NIZWA DAY 92 & 93 14 & 15 -3 -23 245km MASAIRAT A'RAWAGEH PASS

Headed up into the Mountains which ride to 6600 ft in dramatic fashion. It starts off with a 20km ride at 2 139ft of real nice twisties on a beautiful wide tar road up to the top plateau where it got down to 14*C. Met two German bikers that live in Dubai and was invited to his house when I get there, so looking forward to that. 

Virtually rode to the end of all the finger roads which are dirt and sometimes may only have four abodes at the end of it, can't understand how they can carve out these roads for such a few people and some are four to eight kilometers in length.

At the end of the day I hit the jackpot by venturing down into the valley and then it popped down again for a total of eight kilometers to the MasaiRat A'Rawageh village. Total descent 2 921ft of tight switchbacks consulting of shale and dirt, one of the most exciting and memorable ride I have had, was sweating like a pig at the bottom, was so much easier coming up with a huge grin on my weathered face.

Prior to going down at another stop, I noticed my front brake caliper had come loose and the entire thing had gone into my spokes and seat it out to the front of my forks and was hanging over the disc on the outside. I have no club when it happened and never felt it, both of the bolts came out, how weird is that and how it did not buck me off or even feel it in the handlebars is nuts. So I zip tied it to the fork and continued on perplexed as to when it happened.

    Thats the mountain in the background that you come down, am at the bottom here.

So today I got two new bolts and fixed er up and went back down the same pass, in a more relaxed manner. To cut a road down the mountain must have been insane and then why, they even have a Mosque there, well I don't know why I am surprised at that cause they have Mosques even if there are only three houses !!!  Anyway here are ALL the photos. 

NIZWA AT NIGHT. 

MUSCAT TO NIZWA. DAY 91. 330km. 9hrs.

Got to the Grand Mosque at 8am ,so was the only person inside which was great as all the other tourists were still fafing around outside taking selfies.

The rode to Hwy 13 to 10 then got lost and a local showed me the track through the mountains. I certainly didn't expect what was ahead, didn't  do any research on the road but on the map had a lot of tight squiggles so that makes it interesting. 

Was the most intense and fun day I have had on the 800, not as intense as the extreme enduro my son put me through every Saturday in South Korea. The ascents and descents were  maybe 14% and on shale was tricky for me. The switchbacks were tight and narrow and you needed the momentum to turn and not much room for error and had to ride the clutch to make it. The scenery was stunning,  the mountains were beautifauland rugged, can't believe how they cut the road in ,it blew me me away. Even had some rain which made one akcent a little squirly on my back tyre, some Italians could not make it up in their Toyota and some locals stopped and drove it up for them. 

Stopped off at some Cave and then on to Nizwa where I found a real nice room for 17 Omani Rials ($46). Petrol is at least cheap at $0.60 a litre.