Every now and then I get a little restless and have to go out traveling and exploring. Since Qatar is a pretty small place, my domestic options are rather limited. Last weekend I threw some clothes and food in my backpack and headed to Oman for the weekend. After a short flight, I landed in Muscat, rented a 4WD Pathfinder, and headed off into the mountains. Very unlike me, I had no specific plan other than to drive up into the high mountains and find a place to camp for the night. All I had for navigation was a compass and a one-page map out of the Lonely Planet of the entire country of Oman. After stopping multiple times to a) find someone who spoke English, and b) get directions to a road/trail that I had heard would take you the back way into the mountains, I ended up driving up a canyon in the dark on a track that was getting more and more difficult every mile. When I got to a point that was pretty much impassable, I turned around and decided to drive around the mountains and go up from the side that I had better directions to.
Late in the night I arrived in the area I wanted to be, Wadi Ghul the “Grand Canyon of Arabia”. The road went through the canyon up to the end on then climbed out through switch backs from 1,500 feet of elevation at the bottom to 7,000+ at the rim. I pressed on into the night and got all the way to the top of the rim. When I got to the top there was a small building with lights on; as I was reading the sign that said “Military Radar Station, prohibited area…” a little guy inside the building came to the window, looking very confused to see a western tourist in the middle of nowhere at 1 am. He held up his gun to the window as if to say, “Look at me, I have a gun, get the hell out of here.” My facial expression probably conveyed my response, “Look at you, you have a gun, I’m getting the hell out of here.” I promptly drove back down the hill a bit, pulled off the road, and went to bed for the nigh, stretched out in the back of the car.

The next day I continued my wandering. There are some beautiful places in Oman that reminded me at times of Arizona deserts. The picture below is one of the oases that I came upon in my driving. Above the oasis where the ruins of an old stone city, just like in any desert, people are drawn to sources of water. Even today there is a small village near the spring with people herding goats, picking palm dates, and gawking at the occasional tourist who manages to wander into town.
For the remainder of the day, I drove from village to village, town to town, and got in some good people watching. In Nizwa there is a large souq, or market, selling everything from goats, fish, and vegetables to craft items. I saw these gentlemen sitting around talking and I could not help but take a picture.

After the day in Nizwa, I went back to the capitol, Muscat, to do a little more souvenir shopping. Muscat has been an important port for hundreds of years. The old part of the city is surrounded by stone walls and watchtowers. I bought some Frankincense and Myrrh, no gold unfortunately but I did get a very cool silver-decorated ceremonial Omani dagger or khanjar. Saturday afternoon I got on a plane and headed back to Doha having covered almost 1000km and seeing a lot of Oman in just 2 days. More of my pictures are at the link below.
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=5p42e5n.8v126n4n&x=1&y=oft6sd