'Musings From Muscat
I entered Oman yesterday by arriving in Salalah as one of the great British explorer, Wilfred Thesiger did on October 1945. Salalah today is a modern city full of wide long avenues and new buildings constructed or being constructed with an almost North American urban planning, in that you need to drive everywhere as it is so spread out. I saw my first KFC (a.k.a. the dirty bird) in five months!
I arrived in Muscat this morning by skirting below the Rub Al-Khali or the 'Empty Quarter', a hot, inhospitable desert that runs through Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia. It is one of the driest, most desolate places in the world. What took me twelve hours in the comfort of an air-conditioned bus, took Thesiger two months to survey and cross by foot and camel in dangerous, tribal feuding lands.
Thesiger crossed the Rub Al-Khali the following year in 1946 by first traveling to the desert's edge in a caravan and then with four Bedouin companions from the Bait Kathir tribe, they made their way across the 'Empty Quarter' in fourteen days. Taking with them only twenty-two pounds of flour, butter, coffee, tea, and sugar, and four goatskins of water in provisions. They rationed themselves to a daily intake of half a litre of foul "brackish" water, flavored with camel milk. And their one meal a day consisted of gritty lumps of unleavened bread, smeared with butter and a few drops of coffee. An impressive feat to traverse the 1000 KM, over sand dunes reaching 700 feet and areas that have not seen rain for twenty to thirty years, with the constant fear of their camels dying in their heads (and hence, their lives). No GPS, no cell phones, no outside help. It's all detailed in his book, Arabian Sands which is quintessential reading for the 'Empty Quarter' and Bedouin life. I highly recommend it (you can really feel the grit of the desert sands in your toes) and read it of all places, when I was working in Smithers, and now of all places, I am in Oman. How funny life is.
Muscat is a bright, clean and modern city complete with new roads, lit dancing water fountains and a cornice that runs along the harbor with manicured grass lawns and flowerbeds. Muscat really feels more like three towns separated by rocky hills than a metropolitan city and is relaxed and slow paced. However, Muscat and the rest of Oman in general is also very expensive. I'm off to catch a bus to Dubai tomorrow morning.
I arrived in Muscat this morning by skirting below the Rub Al-Khali or the 'Empty Quarter', a hot, inhospitable desert that runs through Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia. It is one of the driest, most desolate places in the world. What took me twelve hours in the comfort of an air-conditioned bus, took Thesiger two months to survey and cross by foot and camel in dangerous, tribal feuding lands.
Thesiger crossed the Rub Al-Khali the following year in 1946 by first traveling to the desert's edge in a caravan and then with four Bedouin companions from the Bait Kathir tribe, they made their way across the 'Empty Quarter' in fourteen days. Taking with them only twenty-two pounds of flour, butter, coffee, tea, and sugar, and four goatskins of water in provisions. They rationed themselves to a daily intake of half a litre of foul "brackish" water, flavored with camel milk. And their one meal a day consisted of gritty lumps of unleavened bread, smeared with butter and a few drops of coffee. An impressive feat to traverse the 1000 KM, over sand dunes reaching 700 feet and areas that have not seen rain for twenty to thirty years, with the constant fear of their camels dying in their heads (and hence, their lives). No GPS, no cell phones, no outside help. It's all detailed in his book, Arabian Sands which is quintessential reading for the 'Empty Quarter' and Bedouin life. I highly recommend it (you can really feel the grit of the desert sands in your toes) and read it of all places, when I was working in Smithers, and now of all places, I am in Oman. How funny life is.
Muscat is a bright, clean and modern city complete with new roads, lit dancing water fountains and a cornice that runs along the harbor with manicured grass lawns and flowerbeds. Muscat really feels more like three towns separated by rocky hills than a metropolitan city and is relaxed and slow paced. However, Muscat and the rest of Oman in general is also very expensive. I'm off to catch a bus to Dubai tomorrow morning.
posted by Louis at 9:55 PM
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