Muscat - flashes of the city's life

Muscat is a beautiful and surprisingly modern metropolis not losing anything of the charm of an Arab town... It has a vibe of a big capital. The historical museum, somewhat modest in its content, however, shows that since 1970 (the reign of Sultan Qaboos), the city has changed immensely and has bec...

The Sultan’s palace "Al Alam" and the government quarter

The Sultan’s palace "Al Alam" means "The Flag" in Arabic.  The palace, one of six royal residences of the ruling monarch, Sultan Qaboos, has a history of over 200 years, built by Imam Sultan bin Ahmed the 7th direct grandfather of the current Sultan. The existing palace, which has a facade of gold ...

Sultan Qaboos Mosque (Grand Mosque)

Sultan Qaboos Mosque is the largest temple in Oman. The construction began in 1995 at the behest of Sultan Qaboos. It lasted six years; the solemn dedication of the mosque took place at the thirtieth anniversary of the rule of the ruler. Fit there may as many as 20 thousand people, including 6.5 th...

In Muscat for a while at night

We arrived in the capital late in the evening, but we could not deny ourselves  the pleasure of walking along the boulevard, the Corniche. At the beginning we encountered a problem with the parking  payment as it is payable until 9pm. There’s one way of the  payment via phone text, but you have to...

A sinkhole Hawaiyat Najm

There was one more thing worth seeing on our way to Muscat: "Bimmah Sinkhole (Arabic Hawaiyat Najm) is a water-filled depression, structurally a sinkhole, in the limestone. A lake of turquoise waters, it is 50 m by 70 m wide and approximately 20 m deep. It is only about 600 m away from the sea, cl...

Tombs at the hight of 1700 m.

The next stage on the way to Muscat is the way up the mountain massif (again from level zero) to a height of 1800 m, to see another group of tombs from the Bronze Age (!!). This drive is a real challenge, the slope of the road is so steep that it is better not to wonder what it would be if ... It ...

The Tiwi Wadi - full of life

From the beautiful city of Sur we are heading to the capital - Muscat. We have about 200 km to drive. Not far away! But along the way there are some "things to do". We have to enter into another wadi (Wadi Tiwi) which goes several kilometers into the canyon and  approx. 1000m (going from sea level!...

A car incident in one of wadis

There always got to be the first time. Visiting  the surroundings of Sur we  were drivin along a big overpass on one of the nearby wadis. Our excellent drivers of the Toyota and Jeep (Wanda and Paul) decided to go under the viaduct  and drive along the wadi. It happens even to the most experienced...