Exploring Nizwa Fort and Souq
Summary
The town of Nizwa is famous for its Fort, high walled Souq and wonderful location on the valley floor surrounded by palm trees and the daunting Hajar Mountains. Probably doesn’t justify the 2 hour drive from Muscat on its own, but its very much worth an extra hour or so if you are already planning a trip into the mountains to see the likes of Jebel Shams, Jebel Akhdar or some of the more adventurous trips across the mountains
Top Tip – go for sunset. The changing colours both in the fort and in the dussilhouettes of the distant mountains makes it worth it
highlights
#1 Exploring the surprisingly large interior of the fort and its walled entrance. Heaps of rooms with displays and stories of the history
#2 The views from the rooftop across Nizwa Town and the surrounding Hajar Mounains
#3 Seeing the silhouettes of the mountains in the early evening and the Souq starting to get going below
Experiences nearby
The below map shows experiences nearby with a colour that reflect the Overall Score of those experiences
Other Fort and Castle Experiences
Score Detail
Background - how many times have you asked someone what a travel experience was like and the response was "amazing" or "awesome"? That response is nice to know, but it makes it hard to differentiate that experience compared to others. That is exactly what these scores are trying to do - differentiate the experience by giving a score out of 10 based on 6 categories and then giving an overall experience score
This overall experience score is calculated by: take the highest of the "Culture" or "Nature" score (1-10) + "Fun factor" (1-10) + "Avoiding the crowds" (1-10) + highest of the "Unique" or "World Famous score" (1-10). Then convert into a score out of 100
Extra detail - the logic being that I find all of the 6 individual scores important, but I don't want to mark an experience down just because it doesn't cover both "Culture" and "Nature", or because it isn't both "World Famous" and "Unique". Take the examples of Safari in The Serengeti and walking through Rome - they both appeal at opposite ends of the nature / culture spectrum, and you can have a fantastic time without needing to appeal to both sides. So, their overall scores aren't penalized for their lack of one or the other, and I've done the same for "World Famous" vs "Unique". But . . . I do think that the "Fun factor" of an experience is important, irrelevant of other factors, and so is "Avoiding the Crowds" (or where there are crowds that add to the experience). So, both of these scores are standalone