Today we went to the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, one of the most popular places to visit in Muscat. Visitors’ hours are from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., and because we arrived at 11:10, we weren’t able to go inside. We decided to walk around the perimeter to photograph the exterior and come back another day, which was fine, but a workman took pity on us and let us into the inner courtyard provided I cover my hair (I already had an abaya on).

What is pictured is only a very small part of the mosque complex, which is enormous (40,000 square meters) and can accommodate 20,000 worshippers in total.

It was absolutely magnificent, even if we couldn’t enter the mosque itself. It was a gift to the nation by Sultan Qaboos to celebrate the 30th year of his reign and was inaugurated in 2001. The mosque contains the second largest hand-loomed carpet in the world, measuring 70 meters by 60 meters. It was produced in Iran and took 600 women four years to weave and contains 1,700,000,000 knots and weighs 21 tons. We must go back if only to see the carpet!

It was sunnier today, but hotter and much more humid. When we left the mosque, my T-shirt and slacks under the abaya were literally drenched, to the point of embarrassment. The abaya, however, was dry.