Muscat , a fascinating city of beaches , bare mountains, gardens and dates and finally… the people !!!

I came down here for spending by paid vacation 4 years back and I never used to like this place. Those 15 days were the hardest I spent here. I could not get over the hangover of my shift with my employer at the time and I spent my whole day sleeping, may be that’s the reason why i did not have high adherence to this place in the beginning .

Next time was even better, temperature constantly hitting 50, and had been here for the entire summer. Days starting early and ending very late with a day duration of almost 15 hours was new to me . Eyes aching at the end of the day, and red when I wake up, was a part of my daily routine. This was something which I never experienced in my life so far and had to live with it . Any day without sunglasses took its toll on me with longer hours of sleep. I couldn’t help it , because it was’nt my body which was tired, but my eyes.

However this made me realize the life of people working for their livelihood in the deserts of gulf, leaving their family behind , in the hope of giving their families a good life , contradicting the fact that they are not having a life with their families, with sun on of top of their heads and responsibility on their shoulders. I am thankful to the merciful for his precious gift called ‘life’ , that I am one of the privileged ones to spend a day in a room with air conditioners and travel in a air conditioned car, while majority of the people does not have this kind of privilege.

Third time out here was the time I had the privilege to interact with the people around me, and to feel their hospitality. That made me understand the fact that , its never the tall buildings, the gardens nor the roads that make a country beautiful. It is the people !!!. The essence of any country is the people .

Things started changing after my third visit and I started understanding it was not the shopping malls, which were interesting, but the culture and the places that hid behind the deserts of Oman, even though never got a chance yet to visit too many places.

Rain always comes as a scare to this country. The Gonu which hit this place an year back took thousands of lives and unestimated losses. Overflowing wadi’s (defined as valley in arabic) , where water comes with great pressure from the bare mountains,crosses the roads across Oman posing a threat to moving vehicles.

Dates and kawa (a drink) is in the blood of the people and a combination to die for. The date palm is the most enduring symbol of the Sultanate’s rich heritage, alongside the trusty camel, the vitalising falaj and other long-cherished aspects of traditional Omani life. It has been the main wealth of people in past generations, the fruit serving as a source of daily nourishment, with the branches and the tree trunk proving valuable in the creation of a great many things that have been an integral part of the Omani home and household. Similar to the coconut tree that we have in Kerala.

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Samjad O.A

Author is the Technical Director to SupportLobby, A 24/7 Outsourcing company specializing and Red Hat and Windows Technologies