Well, after an evening of on and off rain, it seems like most of it dried up. So, might as well go out and enjoy! From the random hike we found yesterday, we tried to find others nearby. Success. We have one on the other side of the town that is also supposed to be pretty easy. So that’ll be part of the plan for today. First off, breakfast. 

This is the second hotel we’re staying at with breakfast included, and it’s quite nice to just walk downstairs and eat whatever you’d like. Today the restaurant area was absolutely packed, but, luckily, as we arrived a family left so we got a table to ourselves. But as people kept and kept coming, eventually two people asked to join us. We ended up having a very nice breakfast with a Dutch-Mexican mother and daughter. They had driven over from Dubai, and they were telling us about Dubai and what they had done while in Khasab. It gave us some ideas. One thing they made very clear is that if we wanted to visit the Museum of the Future in Dubai we needed to book our tickets like two weeks in advance. Well… we will likely be there sooner than that (and we did double check, and they were booked until mid-January). Then they had to run to a dolphin cruise and we had to start our day as well. It was a nice start to the morning! 

So, first let’s address the water situation. Even though it’s hot and dry here, not all of the rain has evaporated. And the locals just live with it, haha. 

Hopefully that doesn’t affect the hike we have planned for later on. Fingers crossed. 

But we will start with an easier, closer goal. Visiting Khasab Castle. 

Luckily we were able to move our flight, or else we would already be at the airport, and have maybe boarded. (We saw the plane come in this morning right beside the hotel). 

Anyway, back to the main attraction. The castle itself is very cool. And you can explore 99.9% of it on your own, including some hard to reach areas. The central tower, which was the original tower built by the Omani in an unknown year, houses a little museum with A LOT of information about Oman. 

Many of these things we had already learned from visiting the National Museum in Muscat, but others were new or had additional information that we did not previously learn. Two of our highlights are the axes that are common to this region and the use of fish spotters at the tops of cliffs. We suppose that when the terrain you live in is like this, you have to come up with creative solutions. 

Then we just roamed around the courtyard between the outer walls that were built by the Portuguese in the 17th century (before being modified by the Omani afterwards) looking at the different rooms and styles of housing and boats, including the House of the Lock. 

We had learned about these houses as well at the National Museum, but seeing one was very interesting. These houses were critical to the people of Musandam because of their seasonal migrations. They would leave their houses behind, with life sustaining provisions inside. But, for such critical resources, how do you safeguard them? Well, these houses had only one entry, the tiny door, which could be locked by two separate mechanisms. And, even more importantly, the large storage jars where they kept water, dates, and other provisions were placed inside the house while construction was occurring, leaving them too big to leave the house through the door afterwards. Necessity breeds ingenuity. 

Afterwards we headed into one of the upstairs sections that was setup to show everyday life in Oman. But, it was a surprise. You open the door and turn and see these women. 

We saw at least 4 different groups of people jump when they turned the corner and saw them, haha. They had multiple displays setup like this throughout the castle showing different aspects of daily life. 

Our final stop of the castle tour was a climb. They made it very clear that it was at your own risk. 

But the view was worth it. 

Then it was a quick lap of the castle again to take one last look, and then off we went to our next adventure. 

Walking around this end of Khasab was different than our end. Here it’s absolutely filled with goats. Goats everywhere. Doing everything. We could put a whole picture gallery up just focusing on the goats of Khasab. 

Just a bit further, and many goats later, we reached the hike we wanted to do. 

Awesome! So… online we had seen that this was a short, easy hike. We think we saw 1.5 hours. Not 4 hours. Whatever. It’s early afternoon, we could probably handle it. And yesterday’s hike was timed for longer than we took (not counting all the time we spent at the top) so maybe we will be okay.

We go in towards the hike surrounded by goats…. And this is what we come to.

You can see the mark for the trail, right? Yeah, we saw that one too. No matter how much we tried, how much we moved left or right, up or down, we couldn’t see the next marker. So we weren’t about to head straight up a mountain without any indications whatsoever. Unfortunate. Would have been nice to see those promised 360 views from the top… next time, maybe. Maybe with more eyes someone would’ve seen the next marker. 

Let’s just continue walking along this road then. Apparently there’s a dock and breakwater at the end, maybe there’s something to look at. 

So we continue and continue. (It’s pretty hot). And then make it to the breakwater. 

Well… the only option is over top of it. There’s a car parked here, so we know someone is in the area. But that’s it. We don’t see anyone else and all the cars driving in this direction pull into the port. But over top there’s a little beach at the entrance to Khasab. Not one to swim at though… but we see people fishing out here. So it’s not so weird. 

And then we see someone walking above us. Now, imagine our surprise. We crossed the breakwater towards the left of that picture. A quick up and over. And this person was walking high above us. Along the cliff face. What?! So we had to take a look, and of course, there’s a marked trail going up to where the person was. Up we go. 

From the “top” it was a pretty nice view.

We say “top” because it was above where we initially were and it was as high as we went. Like yesterday, we’re here alone and no one knows our exact location… so we’d better not push ourselves on the side of this cliff. 

But, we did find a lizard, what looks like a cool fossil, and ended up being higher up than a Khasab-ian mountain goat. Not a bad set of accomplishments. Maybe this is part of the original path we wanted to go on? From where the random person was coming from we can imagine that the views of the Hormuz Straight would be breathtaking. 

Then it was back through town, back by the hotel, and back to the beach. Another little swim as a reward for all that walking I made my partner do looking for the perfect shots to convey the beauty of the Khasab geography. We were even treated to a bit of a nice sunset over the water. 

Then, as always, back to the hypermarket. Stopping to take a picture of the castle at night and to show you what we believe is the drainage system in Oman. We can’t explain why else these would exist if it’s not to allow water to escape. Why else would you have a random indentation in your sidewalk?

But the rain must have been pretty bad yesterday…

Goodnight from Khasab!