This view greeted me from our kitchen window in the morning

Time to leave Muscat. Not without visiting the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque though. Since our visit to Muscat fell mostly on a Friday, we had no chance to see it so far. It opens at 8am on Saturday mornings so we planned to pack up and visit it before riding on.

Breakfast was had in our studio kitchen, which makes it so nice and cheap. Packing went okay but then we realized that the mosque is 20km in the wrong direction which dampened the mood a little. We had to see it anyway.

Once we were at the car park, I took out my headscarf to put it on. It is more difficult than it looks. Unsure if I had to cover all hair, I kept tugging on my hijab self-consciously. Which made the whole thing dissolve. *sigh* I can feel some youtube tutorials coming up in the future.

The mosque itself deserves the name Grand Mosque. Gosh, it’s ornamented! The white sandstone cladding of the buildings looked really pretty in contrast to the blue sky, while the prayer hall was simply stunning. It had the biggest chandelier either of us has ever seen as well as intarsia on the walls and ceiling, ornamented glass windows and a large hand-knit carpet that still has us wondering how it got inside.

There were many hallways around the great central building; all of them highly decorated with mosaics from different Islamic regions and time periods. I wish I knew more about it but my art history education was solely European.

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When we were about to leave, all the tour buses started to arrive, which made us glad to have been here early. A lot of Germans poured out of them but, really, most of the white tourists struggled with the simple instructions of: Wear something that has sleeves to your wrists, pants to your ankles and women also wear a headscarf. While all women we saw had a headscarf, many were hiding naked arms under the cloth as well while one older man was asked to dress more appropriately when his shorts ended directly below the knees. Of course, he had sort of a tantrum about it. Thus, embarrassed we fled.

Impressive engineering

Bye, bye Muscat! We now left the city for good, heading east to Sur before going south. Well, we didn’t plan to reach Sur today but camp somewhere outside of it and then see it the next morning. Since Sur is just 250km away, we had a lot of time to spend on getting there as you cannot put up a tent in the afternoon heat.

Our first stop on the route was the Wadi Dayqah dam. We hadn’t talked about it before but when I read about it in the Lonely Planet, I had guessed (correctly) that Flo wanted to go there. It turned out to be a really pretty spot on the top, looking out over the turquoise lake. We had an extended break as it was getting hot now and snacked on mixed nuts and raisins which is called “students’ grub” in German. 😉

the smallest piranhas on earth!

The road through the dry mountains was noteworthy itself so I, one more, took many pictures. The next stop on the way to Sur came in form of a sink hole. I was unsure what to expect of a “sink hole”. This might be why we were so unprepared, with our swim wear packed deep into our clothes’ bag, not readily available. The sink hole turned out to be gorgeous. Very pretty pond down in the earth with a long flight of stairs leading down.

As it was, we were only able to put our feet in. Flo complained about fishes nibbling at his feet which was weird and tickling, I can’t report any such thing. Maybe the fishes were scared of my feet. 😉 By now, it was scorching hot in the sun and I needed to shade-hop to get back to the bike. Unfortunately, shade is a rare thing here.

Back on the bike, we rode to Wadi Shab, one of the top attractions according to the Lonely Planet. This is for the part of the wadi that you reach after a two hour hike though. The wadi entrance right next to the parking area has the pillars of the overhead motorway going through and looks not impressive at all. You need to get a fisher boat to the other side and then walk for hours; both of which we were not too keen on. After an extended break in the shade, only interrupted by a herd of goats coming by and the group of young men hanging out here with their cars that blasted loud music into every direction, we left again.

In Wadi Tiwi looking back

Wadi Tiwi was next on the list. This one looked promising but had a huge puddle across the road right at the entrance. Cars made it through without an issue while we watched so Flo wanted to give it a go. It was fine as long as there was asphalt under the tires even though it got rather deep. But then we hit gravel, the bike gave a fear-inducing wobble but then Flo caught it again. At this point, the water was so deep that Flo’s feet were in it and we came out on the other side splashed.

The road led along the wadi now, which had quite a bit of water (well, it rained yesterday), for only 400 meters before it crossed through water again. This time even Flo admitted that it is too much for us, fully loaded and two up. So we sat down here with a few other people having a picnic (it was the weekend still). Flo had a nap, I surfed the web. Bliss. Until we were good to leave. That water crossing was not better on the way out. Not a bit. Michael, you guys should give it a try…looked like fun in a car.

Our GPS had a point of interest called ‘Tiwi bush camp” which sounded promising so we stocked up on water for the night and some cookies for the sweet tooth before heading that way. It was a disappointment. A square box out of pebbles was marked on the beach right next to the motorway and a garbage bin. Flo decided that he could find a better spot than this so we hopped along the coast, stopping five times until he was satisfied and we set up camp for the night.