Salalah

We arrived on the evening flight and did not really know what to expect. But as soon as we got off the plane and onto the tarmac for the short walk to the terminal, I felt it. The Salalah mist. Somehow there was a slight change on how the heat of Arabia felt. I used to complain to P that the Vancouver winters were at times more chilling to me than the coldest Montreal days. "Montreal had a dry cold that one could bear", I would reason to him, "Vancouver’s cold weather was wet and went right down to your bones." P would look at me and offer no sympathy. I suppose I couldn’t expect as much as he grew up in the Prairies where -50 C with the wind chill factor was the norm from November to early April. At that tarmac, I had that same thought that this heat was different, yes, very different just as some cold can be very different.

Salalah. The heat was tropical, not the familiar classic desert dry heat that made our bicycle tires disintegrate over the summer. And again, I felt it was a different type of tropical. It was much lower in humidity than the familiar steam room heat of Southeast Asia. There was a familiar breeze, as always blowing a sprinkling bit of sand. But this time it was accompanied by an unexpected rustling of leaves. Foliage in Arabia? Somehow my mind could not process this. Yet it was all there.

On the drive to the hotel, we passed by roads lined with coconut plantations interspersed with groves of banana and papaya trees. At a junction, a row of thatched huts housed fruit vendors offering fruits, finger sized bananas and brown shelled coconuts all stacked neatly on the counter with the green unhusked coconuts piled in small mountains on the ground. There was even that smell of coconut husks and copra burning. For P, it was just like East Africa, which he had visited years ago. For me, it was a flashback to a Volkswagen Beetle with 4 sleepy children in the back seat making its way to Candelaria, to my mother’s ancestral home set in a sea of coconut trees. I had a crazy thought. Could I actually get macapuno candy here in Oman?

Salalah is the main city of the Dhofar Region and is the birthplace of the Sultan. It lies on the coast of the Arabian Sea, 1000 km south of Muscat towards the Yemeni border. Salalah also houses a natural phenomenon. The same monsoon rains that often cause havoc in the Indian Continent during the summer months crosses over the Arabian Sea once a year and provides Salalah with a misty climate of humidity and moderate temperatures. The temperatures drop to an average of 27 C in Salalah when Muscat is frying crisply at 50 C. This monsoon is known in Oman as the Khareef and lasts from June to mid-October. Oman has capitalized on the Khareef by launching a festival during this time to entertain the nearly 500,000 mostly Middle East tourists who come to the region each year.

But really the festival is not what people come to see. The Dhofar Mountain ridge that stretches for 400 km from East to West of Salalah traps all this mist blowing in from the Indian Ocean and therefore, receives the most rain. As a consequence, the jebel or mountains surrounding Salalah become literally alive turning desert land into a lush and green paradise, with waterfalls and rivers feeding pastures. Natural springs also gush forth from all the accumulation of this moisture. The Khareef provides enough water for the rest of the year to water all the coconut, banana and fruit trees, and Oman’s only “green” golf course plus nourish all the camels and dairy cows roaming freely on the mountainside. More importantly, the Khareef provides the sun tired desert dweller with easy-on-the-eyes greenery and a relief from the unrelenting summer heat.

On our first morning there, we quickly drove high up to Jebal Ittin to find the tomb of Nabi Ayoub - the very patient Prophet Job of the Old Testament. The drive up, 40 km from Salalah was spectacular. It was all rolling hills, green pastures, lonely country roads lined with flowers, fruit trees and moss covered stone huts. Job’s tomb was housed in a mosque compound. The tomb itself was set on the floor and was unbelievably long. It was covered by a green cloth which the children kept trying to lift and look under. The place was relatively well kept and surrounded by a lush garden that housed iguanas, beautiful yellow finches and the biggest black beetles we have ever seen. The children were thrilled.

Afterwards, we headed straight down again to drive 70 km east of Salalah towards the ancient port of Mirbat, where Marco Polo wrote of a bustling trade in Arabian horses. We stopped on the way to explore a pretty and compact castle in a fishing village called Taqa. The whole of Oman’s Southern Dhofar Region is not only an ecologically interesting place but is also steeped in history and rich in culture and tradition. Its ancient claim to fame stems from the frankincense trade as frankincense trees are abundant in Dhofar. Frankincense was valued by ancient peoples, especially the Romans and was once more valuable than gold. A drawing from 1500 BC of a ship loaded with frankincense in the Omani port of Samhuran appears in a temple in the Valley of Kings in Luxor, Egypt. Samhuran is hometown of the Queen of Sheba, again from the Old Testament, and we passed by archaeologists digging around this ancient city now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That evening we explored the old souk and bought some “A Grade” frankincense from the Dhofari ladies, conservatively hidden and masked head-to-toe in black but all knowing in the art of bargaining.

The next day after persuading the children to leave the hotel pool, we drove 70 km the other way, west of Salalah to see the sandy beaches, blow holes and limestone cliffs of Mughsayl. We continued westward a few more kilometers on a very steep and curvy drive towards the Yemen border but as the children were clamouring for another go at the hotel’s water park and slide, we turned back before we reached the checkpoint.

All together it was a great weekend with the only glitch being my fault. On the way back to the airport, we stopped a few times on my request to take pictures and videos of the plantations. This delay caused us to miss the last call to check in for our flight by all of 5 minutes, even if the domestic flight was not yet scheduled to leave for another 40 minutes! Suspiciously the airline advised us that since we were late checking in (by 5 minutes!), they made a commercial decision to sell our seats to the standby passengers. (What 5 seats paid for and confirmed yet given away on stand by!) P and I were livid with the airline staff but most of all P was, I am sure, ready to choke me! Luckily the airline promised to get us on a late flight despite it being sold out as well. (Apologies to the unlucky 5 who were bumped!) So finally, four hours later, we flew back to desert Muscat, tired but with a feeling that we had just visited a wondrous green planet.