A Couple Days in Salalah

My vacation has officially begun.

I spent the last two days in Salalah. I flew back to Muscat this afternoon and now I'm in my room sipping tea and eating Haluwa, a gelatanous Omani desert flavored with cardimum, orange zest, nuts and smoke.



This morning I woke up at 6am after sleeping for 14 hours. I spent the morning driving in the mountains surrounding Salalah. I drove up a steep mountain, and then down into the valley of Wadi Nahiz. I parked my car on the side of the road and hiked around for a bit. I found an abandoned shack, a herd of small friendly cows, and a bunches of beautiful flowers and birds. I emerged with my shirt covered in burrs.

There was a little farming town down in this valley. I think small farming towns look a lot alike the world over - I've seen similar looking towns in rural Texas.

As I went to drive back up the hill there was a small guy wearing an old shirt and a purple piece of cloth like a skirt. He was holding a plastic shopping bag and looking for a ride to the top of the hill, so I picked him up. I guess he was surprised to see a pale American woman in the car. He didn't speak any English, "mafi ingleezi", so I tried out a little Arabic. He said he spoke "al arabia, wa al bengali", and he himself was Bengali. He was younger than me and pretty shy, but we had a nice little conversation. "What is your name". "I work near Thumrait" and as thanks for the ride he gave me a nice looking squash from his bag.

I thought I should tell him I was flying on a plane today and I wouldn't know what to do with a squash, but that is a bit advanced for my Arabic skills. I was touched by the squash, and I really didn't want to be rude. So I wrapped it up in my Palisades High School sweatshirt, stuffed it in my backpack, and put that in my big dufflebag to take on the plane. It made it to Muscat intact, and tonight I will see if I can do something with it in the kitchen.

Yesterday I went hiking about 40km east of Salalah around 2500 year old ruins of an ancient shipping settlement. This place is a UNESCO world heritage site named Khor Rori. It was a ways down a bumpy dirt road on which I should not have been taking my rental car. The area was deserted except for two guys at an entrance gate. I think I woke them up. About 1km from the actual ruins was the most stunnely gorgeous beach I've ever seen. Cliffs on either side, soft white sand, turqoise water at just the perfect temperature. And completely deserted! Fucking increadable!!





Tomorrow off to Athens.