Another Day In Muscat

Day 25

GOOD MORNING OMAN 🇴🇲

A beautiful sunny day, up early for the excursion today. This should take most of today with lunch included. Early breakfast in the pig pen.

All line up like Lemins to head out to our tour bus. Bus suppose to leave at 7:30am and yes we have to wait about 20min for some woman to go back on the boat because she forgot something. So we are nearly half an hour late off the mark. Then as we drive off we go 300m and the bus stops and we have to get off and go through customs. No bag control or anything just walk through and back on the bus. A waste of time. Then we headed out through the city of Muscat, beautiful roads and magnificent houses everywhere, to the Grand Mosque 🕌. This was a magnificent building with some really interesting customs etc. women and men had to comply with the dress code and this caused some issues with some people… when in Rome or in this case Oman.
Grand Mosque 🕌
In 1992, the then Sultan of Oman, Qaboos bin Said al Said, directed that his country should have a Grand Mosque. In 1993, a competition for the design of the proposed mosque took place. The building contract was awarded to Carillion Alawi LLC.[2] Construction commenced in December 1994, after a site was chosen at Bausher, and it took six years and seven months to build the mosque.[3]

The mosque is made of stone, with doors, windows and embellishments made of wood and glass. Around 300,000 tons of Indian sandstone was imported for the building. Five minarets have been built around the premises of the mosque: the main minaret (90 metres (300 ft)) in height, and the four flanking minarets (45.5 metres (149 ft)) are the mosque’s chief visual features from the exterior. In the interior, the main musalla is the focus of both prayer and tourism. The prayer hall is square in shape and 74.4 by 74.4 metres (244 by 244 feet) has a central dome rising to a height of 50 metres (160 ft) above the floor.[4] The dome is embellished spectacularly from the inside and it is a major tourist attraction in itself. The main musalla can hold over 6500 worshippers, while the women's musalla can accommodate 750 worshipers. The outer paved ground can hold 8000 worshipers and there is additional space available in the interior courtyard and the passageways, making a total capacity of up to 20,000 worshipers.[5]

The mosque is built on a site occupying 416,000 m2 (4,480,000 sq ft),[4] and the complex extends to cover an area of 40,000 m2 (430,000 sq ft). The newly built Grand Mosque was inaugurated by Sultan of Oman on May 4, 2001 to celebrate 30 years of his reign.

From the mosque it was of to a waddie. This is where the fresh water come out of the ground. This one came out of the hills and water hot/warm water. Houses and farms lined the creek and date palms everywhere… quite interesting, some people not happy but you can’t please all the people all the time. One guy raced back to the bus so he could get changed and have a swim.

Ground Water:

People who have visited Oman are sure to have come across the "Wadis". These are more like natural storm water drains. When there is a storm, it results in something called a "surface runoff". This basically means that the rate of rain is greater than the rate of infiltration into the soil. The resultant water primarily "runs off" to a lower point of elevation. This is what the Wadi's facilitate.

Since storms and rain in general is very low in the country, there are "recharge dams". These dams primarily prevent the surface run-off water from going into points of lower elevation (eventually the sea). The still water then has a better rate of infiltrating the soil and replenishing the ground water reserves.

Oman has actively ensured that recharge dams are constructed. According to the Oman Water Association, there are at least 40+ recharge dams across the country, with most of them in the Muscat governorate.

There are also flood-water dams which are larger and these aid in retaining water which helps both ground recharge and normal use.

Oman has a ground water supply of 985 million m3/year. Ground water recharge rate is about 955 million m3/year. Therefore, while there is a slight decline in recharge, this helps ensure that ground water sources are replenished.

From the Wadis we headed to a hotel for lunch, supposed Arab style but more like Indian etc. anyway it was a great lunch and off we headed to the Souq. We had been there yesterday so we did a bit more exploring. Then off to the Shakes Palace. Palace, fort and museum in this location. Only had a dour 10-15min before we returned to the boat. Time for a few photos.

Once back on the boat it was off for a drink ora couple just to relax then off to get changed for dinner. Another great show after that.

GOOD NIGHT OMAN 🇴🇲Leia mais