In late 2022 and early 2023, I had the opportunity to work as a consultant with a school in Muscat, Oman. This work required two trips from my home base in Sydney, Australia, to Oman. I used the opportunity of the trips to explore the country, as I had only “sort of” visited a tiny part previously, this being many years earlier on the short drive along the road which has to pass through through Omani territory to connect the two UAE towns of Al-Ain and Hatta. That road traversed some interesting desert landscapes, but it showed nothing that was distinctively Omani.
Whenever I work for schools, I always try to get the cheapest air fare possible (because it is a cost that the school must reimburse). In this case I managed to get a ticket with Air India that flew from Sydney to Delhi, with a short connection to a flight into Muscat, the capital city of Oman. Interesting, this was quite a spectacularly priced ticket, being about one-third the cost of any other available ticket with more commonly used airlines such as Emirates, Qatar, Turkish, Etihad, and so on, and moreover the flight time was shorter than any of the alternatives.
The first leg of the trip was on an Air India Boeing 787-8 (registration VT-ANZ, flight AI301), which took off 14 minutes early at 10:31am and landed in Delhi 12 hours and 47 minutes later at 5:48pm (22 minutes early). It was a really comfortable flight with excellent, fresh food and lots of time to catch up on some movies and grab a few short naps.
I had a connection time of an hour and a half, which should have been plenty of time but for two factors. First, the security at Delhi Airport was quite extreme, and it took almost half an hour to pass through the x-ray process even though there were only three passengers in front of me. The reason for that was that every item containing metal had to be removed from all hand luggage before scanning, and no-one (including me) had thought to sort their metal objects from their non-metal objects when packing, meaning that every passenger had to be re-scanned three or four times.
The second reason that the connection was tight was that Air India began their final boarding call an hour before scheduled pushback, requiring a long run to the departure gate which was at the far end of the terminal. I boarded my plane with just 40 minutes to go before pushback, and I was one of the last to get to the plane. The Airbus A320neo (registration VT-EXQ, flight AI973) departed right on time at 7:20pm and landed in Muscat 3 hours 10 minutes later (which was 25 minutes early) at 9:00pm.
I was met at Muscat Airport by Terry, the Principal of Al Sahwa Schools, the school with which I would be working over the coming week. Terry was very welcoming, including saying that he was very keen that I should return home “loving Oman” at the end of my visit. That was a VERY easy task for me to accomplish given the fabulous experiences I was to have over the coming days, especially as my schedule was put together with some gaps to allow me to do some exploring.
Naturally, this travel diary doesn’t discuss the work I did in Oman with the school, but focusses on the geographical experiences in between the work sessions.
Terry gave me a wonderful introduction to Oman (and the school of course) during our drive to the hotel which the school had arranged for me, the Crowne Plaza. I was fairly tired when I finally reached my room; apart from a few short naps on the plane I had been awake for almost 25 hours. Fortunately the air conditioning was working well and the bed was comfortable, so I slept very soundly indeed.
