Two days ago, I became an aunt! My brand new niece, Olea Avelin, arrived into the world on the 21st. I could not be more stoked! And yet...
Yesterday was a day of small fumbles. I noisily knocked over a half-full glass of water almost immediately after waking, and the rest of the day seemed to be full of similar blunders. I have days like this regularly. I imagine most people do. Sometimes the blunders pile on a comic edge, and other days they slowly wear on my patience until by nightfall I feel dramatically plagued by evil spirits. Yesterday, they had the persistent dull quality of mounting irritation. I would just be thinking I had calmed and righted myself when I would trip over the next little hurdle. Ugh!
By evening, I had decided there was probably nothing for it-- I should give up on attending to significant goals, and probably just "veg out." There is so little harm that can be done from the seat of a couch, right?
Except I was still restless, and a little bit annoyed to not be more actively battling the adversarial edge of the day. Suddenly, I realized it was already 7 pm, and I was hungry. I ate a banana, pretending that was dinner, and then had the wistful thought I have so often when I am a little bit grumpy and a little bit hungry: "If I had made cookies two hours ago, I would already be eating them…"
Well, as it just so happens, I know a lady who makes possibly the world's best cookies. I know a lot of people think they know a lady who makes the world's best cookies, but I really do. She will probably guffaw at this, but from an outsider's perspective, I think her secret is her incredible patience. She knows, for instance, that it is worth it to brown the butter before you make the cookies. Even after tasting hers and eating the proof of this, I have never actually had the patience to try it, because I always have thoughts about cookies when I want them already. In my rush to speed up or preferably even reverse time, I always skip the embellishments and throw together a basic, familiar dough and make due. I am usually not disappointed in the moment-- I mean, a cookie right out of the oven is delicious even if it's the trashiest kind-- but sometimes I see what people are posting on their fancy baker blogs and I feel a bit ashamed that my cookie action isn't more sophisticated. You wouldn't think yesterday, a day of personal mini-struggles, would be a likely day for broadening my horizons, but as luck would have it, my baker friend with the magic cookie touch recently posted a new favorite cookie recipe on her blog, and I stumbled upon this at exactly the right moment to save the day! This is big, people: whole wheat chocolate chip cookies are not about health, they are about flavor. This is the take-home central wisdom of everything wonderful about whole-grain baking. Forget about vitamins, think about making your tongue happy!
I won't steal Amelia's thunder-- her post has all the essential information and pertinent persuasive points needed (and a second-hand thanks to Kimberly Boyce and her Good to the Grain for providing the original inspiration). Suffice it to say in the space of this post: last night's late-evening rally round the cookies completely changed the game. I felt like the glass was half-full again, and moreover I didn't really care if I spilled it. Geez, seriously: for a good time, make these. I want to scribble that in every bathroom stall on the planet.
So I awoke into the new day feeling energized for happy things, and particularly inspired by my previous evening's baking success, and decided that the best way to start my Sunday would be with blueberry pancakes. Specifically, whole-grain blueberry pancakes… duh! That's what I'm saying, whole grains aren't for health nuts, they are for people who love eating maximally delicious things. I turned to Smitten Kitchen for a good recipe, and was utterly thrilled with the results. So was Tyler. We ate them before we could take pictures. Sometimes you can't be thinking about things like your silly blog, you just have to be rapturously eating.
But, being then further energized by the sugar and the blueberries and the beautiful, silvery daylight, I donned my full outdoor gear so I would have no excuses about feeling chilly and walked Tyler to work. The last week, we've been out and about and enjoying things like
a bonfire on the beach near our house,
and a snowmobile trip into the valley
complete with snow angels,
so it has been a good week for the outdoors. Tyler's sister and her family were here, which kind of kick-started our energy for local adventure. But it has been a while since I just went wandering for the plain love of it…
After the walk, I washed the windows, as a kind of celebration:
The left hand side is before and the right hand is after… we can see again!
And then, my sister called with news of her and the baby. Apparently, over there, it's been a day of minor irritations, spilled breast milk, that sort of thing… sounds familiar! I think my day yesterday might have been partly going the way it did because in the back of my mind, I was curious and maybe a little bit anxious about how it was going in my sister's radically altered reality. The only baby I have ever had any intimate acquaintance with now has her own to care for… it's wild! This is never going to be a blog about babies or parenthood, that is certain, and yet I can't help wondering how it's going for my sister. She sounds great, in that she sounds like herself. While she talked about the little hurdles in her day, I realized that her attention to them was actually a sign that everything was ultimately, in the grander sense, ok. Maybe they even provide a little bit of necessary grit, something beside which the thrill of joy can shine brighter for. It's a bit like the way the bitter flavor of the whole wheat flour compliments the sweetness of the cookie, no? To tie it all in together. My grandmother Evelyn, for which my new niece is partly named, left me this unattributed quote written into a baby book:
I give you sadness
and the gift of pain,
the new moon madness
and the love of rain.
Some people I have shared that with over the years have commented they think it's rather an odd quote to leave a new baby with. But I'm thinking on that while I imagine my niece growing up and going through her years, tripping over this and that and getting up again. I hope she does love rain, and mud puddles, and getting wet and dirty and coming in and getting warm and dry again. Isn't that what it's all about?
Last month, to round out the experience of living in extreme northern Norway, Tyler and I observed a little ritual the Europeans like to call a holiday. That's right, a proper holiday! We took two weeks off from our working lives to rest, relax, and revel in an exotic, foreign locale. With the blessing of our employers-- how novel! January was a perfect time for our ferie (norsk for holiday)-- past the rush of Christmas and New Year's, and toward the end of the slowly creeping mørktid. It really came just in time: Tyler's erratic work schedule had completely destroyed any lingering remnants of his circadian rhythm, which made sleep a near impossibility; and while I was sleeping fine at night, I was also pretty much ready to sleep at any moment of the day as well. When it comes to that point in the dark, cold winter, what any body needs is a bit of sunshine.
Oh, hello colorful world!
It was Tyler who primarily researched our plan into being. In my estimation, he is verdens beste reisedrømmer (which might loosely translate into "world's best travel-dreamer," if I'm not being too silly). When I first met him, he had one of those upside-down maps of the world taped in his little cubby-hole's worth of space in the dorm in Antarctica. Sometimes we would lie around and stare at it, and Tyler would inevitably start tracing dream itineraries across the continents-- "I could probably fly from here to here, and then take a boat up there to see that…" In the space of a sentence, he could render a projected short trip into a round-the-globe year-long epic. This is the kind of intense day-dreaming that I utterly love to the point of fear. And even while only a day-dreaming exercise, it also involves a consideration for exactly the kind of practical logistics and decision making that I find it especially hard to hunker down and attach myself to. I want to go everywhere! When left to my own devices, my eyes will wander across the entire planet wonderingly, and I could probably just continue to stare at it, like a kid holding a particularly mesmerizing marble, while all the trains to all the stations just came and went and came and went. But with Tyler's finger tracing a line from this city to that national park to this airport hub to that tiny island, I can begin to see the way the journey arcs over time, and I can start to settle into the more specific dream: this trip, here to here. And because I am so enthralled with the whole, I am pretty much happy with any specific trip he plans. So this works out ok, despite a bit of imbalance in the process. (And I hope that I make up for at least some of it by being the better navigator once we are on the ground, and by being awed and enthusiastic as events unfold.)
Anyway, for this trip we chose: Oman! Oman is a wonderful country, and not a place that either of us had ever day-dreamed about before. We stumbled on it thanks to some crazy photos of Socotra Island, which is actually part of Yemen. Socotra proved a bit too remote to travel to in only a couple of weeks (Svalbard-Socotra, nonetheless!), and would have required advance application for tourist visas and other complications. I'm sure we will continue to trace imaginary routes that bring us there until we can hopefully swing it. But Oman proved to be a perfect destination for our purposes, which were: see beautiful exotic birds and a bit of Arabian sun.
Our first night, strolling along the Corniche in Muscat. The group of men seated in the mid-range eventually invited us to join them for tea, in a typically hospitable gesture.
We flew direct from Oslo-Dubai (thank you for providing that surprisingly convenient route, Norwegian Air!), and then took a short flight to Muscat. We had one night booked at a local hotel in the city, and then planned to take to the road in our rental car and drive a circuit down the southeast coast to Salalah and back up the center of the country through the desert to Nizwa, the mountains, and then back to Muscat. This is where my navigator skills were put to the test. Tyler likes driving, and it helps him feel not carsick. I usually do very well reading a map, and have a relatively solid innate sense of direction. Well, the roads in Oman are all completely fine for driving-- pristine, in fact, many of them, being so recently engineered and/or paved. However, the maps are having a hard time keeping up with developments. Our tourist map includes the cautionary note that "Roads are subject to continuous changes." I can attest that this is true. Additionally, as with any new experiment in foreign exchange, there is a bit of something lost in translation. We were reading the map and finding the road signs, only to turn in the direction the sign was indicating and ending up on these funny, bumbling back roads to the wrong place entirely… Hmm… Only several days in did we begin to understand that it wasn't that the sign was wrong, it's that we were unable to follow the local logic in where the signs are placed in relation to the upcoming turn or fork or whatever. Our instincts for this improved slightly over the course of the trip, but perhaps only in that we had a bit more patience for the inevitable looping and backtracking we needed to do to find our eventual way. But the majority of the time, we were traveling on either of the two main roads that run north-south anyway, which was easily do-able.
Wadi Ash Shab
My secondary navigational tools included our small library of travel guides, which I kept stashed in the pocket of the passenger-side door for easy consultation. This part of the navigation was especially fun because being the old-fashioned kind of research librarian who gets to actually look things up in books is still my dream job, even if it's extinct. We were traveling with Lonely Planet's 2013 edition of Oman, UAE & The Arabian Peninsula, and two local birding guides: Birdwatching Guide to Oman (2nd edition), by Dave E. Sargeant and Hanne & Jens Eriksen; and Common Birds of Oman (2nd edition), also by Hanne & Jens Eriksen. The latter two formed the real meat of our trip, with the Lonely Planet being handy for basic general info and sometimes a hotel recommendation. The bird guides were fantastic-- we found all the species we saw in Common Birds, except for only a couple stray random spottings, and can credit most of our sightings to the wonderful off-the-road oases and other spots that the Birdwatching Guide steered us toward. The only caveat I would apply to anyone who might be endeavoring on their own birdwatching trip of Oman in the coming months or years would be that the same changes that are making it hard for the road maps to keep up with their accuracy meant that a few of the spots we tried to go to had been altered significantly in the five years since the Birdwatching Guide's last printing. There is probably loads of current info on this big old Internet if you know where to look, but since Tyler and I travel without any little electronic data-gizmos, we had the fun of stumbling into things and discovering what was what for ourselves. Here's one thing we discovered:
A kingfisher, glowing like a gem in the middle of Wadi Ash Shab
Though bird-watching is one of our primary motivations in travel, I should say that we aren't particularly cut-throat about seeing all the hardest things to see, or about capturing photographic evidence of any of it. For us, half of the goal of birdwatching is to see the birds, and the other half is to have an excuse to be out and about and looking at things. We have a camera, but it's a flimsy, basic one. We often forget to use it at the best moments, being rather more focused on enjoying the moment itself. In rare opportunities we can capture some of the birds we see, which is nice for the reminder. But I never feel bad about it if I can't catch a bird well on film. They are so often in motion, and I am only a passing stranger in their neighborhood. I am happy enough if I get a glimpse and have enough information from that to know what I see!
There are a couple other things I do wish I'd taken photos of though: frankincense trees, and the halwah shops in Salalah. Frankincense is one of the most historically prized exports from this region of the world, and is famous, of course, for being a holy incense. Tyler and I both associate the smell with church, which is to say that we both find it pious and cloying. But Omanis use it liberally in their daily rites, and as a part of the overall fabric of our exotic location, it was actually pleasant. It felt like it fit the atmosphere. I was also somewhat enthralled by my up-close inspection of one of the trees: the sap actually hardens right on the side of the tree, into the resin-nuggets that they sell by the sackful at the souks. Incredible! You can smell it right there under the tree, just warm from the sunshine, odorous as a pine forest. I really loved that. And the halwah shops in Salalah were such a surprise to us that I wish especially that I had taken a photograph to remember them by. There were between six to ten of them, all clustered around the same corner, and they all looked to the naive western onlooker like maybe they were Tupperware stores: just rows of bright plastic containers in different colors lined up on shelves in the windows. We went in and asked for some halwah, pronouncing it "halvah," and assuming we would get the delicious sesame desert we so love. But it turned out we'd made a false assumption: the vender corrected our pronunciation to "halwah" and then let us sample several different types of a jelly-like substance with nuts floating in it. Oh! Halwah is delicious, as it turns out, if entirely different from halvah. It's very sweet, but with a mild softness to the sweetness. We chose one flavored with rosewater, which was like eating Turkish delight without the problem of getting anything stuck in your teeth. The empty yellow container sits now in our cupboard at home, the only piece of Tupperware we own that is stamped "Sultanate of Oman" on the bottom.
Wadi Ash Shab
Most of the time, our maps and our directions from the guide books led us right into the heart of some amazing scenes. The few pictures above from Wadi Ash Shab show a glimpse into one of the many wadis, or oases, we explored throughout our trip. This one was the most touristed, but for good reason: it's stunning. And you can hike back for miles into the canyon, following the water back to ever-more-private pools. This is within driving distance of Muscat, if you only have time for a day-trip. It was the first wadi we stopped at during our drive south, and it made for a very dramatic example. Many of the other wadis our bird guide directed us to were distinctly more abbreviated, marked by little more than a handful of bushes popping up out of the desert. However, that has it's own kind of exoticism, after hours of driving past dunes:
And sometimes driving around dunes…
This was what we came here to see!
On our second day of explorations south of Muscat, we caught our first glimpse of some flamingos! I can honestly say this bird is as exotic and wild as I hoped it would be. They, as well as spoonbills and ibises, are iconic to me as "wild birds of another land," and I got to see them all!
Look how darn pink they are!
And we made some local friends:
These gentlemen drove up to us in their Toyota while we were watching the flamingos and spoke to us in the universal language of "photo, photo!" They then offered us "fish, fish!" but we explained we were ok for food by pointing to our can of beans and then showed them the birds we were looking at through our binoculars.
Some of what I loved about Oman I could capture in textures-- the colors of the desert and the colors of the buildings and clothes are all so similar. There is chalky gypsum all over the place, and ruddy or pale sands. As we were driving down the southeast coast, in particular south of Sur until Bar Al-Hikman, we were driving through increasingly small villages. I was fascinated by the signs on all the shops in these little towns, some of which were smaller than the Bedouin campsites that we also passed. The shop signs were a basic indication of a towns' permanence, though-- and they were printed in Arabic and English almost uniformly, perhaps because the sign factory (wherever that is) does this as a matter of course. Some of my favorite signs included "Gents Beauty Shop" (yes, beauty shop, not barber shop, although there were many more signs for "Gents Barber Shop" too), and "Block Factory." It seemed that every town had a "Block Factory," or sometimes two or three in a row. I imagine this must be the place where the blocks for the buildings are made locally, probably with some kind of concrete mold, and that this would partly explain the coordinating color of the buildings to the land, as they are likely supplying the sand to mix the concrete right out of their own backyard. Still, what would be labeled a "Block Factory" would usually be a walled-in bit of yard with maybe a gate but no roof, and possible a couple ramshackle articles of equipment visible over the edge. Imagine our astonishment when, after two days of driving past these tiny settlements, we suddenly merged with a six lane highway. What? Where were we?? I checked my map, but there was no sign of anything large in our immediate area, just another tiny dot labeled Ad Duqm. I pulled out the Lonely Planet to check for some background info, and discovered that Duqm is actually slated to be the world's second largest port after Singapore! Shortly thereafter, we took a wrong turn, as our directive to stick to the main road misled us down a long stretch of brand new road leading toward the planned center of town which hasn't been built yet. Note to self: look up Duqm in a few years, and see how it's looking then! It could be that those tiny villages we passed through change a lot in a small time, if something as big as Oman's third-largest city is being planned for the immediate area. But for now, it's still basically just a stretch of wide-open highway in the middle of a lonely patch of desert...
Gypsum, with crystals of some kind.
Just a random road-side canyon-view… holy smokes!
Wadi Ash Shuwaymiyyah
Wadi Ash Shuwaymiyyah, at the picnic grounds by the hanging gardens
Another canyon shot, this one even broader and grander, holy cow.
There is a stretch of the main road south of Shalim, just after the turn-off for Wadi Ash Shuwaymiyyah, which is still labeled on the map as unfinished and possibly impassable. However, I can report that they have the entire stretch to Salalah paved, and are mostly working on the finished touches now-- just reinforcing sidewalls where they have cut through the mountains, painting curbs, that sort of thing. We wondered if we might still have trouble getting through, perhaps because they would be diverting traffic for the road crews. However, nobody seemed at all surprised or put out by our presence on the road. At a couple spots, we passed actual flaggers meant to be directing traffic, and more than one flagger was unabashedly taking a little breather in the shade, rather than actively concerning themselves with passing vehicles. It was pretty fascinating seeing how many places of the road they are working on at once-- it gave me a more concrete sense of the impressive scale of engineering required to cut a road through a mountain range than I have ever gotten just by driving over a completed road before. And once this bit is finished, I imagine there will be new tourist attractions planned around it-- some of the pull-outs and viewpoints, like the one above, are truly incredible. And when you come out the other side of that mountain range, you are quite suddenly in the Dhofar region, subtly but completely different… A masked booby (that's a bird, not a body part, dudes) flew by in a flash while we were driving the descent past the sea cliffs, this totally unmistakable harbinger of our surroundings.
Some of the funniest spots that we ended up exploring for birds were things like the little pool of water next to the Hilton Hotel-- so specific, and yet so humble, as to be almost laughable destinations. But remembering that we were exploring for wildlife in what can be a lot of empty desert, it becomes more understandable that any little puddle might be a suitable oasis. It sometimes makes for sad human-watching though… you see all kinds of evidence of humanity's neglect for nature when you seek out the refuges of nature's inhabitants and find them relegated to these dingy sidelines. We frequently spotted brightly colored objects in trees or along the ground, only to discover through the binoculars that it was another soda can or blue plastic bag. And sometimes we went hunting for a spot recommended by our guide, like the mudflats around the pier in Salalah, only to find that the human development in the area had made those grounds inaccessible to the foreign birdwatcher on foot. Who knows if the birds themselves are still making a home of it there? I hope they are, or have found another nearby if it's been too disturbed.
This sweet heron was interested in showing us around his neighborhood. He thinks the pool of water next to the Hilton Hotel in Salalah is quite nice, thank you.
Despite the fact that we had a couple misses in the Salalah area, we really especially enjoyed our time there. The city was smaller than Muscat, with a beach-front, relaxed atmosphere-- a bit more our speed. We stayed at the Salalah Beach Villas, which was lovely-- for once Lonely Planet wasn't exaggerating when it said you could smell the ocean right out the window, either. You have to literally drive on sand to park in front. The owner also made us an absolute feast of Indian food that was so good we had it two nights in a row. Oh my gosh, my stomach is growling right now as I think about it! I have got to go to India some day, if only for the food! Gee whiz. After a couple days of longer drives and tent-camping, we were happy to make Salalah our base for three nights, which gave us one day to relax around the city, and one to drive a little bit southwest toward the Yemeni border and explore after the distinct birds of the Dhofar region.
Sunset on the beach in Salalah
More textures and colors in the rock.
Oh, handsome!
Camels on the beach!
Yes, we did take approximately forty camel photos, I think. I have selected only a few of the best. But even after driving past hundreds or maybe thousands of camels, they still look so unbelievably exotic to me! I think most of them are owned by somebody, but they roam pretty much free-range. I have no idea how far a camel will walk on its own wanderings. Some had rope harnesses, or ropes tied loosely around their feet to keep them from ranging too far. Several times we witnessed larger herds being rounded up by men and led confidently across major highways, or single camels trotting along beside a Toyota they had been roped to. Toyota, incidentally, seems to be the exclusive truck of rural Oman.
Dhofar is also an area of incredibly beautiful beaches, and amazingly, they are virtually empty. Can you imagine finding a beach this beautiful without any other tourists on it in Europe or North America?
About two seconds after I snapped this photo, a dolphin leaped full-body out of the water right in front of Tyler, exactly when he turned away to look back at me…
What a dreamy dreamland, and hardly anybody in sight.
After a rejuvenating stay in Salalah, we headed on the long drive north through the central part of the country, which is flat, flat, flat desert for two days. Our first planned stop was the Qatbit Motel, from which we planned to set ourselves up to be able to get to Muntassar, a nearby oasis, by 9 am the next morning. We had a date with some sandgrouse. And of course, so did the people we ate breakfast with back at the hotel in Salalah, because they were a birdwatching tour, and that is how it goes sometimes when you bumble along on your travels. This turned out to be an incredible boon to us, though-- we never would have made it to our destination with some local expertise! They happen to be doing a lot of roadwork right next to the Qatbit Motel, and as part of the general upheaval of developments and construction, they had removed the sign indicating the 4WD track we needed to take to get to the oasis. At about 6:30 am, we were driving back and forth along the same little stretch of road, straining to find anything that might be it, but no luck. Oh, what if we miss the sandgrouse! But then I spotted the two white 4WD vehicles the other birdwatchers were in, and we pulled a quick U-turn to follow them. Success!! We made it to Muntassar, and right on schedule, wave after wave of spotted sandgrouse came flying in to take a morning drink and bath. As a group, we backed further and further away from the waters edge, trying to give the birds room to come in and enjoy their repast, but eventually we had to cede the area entirely so they wouldn't stay shy away. We did get a nice, closer look through a fellow birdwatcher's spotting scope, though-- its always nice when someone else has bothered to lug that equipment around. It does give such a better view from a distance! It's just such a hassle to imagine carrying it along all the rest of the time. Binoculars are enough of a special commitment for me. We actually got stopped by security heading into Dubai with our binoculars-- the security officer was suspicious and wanted to know if they were for night vision (?). We showed her our bird book and then she laughed and said, "Oh, no problem."
A camel herd at the oasis. One of the challenges of modernization is the question of how to protect resources while allowing people to live the lives they know how to live. The camel herders had set up a generator to pump water out of the oasis and let their herds drink. The concern for the bird experts is that they may pump the oasis dry if they aren't careful, and it being an important spot for the birds species and other native wildlife, this could be very sad. "It's a very short-term view, if they don't consider the alternatives," the logistics coordinator for the birding group put it judiciously.
This is the best map we had in all of Oman! The bird guide drew it to tell us how to get to a recommended hotel in Nizwa, our next destination. I watched some movie about Arabia when I was a kid that included directions drawn cryptically in sand, and I was so thrilled this made it into our trip! Even if it was a British ex-pat who drew it...
It was a long day of driving through extremely flat emptiness before we arrived in Nizwa, at the base of the mountains. We played a lot of car games, and then eventually I started reading aloud from the copy of A Wrinkle In Time that I found on the shelf at Salalah Beach Villas. Thank goodness for a good book. We were glad to arrive.
The mountain areas is less populated with birds, in general, so we had planned to focus more on cultural exploration. We stayed two nights at the Safari Hotel in Nizwa, and used the day in between to drive to some of the old villages in the surrounding area and up to Jebel Shams. Old Oman was a land of walled cities, and you can still see forts and old ruined villages all over the country. We toured Bahla Fort, which is one of the best-preserved examples of the old cities; it's boasted Unesco World Heritage status since 1987, and extensive renovations were completed in 2012. We had a wonderful time rambling through the many rooms and parapets, and eventually were rewarded for our wide-ranging interest with a great sighting of an Indian roller on the edge of the fort's outer wall!
Bahla Fort, near Nizwa
From Bahla Fort, we followed the Lonely Planet path to Al-Hamra and Misfat. There is an inherent awkwardness to walking through a small foreign village as a tourist, but we picked good places to explore. They are familiar with tourists at both places (duh, Lonely Planet is sending everyone there!), and seem really quite undisturbed by our passing through. In Al-Hamra, we just wandered around marveling at the old doors and the plantation walls, and searching for more Indian rollers up in the trees.
Old door, Al Hamra
Plantation walls, Al Hamra
Misfat has taken steps to direct and organize the tourist traffic. There are clear signs and a demarcated path through the village and along the terraced plantations. Also noted on the informational sign at the entrance is a request that you greet people you meet on the path, and reminders on appropriate dress. Incredibly, despite this, we met several other tourists passing through wearing shorts and tank-tops or doing that slack-jawed look of confusion and ignoring our polite hellos. God bless the people of Misfat for putting up with us; it's a beautiful little town, and I am so glad we could see a real mountainside town! The irrigation channels are especially impressive-- they seem to snake all over these mountains, and with generations of careful management, they've managed to divert them hundreds of ways, to water plants, animals, and people, and provide places to bathe as well. Amazing.
Irrigation channels, Misfat terraced plantation
Narrow alley in the old town of Misfat
Misfat
After a morning of bumbling through villages, we continued our drive up into the mountains to Jebel Shams, known as "The Grand Canyon of Oman." The approaching drive really gives no hint as to what is waiting when you finally reach the summit and can look over the rim into Wadi Guhl. Geez, what a drop! We enjoyed the scenery, and also the sighting of both Egyptian and Lappet-Faced Vultures. Not such a bad birding day after all!
Driving up toward Jebel Shams
Looking over the rim at Jebel Shams, "The Grand Canyon of Oman"
Handsome man sighting!
On our way back into town, we also paused at the base of Wadi Guhl and gazed at a ruined village along the cliffside. We wanted to look at that closer, but it lies across some active plantation areas and beyond a soccer field where a game was currently in session, so it seemed maybe a bit rude to go traipsing in.
However, we got our chance to explore another ruined village the next day after leaving Nizwa-- we started our day's drive with a lengthy detour up the steep and winding road to the Sayq Plateau, and followed the side road to Sayq and the ruined village beyond. It would be wonderful to know more about that village-- when it had been abandoned, how long it had been occupied, but there were no signs to illuminate these facts. They are still cultivating the terraced plantations along the bottom of the wadi beside the village, as we discovered when we went wandering through the old pomegranate orchard and startled a farmer. Oops! But the village is apparently a big tourist attraction in summer, and we weren't the only people there that day in winter, either.
An old city hidden in the hillside.
Goats eating trees.
Passing through an old pomegranate orchard.
Ruined city.
After a solid morning's explorations, though, we decided to head back to Muscat in time for dinner, and another evening stroll on the Corniche. I am going to miss all this hummus and tabouleh and foul madamas... They know how to eat around here, let me tell you.
Red-wattled Lapwing
The Sultan's Palace.
We'd had such a lovely time in Oman that I know I was half-reluctantly boarding our flight to Dubai, but the saving grace was that our vacation itself wasn't over yet!! We knew we couldn't fly through this glittering hub of modernity without a brief stay, just to see what the fuss is about. Holy cow, are Dubai and Oman like night and day. We spent one night at the Radisson Resort in Sharjah, on Tyler's awesome employee discount, which we spent in exactly the way that people are supposed to spend days at resorts: lounging by the pool, eating ice cream and sleeping. After our all-nighter catching the plane, it was a welcome day of luxury. In the evening, we roused ourselves and followed another funny little hand-drawn map to an Indian restaurant within walking distance of the hotel. The hotel concierge didn't seem to get requests for restaurants in walking distance very often, but boy were we satisfied. Fantastic food!
Mosque at Night, Corniche in Sharjah
And after our night at the resort, we had basically a whole other day to explore Dubai before catching our flight back to Oslo. We had a couple ideas of things we wanted to see, namely the cultural center in Sharjah and a bird sanctuary in Dubai. Well. Let me tell you: navigating the many, many looping highways of Dubai is total insanity. We spent an hour or more driving circles around the city, trying to decipher road signs before we finally gave in and followed the biggest, most obvious signs to what has become the real heart of Dubai: the Mall. Isn't that what people actually come here for, after all? Resorts and shopping. We saw it all. We spent almost eight hours in and around the Dubai Mall, and we didn't go into a single store. No joke! We did eat lunch and dinner, took peace sign photos in front of the Burj Kalifa (because that is what you do), and watched the Dubai Dancing Fountain perform seven of it's twice-hourly evening shows. Seven. We loved it! I didn't shoot the video below, but hope that the youtube user who has posted it won't mind my sharing… we saw the same song performed the night we were there. Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" was the other big crowd-pleaser, in case you want to go youtube some other videos.
…and so that was our trip to the Middle East! I can't wait to go back again someday, eat some more amazing food and see some other amazing sights. It really is a shame that there are so many areas of legitimate strife and tension in the region, because overall the experience of Arabia is so lovely. The sights are beautiful, the wildlife is exotic, the people are welcoming, and the culture of Islam is so peaceful. I also think it might be worth mentioning specifically that I felt incredibly safe as a woman traveling through Oman and the UAE. I was dressing and behaving modestly, which was generally appreciated, I feel; but there is such a strong culture of respect for women and their privacy that I think it would have been very taboo for anyone to bother me, regardless. And for god's sake, if a shop owner in the middle of the desert offers you coffee and dates just because you bought a bag of bread, say yes! Yum.
