Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

Today has been a long day; our longest, I think, in terms of kilometres travelled and without a doubt the longest day of driving.

Because we have to time our departures around Eloïse’s sleep patterns, we revisited the Family Park in the morning and let Eloïse play around on the various climbing frames and slides. The place was virtually deserted in the daytime heat. As we had seen on the day we arrived, it doesn’t really come alive until the late afternoon.

And so we bade Abu Dhabi a fond farewell around noon and headed for the Al Maqta Bridge to take us in the direction of Dubai. On the outskirts of town, we stopped to take photos of the humungous mosque that is being built there.

It’s already very impressive. The original plan was to make it the largest in the world, but the Saudis got upset at the idea of the great mosque in Mecca being displaced from the top spot, and so Sheikh Zayed relented and scaled it back. You wouldn’t know to look at it, though; it’s huge.

As I’ve suggested before, they certainly know how to build roads here. A four-lane highway in each direction links Abu Dhabi with Dubai. The absence of cruise control was, once again, a royal pain in the arse, as one never has to lift one’s foot from the accelerator as one races across the desert from one modern glass and steel oasis to the other.

When we flew into Dubai, we had no car, so we spent our two day stint there being ferried arround by abra and taxi. This made it possible to see that Dubai was big, but not exactly how big.

This time, our drive to Musandam would take us right alongside Dubai, which loomed up on the horizon when the clock was still reading a good 50 km to go before reaching that most famous of the emirates. The road widened to six lanes in either direction and started to feel more like a race track than a utilitarian road.

The sprawl of Dubai has to be seen to be believed, and it’s not due to the city being low-rise, either. On the contrary, this city has skyscrapers to dwarf those found in New York, Hong Kong and other cities. It seems like no two things are within walking distance of each other in Dubai. A visit spanning a few days could probably run to a few hundred kilometres if not planned correctly, without your ever having left the city.

We followed route 11, driving close by the world-famous Burj Al Arab hotel, its sail-like form quite unlike anything else protruding into the Dubai skyline.

Another building, planned to be the world’s largest when it is finished, currently reaches some eighty stories into the sky, just half the number it will boast when completed. Looking at Dubai is like looking at a vision of the future from a science-fiction story written just a few decades ago.

As we headed out of Dubai near the airport, the traffic arteries started to clog up as we reached the next emirate of Sharjah. (We’ll spend a night here before returning to Dubai.) The signposting also worsened, and it became increasingly less clear which exit we should take from each passing roundabout. More than once today, we would take the wrong road and have to figure out and correct our mistake. Thankfully, we incurred only slight delays each time.

Sharjah gave way to the emirate of Ajman — blink and you’ll miss it — and then to Umm Al Quwain, where we finally stopped, much too late, for lunch. A rice dish for me and hummus for Sarah would plug the gap until dinner.

Whilst there wasn’t time to visit any actual towns, it was clear that Umm Al Quwain is a much more understated emirate than either Abu Dhabi or Dubai. It, too, has a good number of construction projects, but nothing of the scale of what is going on in its two famous cousins.

With fewer visitors coming to this part of the UAE and fewer commuters, the road had long since narrowed to two lanes in each direction.

Ras Al Khaimah was the final emirate we would pass through today. Here, the signposting of the roads became truly useless and Sarah began to navigate by the position of the road relative to the sea and the mountains. The road surface, too, was becoming less and less worthy of its purpose, as it carried us past towns of ever decreasing size.

Finally, we reached the border with the Omani province of Mussandam at just before 17:00.

There was a fair bit of bureaucracy, but no problems, unexpected or otherwise, to deal with. Our only surprise was needing to fill in and purchase three UAE exit forms, which set us back AED 60. We hadn’t needed to do that at the Hatta exit point back in February. Different place, different rules.

With that out of the way, we could drive the 50 m or so to the Omani checkpoint, where three more forms needed to be completed and three visas purchased. We were given the option of paying in dirhams, so we did, to the tune of AED 180. We also had to demonstrate that we had appropriate car insurance for Oman, and we did, as the insurance we had purchased when passing the Hatta border in February was still valid.

The border formalities had taken half an hour, so we had only a little more than thirty minutes to reach our destination before sunset. Happily, we were only another 35 km removed from it at this point, so we made haste and followed the winding road as it hugged the side of the cliffs, first inland and then sharply curving back towards the sea.

The clearly visible strata of the cliffs and the small villages tucked into coves at their base reminded me quite vividly of the Faroe Islands, although the cliffs here were much less green, of course.

Around 18:15, we reached our hotel after some 340 km and checked in for the evening. We’ll spend three nights here before heading back along the road that brought us.

We’ve booked a half-day dhow cruise for tomorrow, as the only way to see a lot of Musandam is by boat. Roads are a relatively new invention here and one village, Kumzar, can still only be visited by boat, a journey that takes two hours by speedboat.

In a single day, we’ve travelled from the bright lights of the UAE’s capital to this Omani outpost, Arabia’s least-known and least populated corner. Musandam is cut off from the rest of Oman by Emirati territory to the south and the Strait of Hormuz to the north. How did this come to be?

Well, basically, the semi-nomadic Shihuh people who live here didn’t really care which country they were in, but then came along the British in the sixties and early seventies, and they wanted to grant oil concessions to their companies. This meant that all of the tribes in the region had to pledge allegiance to one of the big-wigs, and the Shihuh chose the Sultan of Oman, rather than the Sheikh of Ras Al Khaimah.

And so it came to be that the Musandam peninsula is a slither of Omani territory, whilst being physically and geographically separate from the rest of the country.

There are no exploitable commodities here — no oil, no copper — and that has ensured that the peninsula has remained relatively isolated. Fishing, goat herding and limited agriculture are the staples of the local economy.

Beyond the Strait of Hormuz to the north lies Iran, and we’re informed that Iranian smugglers also help bolster the local economy. Perhaps we’ll see a few in the next couple of days.

The Sheraton gets full points for its breakfast spread. No fewer than five different freshly squeezed juices were on offer this morning, along with the usual vast array of breakfast items. Surprising treats were bowls of baked yoghurt and strawberry smoothies. So, as you can see, we’re really going without our creature comforts over here.

We retrieved our car and drove around town, looking for a carpet shop mentioned in our guide book. In spite of locating the correct street corner, we couldn’t find the shop, so we dialled the number in the book and received directions to its new location.

Upon our arrival somewhere close to the shop’s new location, however, we found ourselves in front of another Persion carpet shop, and decided to visit that one first.

Well, this shop contained quite simply the most impressive collection of Persian carpets that either Sarah or I had ever seen; and we’ve seen quite a few, especially on this trip. Consequently, we never made it to the shop we’d originally been searching for.

Expansive, pure silk carpets hung from all the walls. Some of them were 5  m x 3 m or greater, which is larger than most shops back home (and a good few here) can even display.

One side of the shop was adorned with photos of foreign heads of state and similar VIPs, purchasing their carpets in the shop. Clearly, we had come to a high-end supplier.

The woman who assisted us was Iranian and very helpful. She gave us a full tour of the shop, which was spread across three floors, and showed us carpets more beautiful and detailed than anything you can imagine.

She explained to us the reputation of the shop, that it deals purely in Persian carpets (no Afghan or Indian, etc.), that it was the first such shop to be established in Abu Dhabi some thirty years ago, and so on. Her family runs it.

The time came to commence the enjoyable and somewhat fatiguing process of looking through the shop’s stock. We had in mind a nice replacement for the living room rug that we purchased from IKEA a year ago.

That sad old thing is looking tired and stained now, as if it has suffered repeated and unrestrained attacks from a rampant baby. Funny, that.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, we found a nice 3 m x 2 m carpet with an extremely original and striking geometrical motif, yet still very traditional in overall appearance. I loved it at first sight. It was made in Tabriz in north-western Iran.

Some time later, we finally left the shop with the carpet rolled up and packed in plastic, our wallet much the worse for wear.

A nice, long walk along the corniche was called for, in order to cogitate on our purchase and allow Eloïse to sleep. We parked the car along Sheik Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum Street (commonly known as Airport Road or Second Street — are you surprised?) and then walked up to the corniche and along it, stopping periodically for snaps of the impressive skyline. A strong wind had kicked up and made for a very breezy stroll.

On the way back to the car, we stopped off for a spot of lunch and then headed over to the Marina Mall to purchase a cheap suitcase in which to haul our carpet back to Amsterdam. We managed to find a decent-enough one on sale and were pleased to find that its dimensions were just large enough to accommodate the carpet.

Afterwards, we took some more photos of the Abu Dhabi skyline, but this time from the breakwater near the mall. We then drove all the way along the corniche to the carpet market, but it just wasn’t in the same league as the shop we had been in that morning, so we left immediately.

Back at the hotel, we took Eloïse down to the paddling pool and then relaxed while she played on the slide.

We haven’t done all that much in Abu Dhabi, but I must say that I have enjoyed my time in the UAE’s capital. I look forward to returning.

There is a reported $100bn of construction going on here at the moment. The city’s skyline is set to change drastically over the next five years, with all manner of cultural institutions, hotels, apartment complexes, restaurants and so on being built.

The plan is apparently to turn Abu Dhabi into a major global destination, in much the same way that London, Paris and New York have enjoyed being for as long as any of us can remember.

I think they’ll achieve it, too. No other country in the world has the resources, either financial or physical, to take on the development projects that this country has contracted. The world’s most famous architects have been commissioned and are building modern feats of engineering that will put Abu Dhabi on the world’s map.

It remains to be seen whether the UAE’s capital city can compete in this regard with Dubai, which is the world’s fastest growing city and home to development projects, such as the palm islands, whose scope takes one’s breath away.

Tomorrow, we head north and exit the UAE for a three night stay in the geographically isolated Omani province of Musandam, along the Strait of Hormuz. There’s not a tonne of infrastructure there, so I doubt we’ll have access to the Internet during our stay.

One thing’s for sure: it’ll be a stark contrast with the metropolis of Abu Dhabi.

An early start again, as we wanted to visit the Al Ain camel market.

It turned out to be quite a spectacle, with hundreds of camels of various sizes and colours in various pens. We were met as soon as we parked by a bunch of enthusiastic camel traders, who quickly coralled us along the pens, encouraging us to take photos and even trying to remove my camera from around my neck, so that they could take photos of the whole family. I was wary of letting them do so, however, and kept a firm grip on it.

We posed for pictures, touched some gigantic, fearsome-looking camels, and cooed over baby camels as we walked from pen to pen.

After about ten minutes came the shakedown. One of the men, the one who had been grabbing at our camera, suddenly demanded 50 dirhams. I should have seen it coming, of course, but I didn’t; I mistook the whole performance for ebulient hospitality.

On the other hand, I have a lot more respect for people who try to make a quick score from tourists if they’re up-front about it and a price can be agreed in advance, so I was unimpressed with the tactics employed.

I decided on the spot that a few photos with camels wasn’t worth 50 dirhams of my money, so I pulled out my wallet, handed over a 20 dirham note (± €4.20) and made it clear that I wasn’t going to haggle. To be honest, I saw the 20 dirhams more as a self-inflicted fine for being so naïve than as a payment for services rendered.

He backed off, but then the next of the traders indicated that he was ready to receive his 20 dirham note, too. Nice try, mate, but nothing doing. I shook my head and we simply walked away.

We took a few more photos and talked to a couple of traders about prices. We were told which camels were for meat and which were not. The latter category are presumably for breeding, riding or even racing.

Ever since childhood, I have recalled the cliché of the westerner who visits Arabia and is offered camels in exchange for his wife. Well, perhaps unsurprisingly, the same happened to me today. I was offered a whole batch of camels in return for Sarah, plus a sizeable lump sum of cash for Eloïse.

I made it clear, however, that Sarah is good breeding stock, and that I’m therefore hanging on to her for the time being.

With the camel market ticked off, we picked up our clean laundry, went back to the hotel, packed and checked out. We pointed the car in the direction of Abu Dhabi and sped off across the desert.

What an amazing road. Route 22 to Abu Dhabi is a six-lane motorway (three lanes in each direction) with almost no traffic. It runs in what amounts to a virtually straight line right across the desert; you could make a safe attempt at the land speed record across most of it.

This massive boulevard is lined with trees across its entire length, but not just with trees, either. No, the entire length of motorway is also illuminated by lampposts, which must make it the longest stretch of illuminated road I’ve ever come across.

As in America, cars cruise along the middle lane with little regard for what’s going on to the left or right of them, never mind behind. Dunes rise up on either side, then fade away again, only to return a few tens of kilometres further down the road.

One need never take one’s foot off the accelerator until one reaches the first set of traffic-lights on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. We drove all the way into the city until we could go no further, then turned right along the corniche and admired the stunning skyline of the nation’s capital. It’s an impressive sight, it has to be said.

We pulled up in front of our hotel, unloaded our bags and left the car in the hands of the valet while we went inside to check in.

We’re staying in the Sheraton, which in my experience is usually a so-so hotel: perfectly comfortable, but unremarkable; a bog-standard hotel, in other words. Not so this one. The reception area is beautiful: gorgeous high ceilings, exquisite furnishings and tasteful masonry.

We were greeted with glasses of chilled apple juice to drink while we checked in. Then, it was up to a really lovely room on the fifth floor to enjoy the view of the sea from our balcony.

Sarah and I were champing at the bit to get out and explore the city, so without further ado, we had our car retrieved and then set out to inspect the Abu Dhabi Mall, which comes highly recommended as a taste of the city.

As expected, it wasn’t quite the almost surreal experience that Dubai’s Mall of the Emirates offers, but it was great fun to see the cosmopolitan spectacle of men in dishdashas, women in beautifully adorned abayas (which the Muslim women use to great effect to express their personality), western expats, Indians and people from all over the Asian subcontinent. What a fabulously diverse and international place this is, and with little sense of racial tension, too.

The modern shopping mall is really the latter-day equivalent and logical extension of the age-old souq. Here, too, as in the West, women love to shop for the latest fashions and designer brands, which they sport under their alluring abayas. Behind their veils, they press the latest model of mobile phone against their ear and catch up on the latest gossip from friends.

I have come to think about Muslims quite differently during this trip, especially the women. Like so many people, I once saw the veil as a form of oppression, but for some women, it can lead to the discovery of a type of freedom unavailable to many women in the West.

One western woman writes: “From simple hair-tie to hat, from scarf to veil until finally the full outfit. With every step, the reception was warmer and the freedom fuller. From within the veil I could see without being seen, understand what without being understood, and ogle the magnificent tribesmen without suffering inspection myself. It protected me from the sun and kept out the dust. It hid blemishes and bags. It concealed uncombed hair, a crumpled shirt or clumsy cosmetics. When I returned to London, the pressure to appear feminine, au fait and fashionable again seemed overwhelming. To my surprise, I secretly longed for those days in the veil…”

Having travelled around this part of the world for the last few weeks, I can completely understand those sentiments. Yes, for some women, the veil is a cultural obligation, but in practical terms it affords them as much freedom, if not more, than it removes.

The visit to the mall was Sarah’s idea, but, as usual, she ended up buying nothing. This time, however, I shopped until Sarah dropped at the Virgin Megastore.

An attractive Muslim girl in headscarf helped me pick out various Arabian CDs to listen to. We’ve had music blasting from the car radio throughout this trip, but I have no idea who any of the artists are. Faced with an overwhelming selection of Arabian artists, I needed some help to navigate the field.

Between her and the store DJ with whom I struck up a conversation, I was more than catered for with one fabulous CD suggestion after the other. I’d expected to buy just two or three CDs, but I eventually left the shop with no fewer than nineteen (with plenty more yet that I would have listened to, had I been alone). Sarah was grimacing with boredom by this point.

After a cup of coffee, we crossed the road and went to a small shopping centre with vendors selling goods of a more ethnic nature. We spent quite a bit of time in a Persian carpet shop and were rather shocked to discover how cheaply one can purchase a sizeable, hand-made carpet over here.

From there, we returned to the car and drove back along the corniche, stopping just before sunset at the Family Park, where children were flying kites and playing on the best set of climbing frames, swings and roundabouts either Sarah or I have ever seen.

As the sun went down, the place really came to life.

Parents and children here seem to keep different hours. Whereas a European park would be desserted by 19:00, this park was now buzzing with life, as children ran and jumped in every direction, whilst their parents, mostly the mothers and their female friends, sat on large mats on the grass, eating a picnic supper and smoking wonderfully fragrant shisha in large hookahs, the scent of apple tobacco wafting through the air like an orchard.

People from every walk of life were present in the park. It was clean and unspoilt, there were no unsavoury types hanging around, and the atmosphere was joyful. Eloïse joined in with the rest and it was easy to imagine being a part of life here.

Amazingly, a cool breeze had begun to blow through the park. It’s the only cool breeze we’ve felt during our entire stay in the region.

What a great place Abu Dhabi is revealing itself to be. We’re eager to sample more of what it has to offer tomorrow, but already we’re sure we’d like to return.

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.

The family split up for the morning, with Sarah and Eloïse going for a swim outside, whilst Papa stayed inside and tried to contact a hotel to make a booking for our stay in Musandam next week. It took a long time to finally make contact, by which time the girls were back from their swim.

The single most tedious aspect of unscheduled travel is having to make bookings and reservations en route. This means having to be flexible in your schedule (sometimes taking different nights at a hotel than the ones you wanted; sometimes taking fewer nights; sometimes not getting the only decent hotel in town), replanning your itinerary (going to B first, then A, rather than vice versa), dealing with communications difficulties, paying extortionate hotel phone tariffs, recovering from botched reservations (they were expecting you two days ago; or they made the reservation for one night, not two, and now the hotel is full on the second night), finding travel agents to book flights, finding flights that aren’t full, hiring a car at the other end, booking excursions, etc., etc.

There’s really no other way, however. Even with the most exhaustive research beforehand (not that we were exhaustive for this trip), one can’t always conclude how many nights will be needed at each location or, indeed, which locations should be picked for each overnight stay. Even if you did have things tightly pinned down, you can still find yourself wanting just one more night somewhere, or finding yourself in special circumstances that dictate one night more or fewer somewhere.

Besides, the sense of adventure and exploration is that much greater when you plan as you go. With relatively little hassle, one’s itinerary can be changed at the drop of a hat, which means that only your flight arrival and departure dates need be set in stone.

So, you take your chances and try to arrange everything whilst on the road. Sometimes it doesn’t work out, but usually it does, even if some kind of compromise is necessitated. At this point, there’s only one night left in our trip for which we don’t have a hotel booking.

At noon, we bade Muscat a final farewell and took the Sohar road that first brought us to the Omani capital back in February. I had forgotten what a dull drive it was, but at least we managed a steady 120 kmh all the way to Sohar.

Sultan Qaboos must really love his flowers. The dual carriageway in and out of Muscat is embellished for a good 50 km on both sides by a stunning blaze of colour. I can’t imagine how much work it must be to keep that length of flowerbeds looking as beautiful as they do.

We stopped to fill up with petrol and food in Sohar. An anonymous, menuless chicken-and-rice shop provided the calories and we were on our way again. Thankfully, the drive towards Al Ain now became more interesting. The road began to bend and wind its way past hills.

The border crossing into the UAE was painless. We filtered into an aisle containing three checkpoints, and stopped first to show our passports and car registration paperwork. They were handed back with a slip of paper bearing a scribble (probably to verify payment of vehicle fees, but our car is registered and insured in Dubai).

We then drove forwards 50 m to the second booth, where another official withdrew our scrap of paper and printed out an A4 sheet, apparently with three visas in Arabic. He then handed it to us and waved us on.

50 km ahead, we handed the visa paperwork to the third official, who stamped our passports and welcomed us to the UAE. Perhaps nowhere in the world is government bureaucracy and labour duplication quite so evident as at border crossings. I suppose it keeps the unemployment figures down.

Soon afterwards, we were on the outskirts of Al Ain and arriving at our hotel. By that point, the headache that had been with me since the early afternoon had now developed into a real grinder. I wasn’t up to going into town, so we took Eloïse to the playground at the back of the hotel.

It was full of expat families, who come here on Thursdays — it’s the weekend, after all — to relax, use the playground, socialise, etc. The immediate assumption of those around us was that we, too, were expats.

I was forced back to the hotel room to catch forty winks in an attempt to suppress my headache. I awoke at 19:30, my strategy having at least partially worked, and now just in time to drive us into town for dinner at a Lebanese/Iranian place called Al Dewan.

Al Ain is very big, much larger than I had anticipated. The reason for this is that it is a low-rise city, and such cities frequently suffer from urban sprawl. Reykjavík is another such city that comes to mind.

We need to get a good night’s sleep tonight in preparation for packing in all of the sights tomorrow.

At this stage of the trip, we’ve covered more than 2500 km.