Oman diary part 3

Day 5
Woke up about 6:30 but because we were in a Valley between 2 long dunes, the sun had not yet risen. Got up to take photos and found 3 camels wandering about, which made for some nice photos and kept me entertained.

Breakfast was cornflakes and foul. Thought I'd go for both ends of the spectrum. Headed off at 9 for the souk of Nizra. I seem to be doing a lot of sleeping in the car. Aurora has an excuse but I haven't been this sedate on any trio I can remember, and yet I'm constantly falling asleep in the car. The souk in Nizwa we didn't see too much of, but we did have a tour around the beautifully restored fort.

From what I can gather the sultan of Oman seems to have his head screwed on right. The fort was falling into ruins, but instead of knocking it down and building a shopping centre (à la Dubai), or leaving it to disintegrate, it's been meticulously and lovingly restored and is now a museum.

 The old souk has had the same treatment and is now functioning in the same co-operative manner as it has for centuries, so we are told. it certainly doesn't give the impression of being a contrivance for the benefit of tourists, but rather a working market. Pictures in the souk show the floods of 2010, when the outdoor marketplace / car park was comprehensively underwater.

Racing camels - each can be worth £100k

After stopping to change cars for a land cruiser with a working clutch, we headed into a Wadi which turned out to be completely dry. Although not what we were hoping for, it was pretty amazing - we were at the bottom of an enormous canyon perhaps half a mile deep, on a dried river bed.  Huge boulders littered the valley floor. It rains a handful of times a year and when it does, the parched stony valley floor becomes a raging torrent.

The picture doesn't do justice to the scale of the place

Lunch consisted of another soulless restaurant complete with a television on the wall blaring out some crap or other. Including cage fighting, which was unexpected. I have to say the food in this country is nit really doing anything for me. I'm asking Salim for recommendations at each restaurant, but either he doesn't have much taste either, or the food just really is a bit boring. Hopefully before we head home we will be able to have Omani food cooked well - maybe it will actually be good. I'm thinking of which destinations have truly great cuisine - Italy, China, India - and how many have average, nondescript, or downright rubbish food - Peru, Bolivia, Russia, Tibet, most of Africa .

The scenery is quite impressive here. Huge craggy barren mountains with great gashes running down them from rainfall washing sections away, not a single tree on most of them, reddish brown in the evening sun. Crumbling (or sometimes meticulously restored) watchtowers on the smaller peaks.  Plantations of date palms, people on bicycles dressed in the traditional white garb with skull cap.

Following a photo stop at a picturesque village - all mud bricks, goats and date palms - we arrived in the village where we are staying the night. This is the kind of place where you have to park your car on the edge of the village because there are no roads to speak of - just paths winding through mud brick houses in various states of repair. A few people walked past with clumps of long grass balanced on their heads, and some wizened old dudes sat in the shade doing not very much.