Wherein your correspondent and her companion visit Oman, Iran, Armenia, Georgia and Qatar in October 2018. This is an edited version of a blog I distributed by email to sundry friends and family while I was on the road.
October 6 – 8, 2018 – Oman
We arrived in Qatar about 5.30am, then waited for our flight to Muscat where we arrived about 10.30. We are striving mightily now just to stay awake, killing time in our hotel room. It’s as hot as Hades outside so we haven’t ventured out at all, but time is dragggggggggging while we wait for our tour guide to turn up for the 5 o’clock meet and greet. Thereafter it’ll be Bedfordshire for sure, and a civilised 9am start to our tour tomorrow morning.
Muscat is the capital of Oman, a fact I’ve only now come to apprehend with any certainty because I’m sure that once upon a time in my youth there was a geopolitical entity called Muscat and Oman, which induced in me a mental block about which was the capital of which or whether they were both countries or both cities or a merger of two sultanates or what-all. Next: is it one of the United Arab Emirates and if not why not?
Oct 7
As salaam alaikum, friends.
Yes, that means ‘hello’ in Arabic. You were right.
We met our tour guide last night – Ramona Cheremnikh from St Petersburg. 29 years old and a prodigiously gifted linguist. She speaks Arabic, Farsi and English as well as her native Russian and is doing a Spanish lesson tonight by Skype! Alec’s eyes lit up…I urged them both to yack away together as my russki could do with an infinite amount of improvement.
This morning we met Saif, who’ll be our guide and driver while we’re in Oman for the next couple of days. We did a mosque, the souk and the old city with forts and suchlike. In the mosque, Saif pointed out the SECOND BIGGEST chandelier and ditto carpet in the world. I think he said they used to be the biggest until the Saudis or Abu Dhabi one-upped them. Alec remembered Saif saying it was also the second biggest mosque, but I didn’t hear him say that and it just seems too good – and funny for us fans of Maxwell Smart – to be true.
The Omanis are only just opening up to tourism. They practice a form of Islam that’s milder than the Sunni of, say, Saudi Arabia. They don’t like shorts or bare shoulders and women have to veil in the mosque, but otherwise it’s pretty relaxed and friendly. Ramona says there are bars here and there, but not at our hotel or anywhere we’ve been. I’m off the grog anyway till after Iran – 2 weeks! – and have high hopes of teetotal-induced weight loss.
It’s hellishly hot during the day – like Darwin in the build-up. But down by the harbour in the old city the sea-breeze off the Persian Gulf made it a bit more tolerable, and Saif says the temperature will drop noticeably over the next few weeks, which is good as we’ve got two days in Qatar on our way home.
The Great Embarrassment – an amusing diversion
After our morning out in the heat, Ramona and I checked out the hotel indoor swimming pool. There were a couple of blokes in it, but we decided to come back together later for a swim. I put on a stretchy black top over my black togs for extra modesty, just in case. Slim and sylph-like Ramona wore an itsy bitsy bikini, but we went down with our day clothes over our bathers, and by the back lift so we wouldn’t have to walk through the lobby.
When we came down the pool was empty and we had the space to ourselves. After doing 10 lengths we called it quits and got out. I noticed a shower head against the wall and decided to rinse off there rather than have a shower upstairs. Having done that I towelled myself vigorously but my swimming gear was still too wet for me to put my dry clothes back on over it, so with a mad rush of blood to the head I whipped off my wet togs, thinking to dry off and dress in my t-shirt and trousers to go upstairs. At that precise nanosecond a MAN walked in. Not a fellow tourist. In short, probably a Muslim man! I suddenly twigged the horror of the situation. I wasn’t in the women’s dressing room at the local gym, where my brain had tricked me into thinking I was; I was standing buck naked in a semi-public place in a Muslim country! I emitted a horrified roar and clutched my towel about me, and the man turned around and quietly left.
😨
When I told Alec about it he reckoned he was going to go to the hotel manager and tell him that in Australian culture, if a man sees another man’s wife naked by accident, that man has to prostrate himself in front of the ‘husband’ and beg his forgiveness. But he eventually stopped laughing.
…….
Oman – Dubai. Oct 7 – 8
I’m glad so many people got a laugh out of my major faux pas last Saturday. I myself am striving mightily to repress this particular memory, and woe betide any ‘counsellor’ who tries to recover it for me!
It’s a hard act to follow, not helped by my conscientiousness in obliging Saif’s obvious wish for his guests to behave in a culturally appropriate manner. So we wait patiently while he absents himself several times a day to pray – there seems to be some form of rudimentary mosque every 50 metres or so in Oman.
….which is a mountainous, rocky, dusty country. The striking thing about it is the barrenness. The dramatic gorges and mountains are completely devoid of trees. The wadis – riverbeds – are dry at this time of year but there are some where the water is a pure sparkling blue and form the most inviting swimming-holes. The first one we came to, a deep hole accessible by about 50 steep steps, Saif made it clear we shouldn’t swim there, even in shirts and shorts. Ramona was tempted to defy him, as there were a handful of Europeans swimming – in ordinary bathers! But I didn’t fancy the walk back up the steps in the scorching heat, nor did I want to upset Saif, who had however vamoosed back to the parking lot. Ramona reckoned he didn’t want to pollute his vision with semi-naked women, but he was just off for a spot of prayer.
[The call to prayer comes five times a day in Oman. In Iran, interestingly, only three times. Don’t get a hotel near a mosque!]*
As if to reward us for our good behaviour, the next day (yesterday, Tuesday) we went to an even better wadi with the most heavenly rock-lined pool, the size of a decent public pool. He said we girls must wear shorts and shirts over our togs. I put on my gym shorts and a t-shirt, but Ramona only wore a shirt over her bikini. Saif then took Alec aside and asked him to get her to cover herself as soon as she got out because there was an inspector from the Ministry of Tourism there, and he’d had a word with Saif about it!
Ancient forts, castles, mosques, mosques, mosques galore, and a night out in the desert where Saif lowered the tyre pressure to take us up the top of the dunes to watch the sunset. Very Lawrence of Arabia…it is in fact not all that far from the famous Empty Quarter.
Then a long long drive through Abu Dhabi into Dubai. The roads were excellent, the speed limit up to 140kph in parts, but the last 20km of this 400km drive – once we hit Dubai – took us about an hour. The traffic was like Punt Road on a Friday evening, and we didn’t get to our hotel till after 8pm.
Have to bid you goodnight now as it’s an early start tomorrow to catch the ferry to Iran. We are right next door to a mosque with a very effective amplifier, and for some reason they are issuing the call to prayer every half an hour but, Allah be praised, we can’t hear the effing muezzin from our room.