After a very nice drive through the Dhofar mountains we arrived in Yemen – where if anything the scenery is more dramatic than in Dhofar.
Enjoying the Yemeni sun
on small beach we had a simple Picnic before turning around, for the drive back to Salalah.
Fortunately we managed to arrive in time for a nice dinner in town.
Categories: Culture · Meals · Mountain · Oman · People · Salalah · Sea · Tour · Yemen
Tagged: Dhofar, Oman, Picnic, Salalah, Yemen
As the Monsoon Season draws to a close in Salalah it will soon be time to start the Frankincense Harvest.
Camels and Tent
A crew for the BBC filmed in Oman a piece about the Frankincense Trail in June last year. From Oman they went to The Hadramout and beyond, mixing fable, modernity and a bit of history as seen through Kate Humble’s eyes.
in the desert
Apart from the fact that Frankincense is a living legend – the thing I really like about the tree is the culture that surrounds it.
Droplets of Frankincense resin
The smoke from the small pebble size pieces is used in Oman as a welcome to guests and the fragrance will scent clothes for a long time .
Categories: Culture · Desert · Oman · Oman's Nature · People · Salalah · Yemen
Tagged: Oman, Salalah, Yemen, Frankincense, Frankincense Trail, BBC, Kate Humble, Hadramout
A week ago, there was a strong likelihood that a ‘tropical depression’ would create heavy rain in Salalah. Fortunately for Salalah, but tragically for Yemen , it veered away and the last few days was over southern Yemen. The video clip http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7689795.stm from Yemen shows a river pouring through “Al Ghar Al Amar” in the centre of Mukalla . The water catchment area in Mukalla is far smaller than that of Wadi Hadhramaut http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7690463.stm or even I suspect Wadi Du’an; there the flooding might be horrific. Wadi Hadhramaut and its tributaries have extraordinarily sheer cliffs, carved by previous floods, which funnel the water in its restricted course . The article I wrote about Yemen finished …. ‘I was now left with one problem before I left, how to tackle the ascent out of the valley’ hopefully the inhabitants wont find they need an escape route.
Categories: Mountain · Oman · Salalah · Yemen
Tagged: Flood, Hadhramaut, Oman, Rain, Salalah, Yemen
The Arabian Leopard was the subject of an article in the new daily paper from the UAE http://www.thenational.ae/article/20081009/NATIONAL/76935597. The piece highlights how few of the animals there are – the writer covered the possibility that there might be, or might not be one Arabian Leopard in the UAE mountains. That prompted me to scan in the piece I did about the Leopard for ‘Oman Today’ along with 3 other ones .
The visit I made into Wadi Hadhramaut which Oman Today (again) published in 2007 was a wonderful journey . Seeing ‘hand made’ houses rather than ones made from mass produced material was very stimulating. Each one individual and yet harmonious . To get some nice photos I wandered around just after dawn – in Seyoun waking up a pack of several dozen ‘wadi dogs’ on a mountain slope which made me back away very carefully and in Mukalla enjoying watching the men of the old town take up their places in the tea houses . Along the coast, the scenes of fishermen chasing gulls away from drying sardines spoke volumes of their need to preserve ‘wealth’ .
Bank Muscat asks me to produce brief articles which cover towns where they have branches . I am waiting in hope that they will ask me to do one for their Egyptian branch – and of course pay my travel expenses.
The files are probably not so large with broadband – but they take a while to download from Oman .
Categories: Oman · Oman's Nature · Yemen
Tagged: Bank Muscat, Hadhramaut, Hamra, Ibri, Leopard, Magazine, Oman, Oman Today, Seyoun, Shibam, Tarim, Travel, Yemen
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