistan, this will come up again). The hike was short by most people’s standards, but it was pretty brutal for little ol’ me. So I just kept my head down and tried to keep up. I did slow her down a bit on the way back up, but we got it done. There’s not much to say about the canyon except that it’s stunning. The pictures will speak for themselves.
After our hike, Alina asked if we could check out late so that we could get in a shower to wash the dust off. They agreed. After a short shower each, we were on our way back down into Nizwa.
Before getting into Nizwa proper, we stopped at another Yemeni restaurant. I surprised our waiter, who was from Sana’a, by chatting to him in Arabic about Yemen. I ordered another one of my favorite Yemeni dishes, mutabbaq. Muttabaq is a thin pan-fried pancake filled with any number of things such as eggs, vegetables, and/or meat.
When I came home from Yemen, I told my friend KS about this magical creation, and she made it for me. She even made the thin dough herself. That still stands out to me as one of the greatest acts of love I have ever received. There’s nothing like food and culture in a warm kitchen on a cold day.
Just outside of Nizwa is the most gorgeous museum called “Oman Across Ages Museum”. The name could have done with some workshopping, but the museum itself is fabulous. It tells the story of the country from pre-history to modernity. Even the building itself is quite the edifice. We weren’t intending to visit this museum, but its crystalline structure inspired by the surrounding mountains called to us from across the desert.
We spent the evening exploring the meandering streets of the old town of Nizwa. I even accomplished my mission of buying Omani frankincense. Here are five cool facts about the city:
Nizwa is one of the oldest cities in Oman and was the capital in the 6th and 7th centuries.
The city was mentioned in a handwritten letter from the Prophet Mohammed in which he asked the local people to convert to Islam. The people agreed and a tutor was sent by Mohammed himself to teach them about this new religion.
If you know me, you know I love the explorer Ibn Battuta. I want to say that it’s amazing how many places I have been that he was in first, but honestly, that man was everywhere. He visited Nizwa in the 14th century and found it magnificent.
Nizwa is where you can find the masters of forging the curved blades known as khanjar. Khanjar means “dagger”, but in Yemen, they carry a type of khanjar known as “jambiya”. The khanjar design spread all over the world, which is why I found a necklace of a khanjar in the night market in Siem Reap, Cambodia in 2015.
There is an ingenious irrigation system in Nizwa known as Falaj Daris. This irrigation system allowed the area to sustain agriculture, including date palm farms. It is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
That night we stayed in a sweet, little hotel located in the winding backstreets of the old city. This is also where my stomach decided to rebel. Of course. The one hotel room where the bathroom was almost directly on top of our tiny beds. Nothing like travel tummy problems to bond you to a stranger.
The next day, Alina was heading on to see more wadis and camp in the desert, but I needed to get back to Muscat to catch my flight. I asked the front desk guy if there was any good way to get back to the city the next afternoon. He told me he would find someone. I was asking more about public transportation, but if he was willing to help, I was willing to take it. Getting back to Muscat was what my anxiety had been screaming about the whole trip.
Sure enough, just before we fell asleep. The man messaged me and said my ride would be waiting for me in the front office at check-out.
January 6, 2024
Alina and I decided we would have one last hurrah before we parted ways. There is a small village near Nizwa called Birkat Al Mawz that I wanted to see. Birkat Al Mawz is now a ghost town and the entrance is just through a little unmarked archway off the street. We eavesdropped on a tour group to find out that the village had been lived in until pretty recently.
Oman was at war with itself in the 1950s and the British waded in to help. The British Army bombed the area in 1954 and most people fled to safety. As far as I can tell, some of the last families stayed in the village into the 2010s, but no one remains now. The falaj that runs through the village is still pristine, but like all mud brick villages without inhabitants, the buildings are quickly falling into ruins. The 30 families that once enlivened this small corner of Oman are long gone, but the echoes of their lives are still evident in the old electrical wires and painted walls.
Just outside the city of Sana’a, Yemen, you can find a village called Bayt Baws which feels very similar. Bayt Baws was a Jewish settlement that was almost completely abandoned during Operation On Wings of Eagles, colloquially known as the Magic Carpet Ride, that brought almost 50,000 Yemenite Jews to the newly formed Israel in 1949-1950.
Abandoned places like this always remind me of Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem”:
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
I know a “dream deferred” is not about anything tangible, but the buildings in these places sag with a physical and metaphorical load, and it always feels like a displacement starts or ends with an explosion. Old wounds and long-standing grudges always fester.
After the village, Alina and I went to check out of the hotel, and we said our goodbyes. I met my driver, a 24-year-old engineering student. He had a test the next day he should have been studying for, but he couldn’t turn down the money I was paying him to drive me two hours back into Muscat. It was awkward at first until we discovered our mutual love of fast cars. I am also not sure if his English wasn’t great or if his mother really had him at 12. We will never know.
When I arrived back in Muscat, I dropped my stuff off at the hotel and headed to one of Muscat’s large malls. I had originally planned my trip to Oman so I could buy some new clothes, so I did that. I also had one of the worst Subway sandwiches of my life. Sometimes you get Yemeni salta and sometimes you get dry bread with no fillings.
January 7, 2024
On my last day in Oman, I packed my stuff, checked out, and asked the hotel to hang on to my bags for one last adventure. I was finally feeling emboldened by my time with Alina to just go live life.
There was a taxi driver right out front and we negotiated a price for him to take me back to Muttrah Souq for one last round of shopping. He ripped me off a little, but he liked my Arabic, so not as much as other tourists. I’ll take a happy middle ground.
We chatted the whole way to the souq, his English was okay, but not as good as my Arabic–so I got a lot of practice in. He asked if I wanted him to pick me back up after my shopping outing. I asked him how much it would be for him to take me back to the hotel so I could get my bags and then to the airport. We agreed on a price and a time for him to come get me. He wouldn’t even let me pay him for my ride there, which I know was just his way of guaranteeing I waited for him, but I still thought that was pretty trusting.
I meant to go shopping for souvenirs, but I just ended up back at that stall I mentioned earlier. The two men were really excited to see me again, so they got me a stool and tea and we settled in for a serious chat. I found out all about their lives and their work, and a year later, I am still sad I forgot to ask them for a picture. They were both homesick, so they might not be there in July when I am hoping to go back, but I really hope they are.
I had a bunch of Omani rials left, so I handed them the bills and asked them to shop for me. I knew that they would make a profit, but that I would still make out alright. They picked out some great items, and I left to have lunch before my driver came back. I had another nice chat in Arabic with my driver on the way to the airport, and then I was at my gate to fly back to Uzbekistan.
I am not sure any place can capture my heart the way Yemen did. Yemen was a place in time and a trip that fundamentally changed who I am as a person. But Oman was also a place in time and she took another little bit of my soul and exchanged it with the sound of bustling market stalls, waves crashing on the rocks, and gentle breezes scented with frankincense.
I expected that I would never hear from Alina again, but she surprised me. I guess I really wasn’t too annoying. Unfortunately for now, our travel plans aren’t lining up, but I have a feeling I’ll be seeing my friend again somewhere in the world.
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