Al Ain

After breakfast, I made the final hotel reservation of our trip, so barring any unforeseen changes, the rest of our trip is now solidly planned. Our restaurant reservations for each night in Dubai have also been made, as we learned at the start of our trip that it’s impossible to get into some places without booking in advance.

We dropped off some laundry at a local laundrette and then drove into town to visit the local livestock market. That was quite a hoot, with goats and cows being loaded, unloaded, carried and driven all over the area.

We watched and smiled as goats were sold from the back of SUVs, and looked on with pity as others were purchased and placed in unventilated saloon car boots, the lids slammed shut, and then driven away.

A number of merchants placed goats on the ground or pulled them forward in their pick-up trucks, so that Eloïse could stroke them. While I was away grabbing a few photos, an Arab man posed for his picture with Eloïse, which Sarah took with the man’s camera phone.

I enquired about the prices and discovered that a goat would set me back some 400 dirhams (± €87), whilst I could expect to pay a good 3000 (± €650) for a bull. No doubt haggling would work as well here as anywhere else we’ve been.

After the livestock market, we wandered through the oasis, lush and teeming with tall date palms, crisscrossed by falaj irrigation channels.

This oasis is where the original Al Ain began, and just 50 years ago, the only way to reach here was a 5 day camel trek across the desert from Abu Dhabi. Today, the journey will take you under two hours in an air-conditioned car along a tree-lined highway. How times change.

All modern countries have undergone such changes, of course, but more commonly over hundreds, if not thousands of years. In the Arabian peninsular countries, however, such changes have occurred in a matter of a few decades. Somehow, they have managed to assimilate such changes, including the great wealth and external (read: western) influences without losing their identity. On the contrary, the governments of these countries have done much to protect their society, its traditions and values.

Our wander through the oasis brought us to the local souq, which was very disappointing: just a handful of shops selling domestic appliances, hair products, scarves and such.

We walked to the Hut Café, which we feared may be shut (most things are on Friday), but were happy to find open for business. The food and drinks were delicious and the surroundings very pleasant, too. It was clearly popular with locals, in spite of lots of concessions to the western pallette.

Soon after we arrived, the door was locked behind us, as typically no-one is allowed in or out around prayer time.

After lunch, we returned to the hotel, as Eloïse had become inconsolable.

Back in the room, she turned out to have diarrhoea, so she’s obviously a bit under the weather. Perhaps it’s the heat, although Al Ain is famously cool by UAE standards, or perhaps she ate something dodgy. Hopefully, it’ll turn out to be a one day thing.

After Eloïse has slept a while and I had read today’s edition of Gulf News, we tried to go to the Al Khandaq Fort on the Buraimi side of town. I forgot our passports, but that shouldn’t have mattered, because both of our guide books tell us that you can pass freely between Buraimi on the Oman side and Al Ain on the UAE side.

Unfortunately for us, that turned out to have ceased relatively recently.

This open border crossing has now been closed and a passport is thus required to go from one side to the other.

I couldn’t be bothered with going back to the hotel to pick up the passports and then deal with the formalities of two border crossings within as many hours, so we instead chose to drive into town and have a look at the Al Ain Museum.

This turned out to be a nice, relaxing way to wind up the daylight hours. The museum wasn’t too large and had some nice exhibits, including a nice selection of old black-and-white photographs of various Emirati cities, back when they were just small towns and the UAE hadn’t yet been born.

Dinner was at Luce, the Italian restaurant at the Hotel Intercontinental, just up the road from where we’re staying. It was really good and I recommend it if you’re feeling saturated with Indian, Lebanese and Iranian food.

We thought our plans to go to the camel market tomorrow were scuppered, as it, too, is just over the border in Buraimi; or so we thought. In another fine example of printed matter being out of date by the time the ink dries, the camel market is now located on the Al Ain side, so no border formalities will be required to visit it. I’m glad we asked at our hotel.

I also enquired about the new border checks and was informed that the Emiratis instituted these a few months ago. It has nothing to do with the Omanis, so they’re not checking passports on their side, either as people enter or as they leave. Only the Emiratis are performing checks and it’s apparently really annoying to the locals, as some live on one side of the border and work on the other and commuting is now a lot more awkward.

Tomorrow, the camel market awaits, and then we leave Al Ain behind us, as we continue westwards through the emirate of Abu Dhabi to its eponymous capital city, which also happens to be the capital of the entire UAE.

One final thought: I keep forgetting to mention that Wiesje has discovered a fondness for Arabic music. As we drive, she sits in the back of the car, clapping her hands and shaking her head to the upbeat songs coming from the radio. She likes other types of music, but Arabic seems to be her favourite.

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