Nizwa

After our night in the Wadi, we were in Nizwa. We found a pretty cheap place with spacious rooms and big beds. We dropped our stuff off and went to the center of the city, where the fort and souq were located.

Nizwa is located 100 kilometers or so in the interior of Oman. It's a conservative area, with a strong religious tradition. It is also known as an area that is full of 'jinn' or evil spirits. People say that the place is haunted and some people avoid the area for that reason.

Nizwa fort is a huge round structure, with plenty of defensive features to stop invaders. My favorite part were the 'murder holes' in the path leading to the center of the fort. What's a 'murder hole', you ask? A 'murder hole' is a hole directly above a secured door where defenders of the fort can rain down hot oils on top of intruders trying to break down said door. In Nizwa, they would use boiling date syrup, from the many date trees in the area. The corridors up to the top of the fort were heavily defended. They were narrow and had numerous turns in them, preventing battering rams from being easily brought through. At critical junctures they had thick wooden doors with spike pits immediately surrounding the doors. They also had murder holes above them, where the defenders could pour boiling hot date syrup onto the invaders. Basically it went like this: if you got to a door you might have boiling oil poured on you. If you managed to get through the door, you had to watch out for a spike pit on the other side of it. Once you were over the spike pit you probably had 6 more doors to get through, with defenses just like that. It wouldn't have been much fun to try to siege one of these forts.

Murder hole, looking down:

Some of the fort doors that we came across in our trip:

Big:

Small:

Nizwa has a really large fort, with an inner sanctum that could support numerous people. Here is a picture from the inside of the fort, showing just how large it is.

Just outside of the fort area is a large souq, or market. They have a souq for everything someone might want to buy. They have nicknacks for tourists, fruit, veggies, goats, and dates. I was craving dates for some reason (the only time I had ever eaten them before was in Jordan when I visited Steffen there) so I went in. The place was huge, and full of dates. However, there was only one guy in there working, I'm not sure where the other people were. He was old, had wispy white hair and a big cataract in one of his eyes. He didn't speak English, but Steffen had taught me the word for 'date' before I went in (not to mention that if I was going into the date market that I was probably looking for dates). He sold me a kilo (2.2 pounds) for one rial (roughly $2.25). We ate a few of them together, me and my new buddy, and he talked about something while I listened. Then he tried selling me date syrup, (which made me think of the 'murder holes' in the fort) for one rial. First he smeared a little on his hand which he licked off. After licking it off he made a whooping sound and slapped his knee. I think he was trying to show that date syrup made a man strong! He then offered a little to me, motioning for me to lick it off. I did, then I slapped my knee. I motioned that I wasn't interested (the universal open palm wave of "no, thanks") which made him try even harder, no doubt strong off of the date syrup. I smiled and busted out with my kilo before he could give me anymore of his pitch. 

Picture of Steffen in the goat souq, after their big weekly sale:

Selling vegetables in the souq:

In the area around Nizwa, we also explored some of the fortresses that dotted the hill sides. We climbed up to one that was near the road, and pulled out the metal detector. We didn't find anything at this particular place, but we didn't stay too long as it was kind of raining.

However, we did find an old silver coin at another site. It was a collection of ruins along the side of the highway. We stopped and after a half hour of searching we found what appears to be a silver coin with arabic writing on it (it was pretty tarnished). Steffen thinks he found what coin it was in a book at the book store - if it is it would be 500 years old.

After 3 or 4 days in Nizwa we headed back to Muscat. During our time spent in Nizwa, Steffen had arranged for a place to stay, with a guy he met on the plane flight to Oman. His name was Dave, and they had met in the Dubai airport. Dave invited Steffen to hang out with him once he was in Oman, and gave Steffen his phone number. Steffen had talked to Dave a few times in those first weeks and Dave was nice enough to let us stay at his place until we found something. He lived in one of the many nice compounds on embassy row, near some of the nicer hotels. It was a big place, with 3 bedrooms. Not only did he have a great place to live, but he hooked us up with the ex-pat network in Muscat. Through this network we met Elizabeth (who I've mentioned a few times in this blog) and my friend Christiana (who I met at a party over there). Dave was a great cook and we ate like kings while we lived there. He was also the one that told us about the Wahiba sands trip that I've already written about. What a generous guy, all around. It was a stroke of good luck to meet him, and all the good things that resulted from that meeting.

As an American, if you ever plan on moving overseas I would suggest making a connection with the ex-pat network in the place you are going to be. It's a great way to make friends, and to learn tons of stuff about the place you are living. You'll learn about places to live, places to eat, what to see, where stuff is cheap, where the jobs are, etc. I had nothing but good experiences with the ex-pats I met in Oman, and I was surprised just how quickly I made friends there. I'm not sure how you make that connection exactly, Steffen and I kind of lucked into it by the chance meeting with Dave, but people working in the US embassy would be a great place to start. Just some advice!