Desert magic in Nizwa

Omani adventure

Muscat,with its blend of heritage and modernity, is the Omani city experienced by most foreign visitors on their first trip to the country. Nizwa, the country’s former capital, is still relatively unexplored, despite it being a destination which offers fascinating insights into the traditions and lifestyles in the interiors.

It’sworth arriving early in the day to see the souks (market places) at their bustling busiest. Aged localmenwear turbans and ankle-length dishdasha cotton robes crossed with belts bearing curvedkhanjar daggers, the national dress, while pottering between stalls and bargaining hard for a goodprice. On their shoulders, some even carry ornate carbines, whose barrels are decoratedwith silver embellishments; tour guides hurriedly reassure wide eyed tourists who are new to seeing civilians carrying rifles in public, that the datedweapons are merely bought and sold on market days, to be used for hunting and firing into the sky during Bedouin family celebrations.
The filigree work that can be seen on traditional khanjars also makes them popular souvenirs.The high quality of Nizwa’s jewellery and silverwork can be admired in city shops, and their prices reflect the currentmarket price for the precious metal.

Frankincense, harvested from trees out in the desert,andlocallyproducedpotteryalso attract potential buyers.

Cattle shopping

As the weekend approaches, Nizwa is at its busiest, thanks to theweekly cattlemarket.Farmers from the hinterland park their trucks on the edge of the town and bring their livestock to market, parading the animals around a circular track. Buyers sit on a shaded stand in the middle of the ring or crowd around the exterior of the track,waiting untilananimalcatches theireye,thenenter intoanimatednegotiations. The sellers keep walking until a deal is struck, trying to entice with improved offers. This scene has changed little over the past century,and still has a nun spoilt, rustic charm despite a rise in the number oftourists visiting Nizwa.The locals go about their business seemingly undisturbed by pointing lenses and clicking cameras.

Until relatively recent times, Nizwa — which is located at a break in the largely barren Hajar mountain range, a natural barrier dividing thecountry—was farfrom easy to reach. Few visited the region apart from Bedouin camel caravan drivers. They would halt at the town, which lies on a long-established trade route, to replenish their water supplies at the oasis, and acquiresome of the region’s highly-acclaimed dates, harvested from palms fed from the same source. Today, arriving in Nizwa is easier and much quicker, thanks to recent infrastructural developments. In November 2010, the United Nations Development Programme named the country as the world’s most improved nation over the preceding 40 years, a period which coincides with Sultan Qaboos bin Said’s reign in Oman. At the beginning of his rule, barely10kmof tarmac roads existedin the country, the most recent figure available suggests 23,223 km of  closed surfaces can now be driven on.

Nizwa is 165 km south-east of Muscat, just an hour-and-a-half’s drive along the broadhighway that slices throughanarid, undulating desert landscape, which is infrequently broken by bursts of greenery and gravel dry shrub. Occasionally, visitors pass comments to the effect that thescenery resembles a moonscape and, coincidentally, it’s true that a handful of the rocks that drivers flash past while on the way to and from Nizwa, really do come from the moon and other celestial bodies.

In fact, 20 per cent of the meteorites collected on earth over the past decade have been picked up by teams searching in the Omani desert.

Charming structures

The pinkish, pastel coloured houses and shops of Nizwa rise from that arid plain, seemingly interwoven with the barely swaying green fronds of date palms. Arguably, the most elegant building in the city is the Sultan Qaboos Jama Mosque, whose minaret and dome rival the city’sfort for dominance of the skyline. Nizwa Fort, though, is by far the most visited monumentin the city,andevenwithin the country as a whole. Although it is more than 360 years old, having been built under the second Yaruba Imamat the time when Portugal’s colonial interests in Oman were coming to an end, the fort is beautifully maintained and barely gives an indication of its age. The lower floors host an informative museum about life within the fort and the crafts of bygonedays.That said, most visitors head straight up the narrow staircase to the circular gunnery platform, on which cannons still stand, to enjoy good views over the city streets, and out over the dusty plain, and towards the nearby Hajar mountains.

The thick, 30 m high walls help make Nizwa Fort the largest on the Arabian Peninsula. Legend has it that the soldiers of besieging armies ran the risk of having boiling date syrup poured onto them throughholes in thewalls of this imposing defensive structure.

Thanks to the road link from Muscat, Nizwa can be visited as a day trip from the Omani capital, but a couple of days will allow plenty of time for laid back exploring and shopping.

Fact file

*The best time to visit Nizwa is from November to March, when the sun shines but average day-time temperatures stay below 30°C.
*Places to stay: The four-star, 120- room Golden Tulip Nizwa Hotel, which is a 10 minute drive from the city centre, is a popular place to stay.
*Nizwa is a staging post from where mountain villages can be visited along with the Tanuf waterfall and the Al Jabal Al Akhdar mountain.