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The Musandam peninsula is separated from the rest of the Sultanate's territory by the United Arab Emirates. Situated on the Strait of Hormuz, the cliffs of the Hadjar Mountains fall steeply into the sea. This part of the country is also known as the "Norway of the Middle East" due to its wildly rugged fjord landscape.
Truly speaking, the name »Musandam« only applies to the small island of Jazirat Musandam in the Strait of Hormuz, located in the north-east of the peninsula, although today it is generally applied to the entire region.
The northernmost tip of the Arabian Peninsula consists of a huge limestone mountain range that rises to an altitude of 2087 metres. Its flanks rise steeply from the bright turquoise-blue water, dropping back down to the deep valleys of the wadis and sea arms, which form a bizarrely tangled maze of fjords whose rocky walls have made access and life in this region difficult for people for centuries. The longest of the fjords is the Khor Shamm.
The difficult living conditions in this remote and extremely barren region only improved when the first roads and an airport were built under Sultan Qaboos. Today, drinking water ships, desalination plants, local power stations, schools and hospitals provide basic services to the population, even in the most remote areas of the peninsula.
Around 43,000 people currently live in this rock castle, most of them in the regional capital Khasab, the largest and most fertile town on the peninsula. Khasab is also an excursion destination, especially for visitors from the Emirates who like to take boat trips into the fjords at the weekend.
Many of the inhabitants of Musandam are still semi-nomadic; due to the extreme climate, they live on the coast in summer and in the mountains in winter. Due to this way of life, a special type of building developed here, the so-called bait al-qafl. It was used for storage.
➤ More pictures of the Musandam peninsula
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