Caliban – Opinion and Righteous Anger

After breakfast, we had just enough time to drive back to Salalah’s Frankincense Souq to purchase another kilo of the venerable sap.

After checking on-line and discovering that 25 g of the stuff costs half as much back home as a 1 kg bag over here, it was clear that it would be foolish to find ourselves buying more of it in the near future in The Netherlands. So instead, we added another kilo of weight to our luggage.

After purchasing a couple of small bananas at a fruit stand, we filled up with petrol and drove to the airport. There, we dropped off our hire car and checked in for our flight.

The flight was another pleasant one, although Eloïse was restless and fidgeting a lot. Sarah was soaked by the end of the flight, as Eloïse spills a lot of water as she drinks from cups and bottles. Fortunately, it’s so hot that it doesn’t really matter; it dries again so quickly.

Back in Muscat, we retrieved our original hire car from the car park (three days of parking just a two minute walk from the terminal cost just OMR 3.100 [± €6]) and drove to the Amouage Perfumery for a tour of the place.

I thought this would be a bit like a brewery tour, but with perfume in the vats instead of beer. It turned out to be nothing like that, however; it was more of a potted history of the brand, followed by summaries of the individual perfumes, complete with main ingredients, launch years, etc.

The most interesting part was when we were taken behind the scenes to see how the perfume is bottled. Muslim ladies were busy manually putting bottles in boxes, boxes in cellophane, and sticker seals on the cellophane. I was thus surprised to discover that every single stage of the process is performed by hand, even the packaging of tiny samplers.

Amouage is set to release a new perfume, Reflections, at Easter (earlier in Oman). It was hard to resist purchasing a pre-release bottle of the potion, so we bought a bottle of the men’s variant, along with a bottle of a different scent for Sarah).

That was all we had time for today. After that, we drove across the sprawl that is Muscat to reach our hotel, where we checked in and dropped our stuff in our room.

Dinner was at an excellent Mexican restaurant called Pavo Real. The waiters, mostly Indian, were dressed as Mexicans, complete with bandana, gun belts and tassled waistcoats. I was reminded of the Thai men we saw in Chiang Mai, back in 2002, wearing complete Bavarian regalia, including lederhosen, at a German restaurant.

Thankfully, what could have been a kitsch disaster was actually kitchen bliss, as the chef turned out to be a real Mexican! The food was therefore surprisingly excellent. There was even a live band, playing cheesy pop covers.

Tomorrow, we check out and head back west to a city split across the border between Oman and the UAE. On the Omani side, it’s called Buraimi. On the Emirati side, it’s known as Al Ain. We’ll be staying on the Emirati side.

That doesn’t mean we’re finished with Oman, however. If all goes according to plan, we’ll reenter Oman in the form of the geographically isolated Musandam peninsula in just a few days’ time. This peninsula is physically separated from the rest of Oman by UAE territory and is supposed to have a character all its own. Hopefully, we’ll see.

After breakfast, we filled up with petrol and headed east out of Salalah, through the town of Taqa, past Wadi Dirbat and towards the village of Tawai Attair, just outside of which there’s a gigantic sinkhole.

By the time we arrived, Eloïse had gone to sleep, some two hours earlier than she normally does. All of the exercise and adventure must be taking it out of her.

The sinkhole turned out to be down a steep and rocky climb. Because Eloïse was sleeping happily in the car, I made the descent alone, spotting a very large lizard (the largest I’ve ever seen in the wild) on the way.

The sinkhole was so deep, that I couldn’t see all the way into it from my vantage point. There’s supposed to be water at the bottom, but I could only see as far as birds flying around in its gaping maw. Further down, everything looked black.

I climbed back up the rocks and we continued on our way over 16 km of graded track along a plateau. This carried us to the top of Jebel Samhan, with lovely views out to the coast.

The descent of the range was steep, for 4×4 only, and carried us to the coastal road, where we turned left and headed towards Mirbat. Mirbat has definitely seen more prosperous days. Entire neighbourhoods have fallen into decline and buildings stand decrepit and dilapidated. The roads in these neighbourhoods have decayed to the extent that they are now, to all extents and purposes, unsurfaced. The area makes for an interesting drive, however.

Turning down towards the beach, we stopped in front of the Mirbat Castle and went inside. A loud voice was emanating from one of the rooms by the entrance. As the doorway came into view, we saw a bunch of men, sitting on the floor, sipping tea and animatedly discussing some topic or other.

They beckoned to us to come inside, so we took off our shoes and joined them in the room. One man poured us some tea, which turned out to be very, very sweet; I don’t like tea in any case, but as I’ve said before, it’s very impolite to refuse hospitality here.

The conversation quickly turned to children. Everywhere we go in Oman, people’s first or second question about Eloïse is whether she’s our only child. Logical, because I’m no spring chicken (nor is Sarah, for that matter) and people expect you to have several by our age. One of the men in our group had six children and his wife was now pregnant with a seventh.

They told us about the local abalone, which is supposed to be an aphrodisiac, or “our Viagra” as one man put it.

After the stop at the castle, we left Mirbat via the same road and immediately turned left to get to Bin Ali’s Tomb. Bin Ali was a 14th century prophet and scholar.

There’s a very old cemetery in the grounds, which makes for quite an stirring sight, with its hundreds of tightly-packed headstones, two for a man and three for a woman.

The tomb itself is an interesting-looking building from the outside, but non-Muslims are allowed inside only as far as the incense room.

Continuing back, we stopped at a grove of Baobab trees 3 km up the unsurfaced road that had brought us to the coastal road. The Bradt guide got the direction of the turning wrong, which had us scouting around, looking for the trees. Eventually, we found them, though. Sarah was more impressed by them than I.

We backtracked the 3 km and turned right on the coastal road, which carried us to the turn-off for Khor Rouri. This is the site of an ancient city that was of key importance to the frankincense trade. It has been excavated and can now be visited (although the Lonely Planet guide will tell you it is still closed to the public).

It’s also the site of a harbour that has silted up and been closed off. In the distance, we could see camels drinking the fresh water from lush grasses along the bank of the old harbour.

Our final stop for the day was Wadi Dharbat. At its best during the khareef, it was nevertheless impressive and quite verdant, with a river of some kind flowing over the plain. Camels were here in abundance. One can only imagine how lush it must be during and just after the khareef. I hope we can return to see it some day.

That was the end of our final day of travels around the province of Dhofar. We put 550 km on the clock, so we got a good impression of the region. We picked up fruit shakes at Taj Al Arab on the way back to the hotel and then went down to the children’s playground in the hotel grounds so that Eloïse could run about and climb.

We got talking to a Lebanese woman who teaches at Salalah University. We told her of our desire to visit Lebanon and expressed our sadness at what Israel had done to her country. We chatted for quite a while, as Eloïse played with her son.

Eventually, it was time to go to dinner, so we said our goodbyes. She asked us to come to her house in the coming days for dinner and to be shown around Salalah, but we regretfully had to tell her we were leaving the next day. It was another shining example of the unbelieveable Arab hospitality that greets us wherever we go.

What an amazing thing travel is. In January, we were in Iceland with just a few hours of dim daylight per day and temperatures of -10°C. Now, we’re on the Arabian gulf, close to the equator with sunset at virtually the same time every day of the year. It’s scorching hot and as humid as a sumo-wrestler’s jockstrap.

Every day that you wake up, feel healthy and get to travel like this is a gift from… well, Larry and Sergey in our case.

Thanks, Larry. Thanks, Sergey. And thanks, also, Lady Luck.

It was a stifling 36°C in Salalah today, but will reportedly drop somewhat tomorrow, only to rise to 39°C again on Friday. Tomorrow, we’re getting out just in time and flying to the north again, where it will be somewhat cooler (or perhaps less hot is a better way to describe it).

After breakfast, we drove into Salalah to check out the Frankincense Souq.

Some of the stalls and shops weren’t open yet, but there’s a lot of duplication in the products offered, so we were still able to browse properly and sample many types of incense.

I noticed that the souq was mainly run by women here. In other cities, it’s been the men that ran the show. It’s important to note, however, that those souqs were primarily run by Indians, whereas the Frankincense Souq in Salalah seems to be mostly run by Omanis; and many of those Omani women are Dhofaris, i.e. from the region of Dhofar, of which Salalah is the capital.

Many of the people look quite different here, more African than Arabian. Given the geographical positioning, that’s not surprising.

Getting pictures of people in Oman can be quite tricky. One must always ask before taking a snap and the answer is frequently a firm ‘no’, especially in the case of women.

For that reason, I’ve yet to capture the image of a Dhofari woman, with characteristic nose-ring. One woman allowed me to photograph her henna-tattooed hand today, but that’s about as far as I’ve got.

Speaking of souqs, one of Eloïse’s latest words is, in fact, souq. It took her papa several decades to chance upon that word, but it’s already made it into her vocabulary and she’s not even two yet. What a learner!

Leaving the Frankincense Souq behind us, we headed west along the motorway in the direction of Mughsail. As we reached the far end of the beach there, a lush oasis between the road and the sea came into view and we witnessed the glorious sight of tens of camels drinking and bathing in the water.

Further up, we stopped to enjoy a blowhole, which was noisily spouting water into the air to our amusement and that of some tour bus passengers who had joined us.

From there, we continued along the road, which now zig-zagged its way up the cliff, down into a wadi full of frankincense trees, and onwards, getting ever close to the border with Yemen. The views back towards Mughsail as we climbed the limestone cliff were excellent.

About 100 km from the Yemeni border, we had to cross a military checkpoint. The soldier wanted to see our passports, but we had left them at the hotel, not expecting to need them as we weren’t planning on crossing any national boundaries.

In the end, my driving licence and a photocopy of the car registration paperwork were enough to placate him and he let us pass, warning us not to go down certain side roads further along, as these would also have military checkpoints and we would have to explain how we had managed to get so far without passports.

We drove for about another forty or fifty kilometres, during much of which the scenery was beautiful. Innumerable camels dotted the landscape. We’ve seen more camels today than in the rest of our lives put together.

Eventually, though, the road turned away from the coast and became less appealing. We, ourselves, became less certain that we were actually on the stretch of road that we should be and neither of us wanted to deal with irritated soldiers demanding paperwork we didn’t have, in the event we were inadvertently heading towards one of the other checkpoints we had been warned about.

We therefore turned around and headed back to Salalah, as we still wanted to visit the tomb of the biblical figure of Job this afternoon.

On the way back, I spotted what looked like a giant turtle in the distance on the beach. We stopped the car and I slid down the rock embankment to the beach below, before walking towards the turtle. As I feared, he or she was dead, but I couldn’t tell what had caused the death. It was very sad to see such a magnificent animal in this state.

Back in Salalah, we headed out of town again to the north and eventually arrived at our destination after approximately 30 km.

The grounds of Job’s Tomb are quite lovely, with lots of pretty flowers, a mosque, and the building of the tomb itself.

The tomb’s guardian beckoned to us as we approached on the path, and we followed him to the entrance to the tomb, where we removed our shoes. Sarah additionally had to put on a green headscarf before entering.

Inside the tomb, the casket (or whatever it is) is shrouded in colourful sheets. At the far end of the mound, large amounts of frankincense are smoldering in an incense burner. The scent is strong and quite lovely.

A small tray next to the incense burner contains banknotes that some people have seen fit to leave behind. You can tell that Americans have been here, as no other country’s people travel to the other side of the world and still try to pay and tip in their own currency.

After visiting the tomb, we drove back to Salalah and tried to find something to eat near the Frankincense Souq. There were only a couple of shops selling juice, however.

We saw a person we purchased some perfumes from this morning and asked his advice. He called someone on his mobile phone and then handed the phone to me. The voice at the other end gave me directions to his restaurant, which we then drove to.

The restaurant in question was the Taj Al Arab, which was just a few streets away in the direction of our hotel. The food turned out to be good, but better yet, the fruit smoothies they make are incredible; and for just 600 baizas for their largest, fruitiest drinks.

The Taj Al Arab isn’t mentioned in either of our guidebooks, but it’s an absolute must if you come to Salalah. You have been told.

It was now just before sunset, so we headed back to the hotel, got changed and took Eloïse to the children’s paddling pool. As always, she had a great time in the water, climbing out of the pool and jumping back in, with Papa’s arms waiting to catch her, of course.

Today, we explored the surroundings west (and for Job’s Tomb, north) of Salalah. Tomorrow, it’s the turn of the east.

We awoke to find our hotel without electricity. No matter; we didn’t need it.

After breakfast, we had just a short time to visit the Nizwa Fort, depositing our postcards in a postbox on the way.

The fort was quite good (I don’t always appreciate historical military sites), with authentically furnished rooms, complete with carpets, cushions and pottery. Its ramparts made for good views of the city, but it was difficult to get a good angle on the mosque for a photograph.

It was 11:30 by now and we had to be on our way, so we returned to the car, tanked up with petrol (cheaper per litre than water, as ever) and sped off in the direction of Muscat, some 180 km removed.

Some time after 13:00, we arrived at Seeb International Airport, where I dropped the girls and our bags before parking the car and meeting them inside the terminal. There, we checked in for our 15:00 flight to Salalah.

The airport has this fantastic shrink-wrapping machine, which is manned by someone who actually knows what he’s doing. You give him your fragile item, in our case Eloïse’s car seat and he professionally shrink-wraps it for you, ready for your flight. Sarah was particularly impressed at the effeciveness of this gadget. The service isn’t free, but it’s very useful and a bargain at the price, which was 700 baizas in our case.

On the other side of the security screening, there was a pretty good duty-free area, sporting the usual booze, fags, perfume, electronics, CDs (including Arabic music, of course), DVDs, etc. Costa Coffee was also here, along with a Turtles bookshop.

There was just enough time for some food before we had to head to our gate to board our Oman Air flight. A shuttle bus ferried us the 100 m or so across the tarmac to the waiting plane. Why we couldn’t have walked such a small distance is beyond me.

The flight with Oman Air was a professional one, I must say. Even though it was only an 80 minute flight, it included a full meal, and a good one at that. If we’d known about that, we wouldn’t have eaten at the airport.

I’d like to say the terrain we flew over from Muscat to Salalah was interesting, but it was a 1000 km expanse of nothingness. That’s one of the main reasons why we decided not to tackle the trip by road; that and the time it would take us to do so.

The south of the country is radically different to northern Oman. That was evident even from the moment we disembarked, when we were hit by the humidity of the air. It’s tropical here and feels much like Hawaii.

The similarity to Hawaii doesn’t end with the humidity, either. Once we’d picked up a new hire car, this time a Toyota Landcruiser 4×4, we drove towards our hotel past juice and coconut stands, lush gardens and palm tree-lined avenues.

Once we’d checked in, we had a brief walk along the beach as the sun set. Large breakers were crashing along the shore and the red flags were out to signal dangerous swimming conditions.

Sarah wanted to get the lay of the land so that we could plan how much time we’d need in town tomorrow, so we piled back into the car and drove into town for a look around. There wasn’t time to get out and explore, so we just drove around and got a feel for the place.

On the way back, we stopped at a coconut stand and ordered a nut. The man behind the counter whacked off the top of a coconut, stuck a straw inside, and handed us the nut to drink from. He then welcomed us to Salalah and informed us that there was no charge for the coconut. That’s what I mean about people being friendly in this country.

Another example: During the flight, I had chatted with the man next to me. Whilst waiting for our luggage to appear on the conveyor belt inside the terminal, the same man gave me his name and telephone number and told me to call him if we needed any assistance with anything during our stay in Salalah. That kind of offer would get you a bemused, suspicious look in the West, but here it’s just another indication of the incredible warmth with which the Omanis receive visitors to their country.

There’s a very pleasant buzz to this town, as there was in Nizwa. Together, they are definitely my two favourite Omani towns so far.

We had dinner at the hotel, down by the beach. The sound of invisible waves breaking in the darkness is always a great aural background for dining.

Tomorrow, we’ll be up bright and early to explore the souqs of Salalah and the surrounding countryside.

We made an early start today, having an early breakfast and getting on the road by about 09:30. We had a lot to pack in and only one more day in the area.

We drove about 50 km to the village of Al Hamra, which features two and three storey mud-brick houses in the Yemeni style. This old village had real character and conveyed a sense of life from a bygone era. We saw women doing their washing in the falaj at the side of the road.

From Al Hamra, we returned to the main road and began our ascent of Jebel Shams, the highest mountain in Oman.

The Lonely Planet guide warned of “vertiginous views over the edge [of the road] a little too close to the hubcaps for comfort”, a phrase that had made me nervous about making the ascent with our precious cargo on board. Happily, however, there was no real danger and the ascent was an easy one, although a 4×4 vehicle was definitely necessary on the steep, unsurfaced road.

At the top, it was a relatively cool and refreshingly pleasant 21°C.

Peering over the rim of what is known locally as the Grand Canyon of Arabia revealed the depth of what was, indeed, a gigantic chasm, with Wadi Ghul down below. It’s about a 1.5 km vertical drop down to the wadi: you definitely wouldn’t want to fall off this precipice.

Further along the canyon rim, we came across a small village, situated right at the canyon’s edge. Quite why this remote site was chosen for a village is a mystery to me, but there it was, complete with shacks, washing lines, goats, dogs, children and elders.

A woman tried very persistently to sell us some woven goods, but we were equally persistent in our refusal. She eventually disappeared, only to be replaced by an old man, who was eager for us to take his photo, as long as we crossed his palm with a rial in return. His face was contoured and weathered in a way that made him appear like he had stepped out of an item on the evening news, or perhaps out of the pages of an issue of National Geographic.

We declined his offer and he, too, eventually disappeared.

Soon afterwards, as we were gazing out into the canyon, another man joined us, shook our hand and offered us coffee. It’s very rude to refuse such an invitation in the Gulf states, so we accepted and walked with him to his home in the tiny village.

His domicile was a one-room brick affair, with mats laid out across the floor.

We doffed our shoes and entered, sitting against the far wall. He followed us inside and opened a big tub of dates, pulled out a handful and offered them to us. We gratefully accepted his offer and found the dates to be delicious.

He then poured coffee for us, but it was unlike any coffee (or other drink, for that matter) that I have tasted before. I have no idea what it was made from, but it was dark in appearance. He poured it into small, handleless cups and handed them to us. Sarah and I both partook.

The women of the family soon joined us, complete with small baby, and we began to exchange small talk, such as the age of our respective babies, where we were from, etc.

I looked about the room. In spite of the lack of furniture and the obvious simplicity of the structure, the home was relatively well-equipped. An electricity meter graced one wall, whilst a small television set sat perched in one corner of the room. Under it, a satellite tuner box blinked the wrong time.

I glanced over to the door, half ajar and brightly lit by the midday sunlight. A sticker on the outside read ‘Do you Yahoo?’ It seemed as if matter from a separate universe had somehow slipped through into this one.

On the wall behind us, a photo of the photogenic old man shared space with a rifle and a khanjar.

Before long, and rather expectedly, the woven goods were produced by the women and laid in front of us for our inspection. Having been taken into this man’s home, drunk his brew and eaten his dates, we could now hardly refuse to purchase something, but the trade was more than worth it.

We purchased a couple of goat-hair keyrings and I paid the old man that rial for his photo. I also took a photo of the man who had invited us in, but we weren’t allowed to photograph the women of the house (one of whom had already whipped out a boob in front of us to feed the baby — I hadn’t expected a Muslim woman to do that in front of strangers).

I’m sure we weren’t the first and won’t be the last tourists to be invited into his home, and that he was probably more motivated by salesmanship than friendship, but the experience was no less real for that small detail. It reminded me of our contact with the Thai hill tribes back in 2002 and reinforced my belief that there is nothing in this world that can compare with travel and the contact it brings with people from other cultures.

After our encounter, we slowly headed back down Jebel Shams and had lunch at a small camp site/café on the mountain.

Once we had made it back down to ground level, we drove through the wadi to the base of the desserted village of Ghul. We clambered up the rocks to the village and nosed around in the ruins of the old mud-brick homes, long since abandoned to the elements.

This left just enough time to point the car back in the direction of Nizwa and make for the Al Hoota caves, a recently opened cave system that boasts one of the largest caverns anywhere in the world. A small train carries you from the reception area to the cave entrance: very slick.

The caves themselves were fun, but not as awe-inspiring as those we visited last year in Slovakia and Hungary. Our guide didn’t speak much English, either, but the visit was still fun.

A simple dinner of shwarma and hummus back in Nizwa rounded off the day.