Muscat

It is said that Muscat lies on a narrow strip between the Hajar Mountains and the Gulf of Oman. This past weekend I discovered that this was misleading. There is in fact no space between the mountains and the sea. The Muscatis adapt, however, by building their city amidst the small rocky peaks that pop up everywhere.

The picture below is taken down an alley off of Mutrah High Street, one of the main drags. The ubiquitousness of these outcroppings is such that I could have taken and posted one hundred such photos. But that would be tiring.

In stark contrast to the rest of the GCC that I frequent, Muscat is truly an Arab city. The taxi drivers are Omani, people actually walk on the streets and there is, more than anywhere else I've been, a sense of a native culture. I was surprised to learn a few things about Oman:
It used to be a world power giving Britain a run for its money in naval supremacy through the late 1800s, deriving its wealth from its overseas colony of Zanzibar. In fact, the Sultanate split upon the death of one of the sultans, with one son controlling Oman and the other, Zanzibar and the Tanganyikan mainland.
It used to be Portuguese. Conquered for its ports and as a jumping off point to India, the Portuguese built many forts along the coast, a few of which are pictured below. Oman struggled through civil wars in the middle of this past century, adding to Portugal's consistent and enduring legacy of screwing countries over (#Angola, #Mozambique, #East Timor)
While my main goal for the weekend was getting out of cities and into nature for a change, I did wander around the Muscat's Mutrah corniche Friday night:

and saw the sunset over a remaining Portuguese watchtower:

and saw a spaceship land (seriously, I never figured out what that was):

and fought off pirates: