tower | Chaos roaming the world

The first night in the tent…let’s just say there is room for improvement. 😊 Flo and I were toasty as our set-up is tried and proven time and again. Both kids were cold and complained, waking us up repeatedly. So our mood was not the best when the alarm went off in the morning.

we had colder before, but not the wee ones

Breakfast was the first ray of light in a grey day with lots of drizzle. The Agent of Entropy devoured a whole banana. Nonetheless, you could just tell that everybody was sleep-deprived and slightly grumpy. Flo wouldn’t be deterred though: There was a tower on a hill which you could see from our campsite and he was determined to get to that tower. Today. So, we packed our backpacks and hit the track.

Number 3 was not amused. He was in no mood to walk. At all. He managed to cross the field to the village where the track was about to start. Trying to solve the conundrum, Flo decided to carry Number 3 in the carrier while I had the Agent of Entropy in the cloth wrap. It was quite an exhausting way of hiking…

The track, however, was worth it. It started with a steep section through dense forest with animal statues on both sides to show kids what kind of animals used this habitat. Further up we went to the saddle where we had an early lunch with delicious bread and cheese. The Agent of Entropy took a nap while Number 3 explained that he couldn’t sleep because he had to see every single tree we passed.

About 1km from the tower Number 3 decided that his battery was sufficiently charged now that he could walk a little. It was okay for about 200 meters and then he had a full-on melt-down when he wasn’t allowed back into the carrier. He screamed at the top of his lungs for the rest of the way to the tower. Since I had asked him about a million times if he was sure that he wanted to walk now and that he couldn’t get back into the carrier before we reached the tower…we just all had to suffer through this. At the top, we had another break with snacks.

Tower at the edge of Baden-Baden city limits

Flo went up the tower to enjoy the views, the kids and I stayed on ground level.

The way down on the other side was fun. Number 3 more than redeemed himself with being a great pleasure to hike with for the rest of the way. First, we went down quite a rocky path, then a steep slope to finally come back to a wide hiking path. Only on the wide pathway did Number 3 need more encouragement and the occasional boost off being carried a few meters. We were back at the campsite around 4pm, six hours after we started.

Flo was totally the hero in this piece as he carried both kids for the last kilometer of our hike. Needless to say: getting the kids to bed was easy this night. Not falling asleep right next to them proved to be much harder…

Rise and shine. Time to get moving again.

Good thing we got up with Lina and Michael today as the early start gave us plenty of time to pack. After eight stationary days, almost everything was unpacked. We also wanted to be good house guests and clean up a little after ourselves. 😉 There were a lot of administrative things we weren’t up to date with and so on and so forth. Lina had said that she will have time off from teaching from 9.40 am onward for a bit so we could drop by at school to hand back the keys.

Arriving at about 10 am, we handed everything back, showed Lina and Jorge the fully loaded bike and said good-bye until we’re on our way back out of Oman. It is weird to leave again. We’re looking forward to exploring Oman immensely, but catching up with her and Michael and living in a real flat had been amazing. Now, we were heading to Muscat, about 250 km from Sohar, which is the capital of Oman.

Waving goodbye to our temporary home away from home

Being on the road was different from our last experiences in Southeast Asia. For one, traffic is moving really fast with a speed limit of 120 km/h. But most importantly, drivers reacted to us, something which hasn’t happened in Thailand at all. There would be a tentative honk from behind and then a car would pass us on the fast lane, giving us a thumbs up or a wave or a smile. That was actually quite lovely.

When we were just over the half-way mark, we had a coffee stop. Flo enjoyed the roadside coffee a lot – it seems to have been flavoured with spices. I, however, bought a thin, honeyed pancake as a snack and can only approve of that. 😉 English is spoken widely so we had no trouble ordering food and explaining our trip as the interest in the motorbike was incredible. At the gas station, staff studied our world map before we even finished re-fueling so that it took us a moment to get where the “2015…long trip” comment was coming from. 🙂

Over the first hill. Next up, Matrah and Old Muscat.

Moving, the temperature was fine, just standing in the grilling sun was getting to us again. I took a couple of pictures on the road but really, it was getting into the center of Muscat that was eye-opening. The city sprawls for quite a while before you actually see the sea on one side and the mountains on all three other sides.

We headed to the waterfront as this is the “budget” area. The hotel we had seen in the Lonely Planet was closed and under construction so we asked around in the hotels close by. They were all lovely but way more than we need. This fact was reflected in the price. 60 euro for one night? *cough* They all pretty much stuck to this price. There doesn’t seem to be much backpacker tourism going on which makes more affluent people the most likely candidate for the rooms available. We checked Agoda and one of the hotels further inland had a rate of 40 euro per night. When we arrived, we got a gigantic room including a tv, a kitchen and a bathroom with a bathing tub. All of this is very nice but pricey so we will (have to) camp as much as possible from now on.

With enough space for 20000, the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque is a sight to behold.

People were incredibly nice to us though. They stopped on the street to have a chat when I was waiting for Flo next to the bike. Some recommended things, others were mostly interested in our travels. There’s a cruise ship in the harbour at the moment, so the German tourists also came by, had a chat and took a picture. I think the most adorable instance was an Omani asking to take a picture of us and then explaining that he is a motorcycle driving instructor.

By the time we’d checked in and unloaded our luggage, it was 3pm. Very hungry, we went out in search for food. Nothing around our hotel was open (siesta?) so we ended up back at the waterfront. Driving around Muscat revealed pretty views but my camera was packed away for most of it. You go along roads, a view opens up and suddenly there are jagged mountains, often even with a round tower or a fort on it. It makes the whole situation slightly unreal and simply looks like a fairy tale. In between the houses, mosques are dotted and you can see domes everywhere, even on the bus stop shelters.

A lot of necklaces

After “lunch”, it was 4.30pm. Instead of rushing to a museum which would close at 6pm, we went into the Mutrah Souq. I was instantly slightly overwhelmed by all the goods, the smells (mostly incense) and again, the attention we attracted in our motorcycle gear. The souq is a maze of alleyways, more or less covered, with stalls selling just about everything. We already found a sticker of the Oman flag to put on the motorbike plus, I bought all of the postcards I will write from Oman.

Pretty dead from a long day, we bought groceries on the way back to the hotel and crashed.