Elsien's Traveblogue

Left Oman yesterday. A beautiful place, definitely, but a difficult one for a lone female budget tourist without 4WD or much Arabic. Ramadan didn't help, I think: people were sleepy, hungry, thirsty, grumpy because of the fast and the fact that they couldn't smoke all day and preoccupied with prayer and religious duties. Opening times were erratic; lunch was out of the question and during Eid everything was closed for a day or two, but after Eid life suddenly cheered up. People started totalk to me, I got hailed and 'hallo'ed' by taxi drivers, predatory and friendly sheikhs again and I could find places to eat and drink - although no alcohol.
After a few days in Muscat - lovely, but expensive, see previous e-mail, I went to Nizwa where I only spent long enough to visit the impressive fort and the soukh. I was only able to find a bed I couldn't afford for more than 1 night - the other 5 hotels I'd tried were all full of Eid guests and lots of well-paid Dubai expats in 4WDs. I nearly didn't get out of Nizwa, as I'd been waiting at the wrong bus station - information had been hard to come by and confusing to boot, but a sheikh in shining Nissan came to the rescue (they all have large Japanese or Korean cars except for 4WD expats) and gave me a lift to the right one, 10 km away. He propositioned me (of course?! I've lost loads of excess weight, have a suntan and hair bleached by sun and desert): why didn't I "sit" with him that night instead of catching my bus? I doubt "sitting" was what he had in mind, so I threatened him with all my real and imaginary male relations as well as my Mum and hopped out at the right bus station where I caught the bus with a minute to spare. Oh yeah, I did get a job offer in Nizwah, at the College of Engineering, a great financial package, I'd be able to afford my own 4WD and maybe even my own Sheikh.
Spent the last few days in Salalah, on the coast, right in the South, almost on the Yemeni border. The place has really grown on me, even though there's not really anything here. The package tourists have all been packaged together in hotels 5 - 10 km out of town and they stay there. I've been one of the very few tourists here all the time. I infiltrated the Crowne Plaza Hotel for a day and enjoyed their beach facilities. It was lovely for a day, but I'm not really a beach-person.
I could afford to rent a (Korean) car for a day as my hotel, though very clean and comfortable, was affordable. I explored some of the coast, the mountains, wadis and oases and bits of desert - it's really fabulous, but you have to be careful not to run over a camel - they're all over the place. (Salalah was the base for Wilfred Thesiger's desert journey - he wrote 'Arabian Sands'. They have his photographs, well, copies of, in the local museum / library). I did like the place, it's safe, friendly, a pretty authentic mix of old and new, with great surroundings. Hot, yes, but there's a sort of desert wind, or maybe sea-breeze that keeps it bearable. My favourite time of day is dusk, when the call to prayer, the pink evening light, the cooler warmth create a magic atmosphere.
I got the night bus to Muscat - it dropped me off right at the airport in time to catch the plane to Karachi in the morning. I'm reviewing my Pakistan programme, as both the Dutch and the British Foreign Office warn against non-essential travel in some 80% of the country, so I'll probably spend less time in Pakistan and more in India. The Punjab is still safe apparently ....