Friday
The 7.00 am flight from Muscat to Khasab prepares to land.
As depicted in movies about magical creatures, sharp, serrated mountain
crowns thrust out of fleecy, formless white clouds. A breathtaking vista opens
up – rock formations in varying hues of gold and grey, tiny islets and coral
reefs, a stunning coastline.
Khasab is the main city of the Musandam peninsula. Musandam, a
governorate of the Sultanate of Oman, separates the Arabian Gulf from the Sea
of Oman.
On landing, the airport and its surrounds give the feel of a small town
where tourism is a thriving occupation. Tall, towering mountains, eroded through
the ages, bring to mind the carvings in South Indian temples.
In the airport transfer van
provided by the hotel, a group of four passengers join us.
The elderly gentleman in shorts
takes up the front seat beside the driver. The elderly lady with brown hair
sits with a petite blonde young girl of about twenty on the back seat.
As the van is about to leave, a
shiny-skinned dark girl enters and takes up the empty seat beside me. With her
hair tied up in a turban with a few curls stubbornly pushing out over her
forehead, she looks like a goddess.
The elderly lady talks in a monotone
in an unfamiliar language. The three others nod to her remarks from time to
time. They seem like odd pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
The van passes by the Khasab Castle and the only supermarket in town, winds
through streets lined with little outlets offering dhow cruises, mountain
safaris, and car rentals. A big goat, with a thick brown velvety coat, sits
sphinx-like with front legs crossed on the top of a cliff overlooking the
blue-green sea.
After checking-in at the hotel and having breakfast, we head to the
cliffs jutting out into the sea. The receding tide has revealed an evenly
surfaced rectangular rock covered slightly with barnacles. Just below the
surface of the water, tiny grey, green, yellow, and orange fish gleam in the
morning sunlight. Not far away a couple of snorkelers revel in their
interesting adventures.
At 1.30 pm, we boarded a traditional Arabian wooden dhow for a cruise. The seawater-filled canyons along the shoreline north of the Musandam peninsula have created narrow fjord-like inlets. This area is famous in the tourism circuit as the ‘Norway of Arabia’.
A wizened old Omani gentleman with a kindly smiling face expertly guided
the dhow through the fjords to Khor Shamm - the place where resident
Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphins come to play. Our whistles attracted them and
they put up a synchronised show.
The fjords were majestic with a handful of houses nestling between the
folds of the mountains. Kumzar, a coastal village in the northernmost tip of
Khasab, is enclosed on all three sides by inaccessible mountains.
Richard,
our friend, who had once visited Kumzar for work on the Ministry of Tourism
administration building, remarked, “I saw that the goats there ate dried fish
in the absence of any vegetation”. Tourists can only view the village from afar
and imagine life there with its own unique Kumzari language and culture.
At the Telegraph Island, on which the British had built a repeater
station for telegraphic messages in the 19th century, the green
waters were inviting for a dip. Snorkels bobbed up and down as boats anchored
and departed. A large sea urchin found near the steps to the hill deterred
those who wanted to climb up.
Back at the hotel, we saw a young couple who had spread a mat and camped
on a barnacle-covered cliff. They were fishing with the intention to have a barbecue
dinner by the sea.
Along the poolside, the
passengers from the airport van sat on four deckchairs placed at equal distances. The
elderly gentleman and the lady were at extreme left and right respectively.
Between them sat the two young girls – the dark one on the left and the fair
one, with one of her foot bandaged, on the right. A full moon threw an enigmatic brightness over their shadowy
faces.
None of them spoke.
Saturday
An old man practised Tai Chi facing the sea at 6 am. Fishermen on their
boats hurled their nets for an early morning catch. A big turtle flashed its patterned
back.
We browsed through tourist information booklets for things to do and
learn about the lifestyle of the people of the peninsula:
‘Although accessible by road, air and sea, Musandam has several
cultural traditions which are different from the rest of the country. The local
people are a semi-nomadic community farming their hillside terraces in the
winter and living by the coast in summer to fish and harvest dates – their
summer homes palm frond huts, their winter ones low stone houses that blend
almost invisibly into the mountainsides. The men carry a traditional stick with
a small axe fixed to the top locally called Al Jirz.’
We took a private guided safari to Jebel Harim – the Mountain of Women
– so called because it was the women who took care of young children, farms,
and animals while the men went down to the coast for fishing and defence for
extended periods of time.
At 950 meters, among the barren mountains, we found bright green foliage – aerial plants that absorb moisture from the air and release it into the soil.
A dry wadi had eroded the black stone and created amphitheatre-like formations which would hold clear pools of water whenever it rained in these parts.
An old cemetery with tombstones gives testimony to the advent of Islam in the region. Healthy mountain goats and donkeys seek shade under sparsely-leafed trees. A cool, stone house with sections and windows crouched by a hill with a fig tree by the front door.
At 950 meters, among the barren mountains, we found bright green foliage – aerial plants that absorb moisture from the air and release it into the soil.
A dry wadi had eroded the black stone and created amphitheatre-like formations which would hold clear pools of water whenever it rained in these parts.
An old cemetery with tombstones gives testimony to the advent of Islam in the region. Healthy mountain goats and donkeys seek shade under sparsely-leafed trees. A cool, stone house with sections and windows crouched by a hill with a fig tree by the front door.
While taking
in the splendour of the scenery, a unique rock formation catches our eye – a tall
silhouette of a ‘Rock Man’ accompanied by an army of ‘rock soldiers’.
Our guide, HB, leads us to a “fish market” – fossils of fish embedded
in the black stones.
He has brought dates along to feed donkeys and goats.
The
canyons stretch as far as eyes can see.”On the other side” informs HB, “is
United Arab Emirates. The Musandam peninsula of Oman, lies at the north of U.A.E.”
On the way back, we went atop Khor Najid, one of the fjords in the Sea
of Oman, which offered a view of sailing boats on a small white beach.
“Bellisimo!”
HB, whose favourite language was Italian, regaled us with stories about how he had learned foreign languages
from tourists. When the scenery got
monotonous, HB entertained us with his extraordinary home remedies and
concoctions for various illnesses.
At regular intervals along the road back to the hotel, the puff pastry-like
hills sandwiched brightly-coloured new villas.
“The people from the stonehouses have moved into these palaces now” informed
HB.
The dark girl came by herself
for a swim in the pool in the evening. But she did not smile or talk to anyone.
She swam with calm, slow strokes. She was beautiful.
The April night air was balmy and the moon beamed.
Dinner outdoors under the moonlight was delightful for all hotel
guests. Two little English boys boasted about getting 'Albus Dumbledore' in a Harry
Potter card game.
The four passengers had their
dinner quietly in the indoor restaurant.
Sunday
A hurried breakfast.
The four passengers were seated
in the airport van before us. The elderly gentleman wished us a booming “Good morning”.
The dark girl was sitting beside him. The other two ladies sat behind them. The
elderly lady was particularly talkative.
At the airport, we glanced through an Arabic newsletter which had
glorious pictures of members of the Omani royal family and the armed forces. We
watched an army helicopter land and passengers arriving by Oman Air. As we boarded,
a man’s cap flew away with the breeze and landed near the plane’s wheels. The
security retrieved it.
The elderly lady and the fair
girl were laughing and smiling at something as they sat next to each other.
The elderly man and the dark
girl sat behind us. They were holding hands.
