I signed up for a ship’s tour here in Khasab, it seemed a simple way to see a bit of the countryside.  My tour was “City Tour of Bukha & Khasab”, luckily an English language tour.  Khasab is known as home of the “Omani fjords”, as the area is surrounded by deep bays and islands.  It’s quite famous for its dolphin dhow cruises but I’ve just spent so much time a-sea I chose to spend a terrestrial …..

We took a narrow winding road curving around limestone cliffs along the coast to Bukha.  It’s very arid and very rocky here.  The government is having to build new roads extended further out into the ocean as frequent landslides keep blocking this one.  We passed a couple small villages – one, a fishing village, was demolished by flooding a few years ago and now only 25 people from an original 425 live there.  It only rains during November & December but as it’s basically just rocks here the water accumulates and runs off in torrents down the narrow ravines. I can’t there were many settlements here before modern sewer & water infrastructure was built; it’d be impossible to grow anything, summers can reach 55°C.  Maybe just fishermen during the winter months?  

To consider our drive through Bukha a “city tour” is being extremely generous.  I thought we were just making a big U-turn to get to the parking lot of the Portuguese fort but in fact that was the tour.  We saw a few homes and our guide pointed out the separate girls and boys school!  There was no one on the streets even though it was 9:30am; it’s Saturday, which is the 2nd day of their weekend and everyone is tucked in behind the high walls of their homes.

The fort at Bukha…..well, I don’t know anything about it.  Our tour guide chatted non-stop but it was all about the building of the roads, geography, politics, religion, world peace, contraception, taxes, Omani residents vs. foreign workers; everything except what we were heading to see.  So, I think it’s a restored fort from a couple hundred years ago.  There’s a big square hole in the courtyard which could have been a prison or a cistern, a little tower with a wooden ladder covered in pigeon poo which I didn’t realize till I had already climbed halfway up, and wee slots in the adobe walls which made me think of gun/arrow slots ergo = defensive.

From there we turned around and headed back on the same road to Khasab.  There we had 30 mins to shop, which I’m afraid was about 25 minutes too long.  Then we bussed to Khasab Castle, which my cruise ship website describes as a restored 17th Portuguese fort built in an attempt to control trade through the Strait of Hormuz.  Btw, Iran is just across the way and our guide said that many of the boats on anchor were Iranian smugglers (loose sense as they pay import tax) bringing in large goats.  Believe it or not.

Back to the fort.  Whatever it once was, it’s now been repurposed as a museum showing daily life of early 20th C. Khasabians.  Certain rooms in the fort/castle had mannequins positioned in acts of daily life: ladies having tea, children before a teacher, a pharmacist preparing medicine.  Other rooms displayed texts or jewelry.  No English descriptions but still a bit interesting.

We returned right at noon and I think my whole tour bus came straight to the dining room for lunch.  A bit calmer than the upstairs buffet, and as the boarding ramp is literally next door, very convenient.