Stunning landscapes dotted with rippling dunes. Check. Ornate mosques and beefy forts. Check. Bustling souqs and sun-kissed beaches. Check. Ritzy hotels and friendly locals. Check. There’s little that the staggeringly beautiful country of Oman a mere 180-minute plane ride out of India doesn’t offer to a discerning tourist. Until I got there, however, my blinkered view about this exotic slice of Arabia was coloured by three things sand, sand and then some more sand. Everywhere. On curvaceous dunes that invite you to flirt with them. Dune-colored beaches that lend themselves so well to frolicking. And in dried out river beds called wadis that pepper this pristine land hemmed by the Gulf Sea and the Strait of Hormuz. But besides sand, there are so many other stellar attractions that spike a visitor’s adrenaline here. Like snorkeling and diving in the gorgeous Dimaniyat Islands, dune bashing at Wahiba under a glittering vault of stars, soaking in a Karan Johar-esque cinematic landscape at Sur and Qalhat and the piece de resistance the intriguing capital city of Muscat.
TIME TRAVEL IN NIZWA
One place that particularly enamoured me during my weeklong sojourn across the Sultanate was Nizwa, the ancient capital city of Oman and one of its oldest regions.
More interesting than its antiquity, however, is that Nizwa seems to volley back and forth between different time periods. For instance, the city offers all the comforts hotels, boutiques and eateries yet when you visit its monuments and world heritage sights, you feel you’re in a time warp. It’s almost like entering a time machine and getting transported to an ancient era. And then bouncing back to contemporary times!
This interplay of past and present, and tradition and modernity, is what lends Nizwa its intrigue. As Oman’s capital city in the 6th and 7th centuries, the city was also the nation’s culture crucible. Art manifests itself everywhere in the city’s historical monuments, its well-crafted handicrafts, its architecture and atmospheric souqs. The city is especially famed for producing Omani khanjars (curved daggers).
SHOPPER’S TREASURE TROVE
I get to Nizwa souq one incandescent afternoon and am engulfed by its rich atmospherics in a trice. The market mimics the feel of an Aladdin-like cave brimming with glittering treasures. Bahla pottery, silver jewellery, leather goods, apparel, coffee pots, swords, antiques and household utensils, you name it and its here. I amble through the souq’s labyrinthine lanes soaking in its mesmerising sights and smells. Neatly splintered into sections, the market is further sub-divided into a fish souq, meat souq, pottery souq etc. I snap photos with paparazzi-like fervour as silver and coppersmiths craft exquisite ornaments in front of my eyes.
A SLICE OF HISTORY TOO
Nizwa offers a trove of history as well. The city’s topography is studded with world heritage sites including the Nizwa Fort and Jabreen Castle. The Fort, built in the 1650s was the Sultan’s power centre and now ranks as Oman’s most visited national monument. Jabreen Castle, built during the 17th century, showcases exquisite Islamic architecture with exquisite wooden inscriptions and paintings on ceilings.
At the doughty and multi-tiered Nizwa Fort, I amble from room to room, mentally reconstructing the royal life of a bygone era. The fort’s well-maintained innards are strewn with antiques. The kitchen flaunts gargantuan vessels employed, I reckon, for imperial feasts to feed thousands of royal guests. Being a foodie, I muse about the king’s favourite dishes! The royal durbar hall where the king held court has a Bedouin-style floor seating while the guest room has impressive accoutrements like an Iranian carpet as well as a welter of rosewater bottles. The latter were used to sprinkle perfumed water on guests “so that they could leave the palace in a cloud of fragrance”, the audio commentary informs me.
A short detour out of Nizwa to the nearby and mysterious town of Bahla is de rigueur. Locals believe that magic wafts in the town’s air. Magical indeed are the town’s handicrafts including the famed Bahla pottery known for its voluptuous urns. The Bahla Fort touted to be the oldest fort in Oman is a Unesco World Heritage site built in pre-Islamic times. On our way out of Nizwa, we stop at a vertiginous hilltop to click pictures of the 400-year-old Al Hamra and Mistaf Al Abreen villages that glitter like jewels in the precipitous wadis below!
