I'm writing this in the brief 10 mins before breakfast in the desert eating tent It's hard to describe the sensory overload that happened in the last 24 hours. We picked up by Tony and went the great Mosque in Muscat - built only in the last 10 years by the sultan - massive structure over a large area that from the outside looks quite plain and monochromatic, but inside is an explosion of colour and decoration - built in the Persian style, laid out by an ageing Omani architect and then designed by NZ architects.
Head out south towards the desert and take a detour to Birkat Al Moz which has examples of both the new housing/architecture and the old mud-brick houses, now occupied by migrant (Bengali) workers. but as Tony notices, it's 11am an the workers are still at home - there seems the be a problem here with workers/contractors not fulfilling their responsibilities.
We drive towards the desert and the rocky bare scenery reminds me of an open cut mine - no trees to be seen apart from small shrubs and very dry looking acacias. We visit the fort at Niswa, used for defence up until the 1950s, and then lunch in a local restaurant.
We travel through a long valley (wadi) with rocky mountains to the left and large reddish dunes slowly becoming visible on the right. The wadi, with it's occasional floods forms a barrier to the encroaching dunes. Eventually we reach the end of the road and the desert starts, no gentle transition! the road stops and the desert starts. The reddish dunes are heavily dotted by small grass tussocks, remnants from a monsoon a year ago, and surviving on what little rain has fallen since.
We stop briefly at the home & a camel camp of Ali who immediately offer us sweet minted tea, coffee (Arabic style) and dates, the traditional offering when someone arrives. We spend some time while Tony chats (in Arabic), mostly about camel racing, and then head off to the desert camp.
After an hours drive, up and down the sand, following other 4WD tracks, we eventually arrive at the camp near sunset at Wadi Bani Khalid. It looks like a deserted wild west town set. The wind has come up and sand is whipping our faces. It's very fine and covers us with a light dusting that sticks & gets in our eyes. We met 2 Swedish lawyers, one of which is holidaying from her job with the European Union in Kabul. Later, we have a dinner of chicken casserole and different pots of cooked vegetables.
The desert camp is well established, with bricked in shower/toilet facilities & on cement slabs, not really roughing it. But there’s no electricity, so everything is done by the light of kero lamps, including hunting mosquitoes. The place is heaven for dung beetles, busy rolling their balls of camel dung along the sand and across our path.
