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Clary's Travel Digression

 
 
Clary
 
  1  
Reply Wed 2 Jan, 2008 12:59 am
Ah, McTag, I felt your benign presence every bit of the way through Mumbai! Had you damaged a car there, it would have meant either a lynching or nobody noticing... daresay Derbyshire a little more predictable, if annoying.
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Tai Chi
 
  1  
Reply Wed 2 Jan, 2008 08:43 am
Enjoying the travel tale, Clary. (Wonderfully warm reading here in the snowy north!)
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margo
 
  1  
Reply Wed 2 Jan, 2008 04:55 pm
Wow!

and I got to go to Kiama - 100km south of Sydney! (bloody nice, though!)
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msolga
 
  1  
Reply Sat 5 Jan, 2008 04:33 pm
margo wrote:
Wow!

and I got to go to Kiama - 100km south of Sydney! (bloody nice, though!)


... & I couldn't afford to leave home! Sad



Clary, you're travelling for all of us! :wink:



Very best new year wishes to you & the boys!
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Clary
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jan, 2008 03:02 am
Very best New Year wishes to all... I guess the year is pretty old by now; the Islamic one was the day before yesterday, however.

We had a great trip through Oman, 4000 km, Rustom and I, 3 nights in the wild, 4 nights in hotels, but what a contrast of places it was!

First night we went to Muscat, which Rustom hadn't yet visited, and stayed in the trusty Marin Hotel (the A had dropped off the end). We met up with some old Hong Kong chums, now working in Muscat and had a good dinner (jhinga masala for me) at the deserted Boat Club. Bruce and Rustom exchanged business cards, as did Sue and I - mutual benefits were promised. The hotel was good except it was a Thursday night (equivalent to the crazy Fridays of UK) and some enthusiastic Indians were having a party, seemingly 10 metres away, until about 3 a m. Luckily I sleep well...

Next day, after breakfast on the rooftop, we hit the road to Sur. We had been unsuccessful in locating the rapid pump for the airbed, and had rashly bought an electric one. Inevitably, all the adaptors that were supposed to work from the cigarette lighter did not enable the pump to work, I still don't know why. So our bemused Indian hoteliers watched as we attached the electric pump to the socket in the lobby, and the bed grew huge in a matter of seconds. Trying to get it into the back of the jeep was definitely not on, though, so we had to let out quite a bit of its air, fold it back so the front seats could accommodate us, and then pile everything on top. Rustom had great misgivings about it being viable but I remained sanguine.

We drove along the coast where possible (mountains sometimes got in the way). They are in the process of dualling that carriageway, and had also suffered quite a bit in a cyclone last June, so parts of the road enabled Rustom to engage the fourwheel drive and bounce over stones and up slopes. We stopped for a typical chicken-and-rice lunch, saw some more expansive views and jaggedy mountains, and temporarily lost the right road a few times (one of the worst road maps I have ever encountered, just plain wrong on many occasions).

We spent the first night in a mountainous area, not down on the coast because there were People Living There. We had found a brilliant 'curry-in-a-bag' to heat in the vast Dubai supermarket, and although we had Italian risotto to go with it, we relished our frugal fare. Half a bottle of Argentine wine helped, too (strictly illegal to bring it into the country of course). It was very starry but no moon, and although we built a fire from some dead bushes, by 8 o'clock we were ready to turn in. Rustom started off chivalrously in the tent, giving me the blowup bed, the pillow, the jeep... but around 2 a m he was so uncomfortable and cold, he crept in and shared the space - there was plenty of room, and because of the comparative lack of air in the bed, two of us were more comfy than one.
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Dutchy
 
  1  
Reply Sat 12 Jan, 2008 03:20 am
Magic stuff Clary, I'm riding all the way with you, great adventure. That Argentine wine has me worried though, I'm visualising a public flogging.
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Clary
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 01:17 am
Up betimes, as Sam Pepys says, in a slightly chilly dawn, and cooked up Nestle's 3 in 1 to get us started. I'd never seen it before, it's coffee, milk and sugar in a packet and makes a syrupy but sustaining drink. Nothing like the black espresso with a dash of hot milk I favour at home.

Lots of mountains and a long deviation inland as the coast road is either nonexistent or being repaired. We missed out the beaches where turtles breed, partly because it would have added kms and also it isn't the right time of year. And I have done the 'sitting deathly quiet on a beach all night while the turtle lays its eggs' thing, twenty years ago in Pakistan.

We were approaching the place Rustom had been to look at a hotel site proposed by a client (that's his job), a place called Duqm or Ad Duqm, large on the map, but small in fact. We arrived around dusk, and were seduced into a restaurant for some good hot Indian food (the menu is always the same but we were favourably impressed by the quality: chicken fry or curry, mutton (=goat) fry or curry, veg, dal, rice and/or paratha). We wondered loudly and often where the chickens came from as we NEVER saw one, in fact haven't seen one since coming to the Arabian peninsula at all. The same goes for cows. We get milk, said to come from Al Ain, which we have driven through twice, but nowhere is there a suggestion of a farm, a cow or even a bottling plant for reconstituted powder milk. I did get some camel's milk (see plenty of them) and it tasted v much like cow's.

It was dark when we drove past the putative hotel site, and Rustom remembered the rough roads to the beach, so we bounced along them for some twenty minutes. It's strange but you have the illusion when driving in the dark that you are surrounded by trees or something, there is a feeling of being flanked by things taller than you are - we both felt this. So when we found a likely sandy place we got onto the beach, could hear the surf, and stopped for the night. It was therefore rather a surprise, come dawn, to find ourselves the only object for miles around, a totally flat and empty beach stretching as far as the eye could see in all directions, and the sea a stone's throw away. A few tiny scrubby bushes, no trees.

It was the most beautiful dawn I have ever seen. The nail-paring moon had risen around 5 a m, and the sky started to lighten at 6. We had been able to leave the back of the jeep open to the breeze, as the temperature was comfortable, as I lay in my sleeping bag, watching the sun rise over the sea, and Rustom gently slept beside me.

Earl Grey tea was the chosen tipple, and some cashews and figs and a cereal bar. No elaborate cooking for us Sagittarians.

We continued for mile after mile down the flat coast, and then turned inwards to the oil-rich desert, where nodding donkeys patiently raised the black stuff to the surface, seemingly untended by humans.

http://images.jupiterimages.com/common/detail/27/82/22898227.jpg

Not a particularly attractive drive, but interesting to those of us who aren't used to such sights.

There was a crossroads in the middle of nowhere that had a restaurant (where we lunched) and a very sophisticated bank with cash deposit facilities. Nothing else.
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msolga
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 01:21 am
Reading along & following your travels, Clary.

Wondering to myself: have you turned into some sort of nomad? (not at all a bad thing!)
Is the thought of waking up in a house in England kinda weird now? :wink:
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Clary
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 01:47 am
I always resonated to the idea (Bruce Chatwin wrote about it) that we are all natural nomads, from hunter-gatherer days, and feel perfectly happy with the idea of not owning or even having a home. Could spend my whole life going from place to place, with a small bag, buying new shirts and socks when the originals had worn out... but not living too rough, no hiking, climbing, extremes of temperature!
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ossobuco
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 01:57 am
reading, cogitatiing.
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msolga
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 02:00 am
Clary wrote:
Could spend my whole life going from place to place, with a small bag, buying new shirts and socks when the originals had worn out...


Oh I know you could, Clary!
And good for you!
As much as I love travel (when I can afford it! Sad ) I really do love home, my very own nest, my books, my garden, my cat, my .... Very Happy
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Clary
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 02:03 am
See, it comes down to astrology!!
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msolga
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 02:04 am
Clary wrote:
See, it comes down to astrology!!


It does? Surprised
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Dutchy
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 02:35 am
Travelling those desert tracks on the Arabian Peninsula sounds like travelling the Birdsville track in outback South Austraklia with one major difference, there is a pub at the end of the track here! Have you travelled that one or the Strzelecky track Olga?
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msolga
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 02:57 am
No, I haven't, Dutchy. Have done the Melbourne to Perth (via a then VERY bumpy Nullabor), then south from Perth to Albany, etc .... then Melbourne to Cairns (via express bus! Shocked Laughing) & lots of other "eastern" Oz areas, but not those tracks you mentioned. Shows what a city girl I am, huh?
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Clary
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 11:29 pm
I can't believe my memory is so short that I left out the Wadi morning - the day before. After our stony campground, we drove on up the Wadi Bani Khalid, and walked up to the pools there. They must be fed by springs but the water was quite warm, and we had a good swim in one of them. An Omani Physical Education University trip was also there but the young men were all huddled in sweaters and not swimming!

http://www.tropicalisland.de/oman/sharqiya_region/images/MCT%20Wadi%20Bani%20Khalid%20-%20waterhole%20with%20palm%20trees%20and%20rocky%20mountain%20background%203008x2000.jpg

Anyway...Past the oil fields, and down the mountains to Dhofar, a region known for its special microclimate - temperate, and in particular has the Khareef, a wet season in midsummer, which makes it a second mecca for the Arabs of the region, who love its damp softness and apparently pile all their families into people carriers and drive hundreds of miles from Kuwait and Saudi to take houses in and around Salalah, the main city.

http://community.iexplore.com/photos/journal_photos/CamelsNearSalalah1.jpg

There were lots of camels about, and donkeys, and cows, but again, NO chickens.

After 2 days of sleeping rough, Rustom treated us to a night in the Crowne Plaza, and very nice it was too! How much more appreciated is a shower or an undisturbed night or a well-cooked steak with a glass of wine after the joys of la vie champetre...

And I checked my emails HERE:
http://image.pegs.com/images/CP/SLLSS/sllss_b29.jpg
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Dutchy
 
  1  
Reply Sun 13 Jan, 2008 11:52 pm
Nice photo's Clary, top one could have been taken at King's Canyon in Central Australia.
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Clary
 
  1  
Reply Mon 14 Jan, 2008 12:24 am
Interesting, it says Intercontinental Group, maybe they are all the same.

Rustom being a hotel consultant told me about the 2 "five star" hotels there (he reckons they are only worth four). Apparently during the Khareef they are totally full, but the rest of the year barely make ends meet; they were saved by a Swedish tour company who bring 102 Swedes a week during the winter, in a smallish plane that has to refuel in Cyprus, and the hotels share them between them. Hence I was spoken to in Swedish by breakfasters, and it was funny seeing the bronzed lot going home and the deathly pale ones arriving.

After a morning of minigolf and pool we had lunch at the Hilton (to be fair and make reasonable comparisons) before driving west as far as we could towards the Yemeni border.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhofar has a good resume of the region, should you be interested, including its fame as the major source of frankincense. We didn't see any frankincense trees but then, would we have known them if we had??

There are some beautiful white sand beaches along the coast, one in particular had handsome Arab-style beach huts all the way down it, but nobody enjoying them. I can't recall its name, but will check with the oracle when he wakes up!!

Further round the coast, the mountains loom and the road becomes a series of what the Cornish call 'elbow bends' - we stalwartly continued as far as possible, through 2 police checkposts (they looked at passports and car registration card) until we saw the Yemen border but Rustom was too chicken to try and go through (the only chicken in Oman??). Actually it was getting late, and we knew it was pretty impossible unless we had visas, so we had to drive back along the precipitous roads to the nearest village with a hotel.

Rustom has photos of this, I will wait to post some if I can master the technology.
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Dutchy
 
  1  
Reply Mon 14 Jan, 2008 01:54 am
http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/6104/palmvalleyau9.jpg
Palm Valley in Central Australia I mentioned in my previous post. Camped near there a couple of years ago.
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The Pen is
 
  1  
Reply Tue 15 Jan, 2008 12:59 am
Good text, Clary, keep it up... I visited Oman before there were roads, almost!
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