Rain

As we've entered the sandy part of the year, I thought I would post a few pictures from December when it rained two or three days in a row.  I should've been out of town with some friends when I took these pictures, but was violently ill after some bad curry.  The day or so before, a number of us went to an Indian restaurant in the neighboring city to have a going-away party.  Little did I know that, even though I wasn't leaving, I was to receive a parting gift.  I still can't quite eat lamb.

Afterward, as I was recovering from a vindaloo-induced delirium, I noticed that the wind was blowing through the window and it smelled like rain.  I went over, and saw that it was starting to rain.  At first it simply trickled, then suddenly all the rain that I had missed over the last four months began to fall.  A boy ran across the dirt lot in front of the apartment laughing and with his arms thrown wide open.  I have to admit that I started to tear up a little, a little because it had been so long since I had seen rain, a little because of the vision-quest level of food poisoning I had just endured, but mostly because he seemed so happy.  I decided to go up on the roof and take a few pictures.

If you'll notice in the first picture, there are no gutters or storm drains.  That's because it rains five times a year.  This may seem like a reasonable response on the part of the city planner, but the problem is that when it rains, a good bit of the city washes away.  By the time this storm was over, the puddle at the edge of the road had encroached within a few yards of the building, and a good deal of the lot was underwater.

Bur Dubai - Someday My Dhow Will Come In

Now that it's getting warmer and sandier, I thought I'd post a few pictures from November, when the daytime highs were only 85 degrees, or so, and the sky was blue.

This goes to show that you can't buy taste.  Strangely enough, had this sign not been here, I probably wouldn't have considered taking a picture.

Men who hire themselves out to cart goods are ubiquitous in Bur Dubai.  They'll help deliver in-bound stock, run things from store to store, or lug your stuff for you if you've gone a bit overboard with your shopping.

This area features traditional architecture, like the wind tower behind the camel.  These were used as a form of air conditioning by channeling the breeze down the tower and through the house.  On a side note, my friend learned that if you scratch a camel's ear, there's a good chance that your hand will be camel-scented for the rest of the afternoon.

These are water taxis, called abras, and cost a little over a quarter to ride.  They ferry people from one side of the creek to the other, and are especially exciting when they depart and arrive at the dock.  This is because abra pilots use a boating-by-braille technique to pinball the boat into the slip, ricochetting off of nearby boats or poles.

Visa Runs

One of the integral parts of life in the sandbox is the visa run. For those of you who are wondering, a visa isn't terribly unlike a hall pass from the government; it allows you to go around relatively freely for a certain amount of time. Holders of residents' visas usually need to renew their visas once every few years, but people on visitors' visas need to renew them more frequently (once a month for me).

Around here, a visa run generally entails a few bottles of water, some form of sustenance, hours of driving, and a bit of time in various offices. Some additional items that are of benefit are a fully charged iPod and a day lacking any other plans, as it's never certain how long the endeavor will take. The actual trip involves driving to one of the border checkpoints, having passports stamped, going to the next country's checkpoint (sometimes a ninety-second drive, sometimes forty-five minutes), getting two more stamps, and then going back to the original border post to stamp back into the first country. A good run is anything under two to two-and-a-half hours, but some have taken the better part of the day. When any of us are feeling especially plucky, some sort of (additional) adventure will coincide with the visa run.

For this particular visa renewal, we decided to head up the coast toward the tip of the peninsula and to go on a dhow ride (a dhow is a type of boat). The coast itself was gorgeous, with rocky hills running down to meet the brightest green and blue water that I've seen. Sadly, I didn't take any pictures on the way up because we were pressed for time. We had a good chuckle when we arrived and saw the trailer that served as the adventure company's office. Nothing inspires confidence like a company that's chosen to place their office at the foot of a hill in an area marked by "beware of falling rocks" signs. Looking back, that might explain why the office was empty when we arrived.

We parked across the street (read I stopped the car in the parking lot roundabout trying to figure out where to go next). Thankfully, someone noticed the two cars of perplexed expats, and decided to offer us help. I was able to speak to him a bit in Arabic, which probably wasn't his first language either, and communicate that we wanted to go out on a boat but couldn't find the office. He looked at me and asked "dolphins?" which took me a bit by surprise, but clarified the whole issue. He was pointing me in the direction I needed to go when the dhow tours manager approached me. Though they decided to place their "office" on a strip of tire-puncturing rocks at the foot of a landslide prone rock hill, they surprisingly felt that it was unsafe to send out any boats that day since it was a little windy. We asked if one of the captains would take us out anyway, and turn back if he thought that it was legitimately dangerous, but no one would agree to this.

After having the wind taken out of our sails (had to be done), we decided that we could at least pick a nice spot of beach where we could eat lunch. We wound our way back along the coast until we found a place to park, and the seven of us disembarked from the cars. The double stroller was scraped along the beach for a few yards, and we sat and ate as my friends' daughter slept. She was so excited about riding in the boat and seeing dolphins that the disappointment suddenly put her into a narcoleptic state. The rest of us enjoyed lunch on the beach, even as it started to sprinkle on us. Normally, rain ruins picnics, but in the desert, rain is always welcomed, especially when it comes as late as April.

After lunch, we packed back into the cars and started the return trek. Midway through checking through the border, we met a wandering goat. Normally this isn't the most peculiar thing, as per-capita-goat-ownership is pretty high. The strange thing about this goat, aside from the fact that they didn't check her papers as she went back and forth through the border at whim, was that she was so friendly. Maybe she was overwhelmed by the foreign delicacies we gave her to eat, such as Pringles and snickerdoodles. As dogs are considered unclean here, maybe she was some form of car-sniffing goat. Apparently, she enjoyed whatever she smelled so much that we had to fight to keep her out of both cars. Finally we tricked her, which might not be something to gloat about too much, and were on our way home, smelling like the sea and goat and holding fresh visas.

This is an example of local small-town traffic.  I'm not certain about passing laws in regard to various grades of livestock, but I went ahead and passed on the right while taking this picture.

Muscat Souq

So, pretty much any self-respecting Middle-Eastern city has a souq.  The word "souq" means market (more or less), and depending on the size of the city, the souq might be the main location for shopping.  Souqs are comprised of a group of stalls or nooks that may or may not sell the exact same things as the shop next to them.  Some souqs specialize in fresh seafood (often called the Fish Souq), small livestock (~the Goat Souq), gold (surprisingly called the Gold Souq), and some sell a little bit of everything except what you want at the moment.  For instance, at a souq you can buy: a 50 kg sack of basmati rice, white patent leather sandals, enough incense to fog out your Western neighbors even though both your door and their's are closed and all of their windows are open and fans are on, or even a couple of short-handled shovels to dig a 1995 Jeep Wrangler out of the desert.

If none of this seems to help, you've probably seen a souq in an adventure movie, such as Indiana Jones.  Though there are rarely crazed men running around with scimitars, you can manage to see a quality slap-fight between two grown men, but proper souq-etiquette requires that you go around the corner before you burst out in laughter.  If none of that helps, here are a few pictures from the souq in Muscat.