Thursday 30th January 2014: GMT + 4hrs ­ Mystical Muscat, Oman

I hadn’t intended leaving the ship at Muscat but pleased at the end of the day that I had made the effort to take the shuttle bus to the Al Mutrah Souk and then the ‘Big Red Hop-on Hop-off Bus’ although in the heavy traffic of this busy commercial city, port and capital of Oman it was more a ‘Stop – Start’ bus.  The driver must have been equally frustrated with the traffic because he had a rather heavy brake and accelerator foot so that the bus lurched and jerked very erratically although not sufficiently to cause major injury.  Nevertheless it proved to be an interesting and scenic tour of this city of Portuguese forts, sultanate palaces and a magnificent Parliament building.

My last visit to Muscat was on the 3^rd March 2013 as a port of call on the return journey Round Africa and was much less leisurely, although equally bone jarring as I recall, since I had opted for the Dune Bashing Omani Style 4x4 tour.  This had involved a three-and-a-half hour drive due west with a young driver who clearly had little experience of driving let alone off-road.  Co-incidentally the first person I had recognised at Heathrow was a gentleman passenger on this trip who had snored the whole way back to Muscat!!

Oman is one of the oldest independent Arabic States at the Eastern end of the Arabian Peninsular (See map).  Colonized by the Portuguese in the 14^th & 15^th Centuries (Although this needs checking) the local Omani tribes kicked out the Portuguese in 1651 to gain their independence. Today Sultan Qaboos Bin Said rules Oman.

The economy has been heavily dependent on oil discovered in 1964 but like Dubai, Oman’s oil resources are dwindling and the Government has a strategic plan to reduce the contribution of oil to the country’s GDP to 9% by 2020. Oil and gas will remain important along with the development of Muscat as a commercial and financial centre.

Muscat has a population of some 70,000 most of whom live in the coastal area to the north of the city.  In common with most of the Arabic states there is a huge expatriate workforce drawn from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Egypt who provide the labour for the heavy construction of roads and buildings and run the transport systems.