We did quite a lot of groundwork on planning our Oman holidays last October, as we wanted to make the most out of the trip, both, in terms of getting to spend some time alone with each other, plus to travel & discover the new place, since we both love travelling... we started our homework about 1-2 months before we took off to Oman... we did our hotel bookings online, managed to reserve 2 bus seats to travel to Salalah (btw, Salalah is about 1200kms from Muscat on road; that’s 12 hours journey one way), arranged for a rent a car (because we considered driving in Muscat) etc...
Since our flight was booked for 8pm, we had coordinated the hotel & car rental bookings accordingly. We reached the airport at about 6 pm. Obviously excited, I rushed to the flight info screen, just to see that our flight had been cancelled! OMG, at that point, my mind was oscillating to n fro... I was overcome by so much anger & frustration that I didn’t know who to blame... thank god for RJ who usually maintains his tranquil in such situations... he asked me to stay calm & we both proceeded to the flight info desk counter. We were told that the flight was cancelled due to technical faults... they promised to put us on the next flight to Oman. Well, thank God! And so we were put in the 9pm flight to Oman. We landed at about 10:15pm Oman local time. After clearing our immigration formalities, we reached the car rental airport branch office, only to wait for an hour for their staff to return to the office. During this time RJ bought a map of Oman, with the minutest detail/route of every avenue/street in Oman. We finally got our car keys & headed straight off to the hotel in Muscat. The drive was lovely since there were barely any cars on the roads (it was 12:30am at that point) & also the route to the hotel being a straight one from the airport. We reached the hotel safe at about 1am, only to discover that our booking got cancelled since we didn’t check in on time! Oh God... I thought again, this isn’t fair!!! We explained to them about our flight getting cancelled & the delay at the airport counter etc... The receptionist asked us to wait for a while until he tried & got us a room. We had booked a double room; but the hotel officials managed to get us a suite...! Well, yet another display of God’s grace... in the morning, we drove through the boulevards of Muscat...visited a few beaches, parks etc; by next day evening we were ready to leave for Salalah by bus; when we reached the station, we were told that there were no bookings in our names & that all bookings were closed to Salalah! It was practically impossible to get seats during the Eid hols because most people rush off to Salalah for hols... Isn’t this just a bit too much...! I thought to myself... however, RJ managed to get us 2 tickets from a private outlet nearby... yeeeeehhh, we are going to Salalah! (this place looks just like Kerala in terms of it’s lush green vicinity). The journey began at 6pm from Muscat & we reached Salalah 6am the next day. We were awake at 5.00 am on dot to see the descend down the hills. It is almost like the Kodai /Ooty trip. We could see small streams from the mountains too... it was indeed a beautiful sight! At the station, we were received by the car rental officials there since we hired a car with a driver to take us around Salalah; as we were scheduled to travel back to Muscat the same day by the 7pm bus. In Salalah, we visited a number of exquisite places, quickly to cite a few like the beaches there-Mughsayl, Mirbat etc. Fantastic! We could see fountains from the openings of rocks above the sea. It was indeed a unique scene. There was also an anti gravity place, Job's tomb and foot prints at the hill top, Mother Mary's father's tomb (all of which are with the Muslims now) etc... well, to sum it all, we drove 400 kms in hardly 8 hours... we were dead tired by the time we boarded the bus in the evening; the bus had some technical faults, so after all the repair and stuff, we took off 2 hours late...! About half way through the journey, our bus broke down & that too in the middle of nowhere, I mean it was a complete desert area! So much for a holiday!!! We somehow got the faults corrected & continued with our journey. Meantime, all the way thru I was wondering on how we could reach our hotel on time to check out & board the flight ack to Bahrain... well, we reached the hotel a little after the scheduled check out time, but the officials were so warm & courteous that they asked us to rest in our rooms for an extra 3 hours without charging us the extra! So we could rest enough & packed our bags to check out & clear our bills at the reception; & guess what, we were charged only the room rent for the double room in spite of being given a suite! Having checked out of the hotel, we still had some time before we had to report to the airport. So, we drove thru the suq, the traditional omani market... & bought a few pieces of items... we then headed straight to the airport & thank god our flight was ON time J...
During our flight back, I just couldn’t stop thanking our lord much, I did a mental rewind of how our holiday turned out to be, one episode after the other... & how we got the best of everything we had arranged for… all glory & honor to the lord! & yes, looking forward to our next eventful holiday…!
