Victorian London - or Post-Modern Yas Island

I suppose this picture should really be paired with the ones right below in the Sandstorm posting. Here is the same view outside my window at the Staybridge, except this one features the claustrophobic fog that hung over Abu Dhabi this morning. Surprisingly, I made it to work with no trouble today. My fear was that the other Abu Dhabi drivers, who drive like lunatics on the best of days, would react to the dense fog by driving even faster. The other day I saw a driver in a huge 4x4 drive up on the sidewalk so that he could get past one driver and make a right turn on red, which you can't do here anyway. Luckily everyone was on their best behavior and there were no problems.

Monsters That Eat The Past

OK, so only my son would get that obscure reference. Here's a picture I took this weekend on the way into the Rub al-Khali, the Empty Quarter, which I'll have more to talk about later. I like this picture for any number of reasons, but mainly because it got me thinking about what happens when you sit still too long. In one of his movies Woody Allen (and I'm wildly paraphrasing here), proposes that, "Relationships are like sharks, they have to keep moving forward. What we have here is a dead shark." Over the years I've repeated that line to my students many times, but compared it to civilizations and also to life itself. You do have to keep moving forward. Whenever I have done something meaningful or interesting with my life it has been when I definitively responded YES when life asked me if I wanted to try something new. Ten years ago Champlain asked me if I wanted to travel to the UAE on a site visit for the campus we had here then. I didn't even have a passport but I said yes, and so many extraordinary opportunities spun out of that trip. If I had said no then I would have never discovered my love of the Arab world and the desert and Islam and Rumi and Ibn Battuta and Ibn Khaldun and there would have been no Global Modules and thousands of students from around the world would have never talked to each other and I wouldn't have visited thirty countries and I would not have hundreds of friends from around the world and on and on and on. Yesterday I picked up a copy of Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands, which recounts his five years exploration of the Empty Quarter. He tells how he was determined to explore the Empty Quarter, the inhospitable desert that dominates most of the southern half of the Arabian peninsula, and which had, even as late as the 1940's, been largely ignored by everyone but the Bedu. He was having dinner one night and met some British official from some anti-locust organization that was looking for someone to travel into the Empty Quarter to check out the locust population. While truthfully pointing out that he knew nothing about locusts, Thesiger also promoted himself for the position and by the end of dinner he had the appointment - and his life and big chunk of history was changed forever. So, I guess the moral of the story is that you should always volunteer to explore and examine the locust population, no matter what form it takes. As Proust reminds us, memory is just regret, and regret for what you didn't do is the worst kind of regret. Or, as the great Canadian philosopher reminds us, Rust Never Sleeps.

Another of Those Desert-Loving English

Yes, I borrowed that line from the excellent Steve Wehmeyer, who in turn borrowed it from Lawrence of Arabia. When Wehmeyer is not, for some unknown reason, referring to me as "the most interesting man in the world" (which implies a very boring world) he identifies me as one of those desert-loving English, which is the line that King Feisel used when describing T.E. Lawrence. Over the weekend I splurged on a desert safari (it's not nearly as exotic as it sounds, but more on that later) and it hit home that I had done the same thing ten years earlier on my first visit to the UAE. I had never gone overseas, or even owned a passport, a decade ago and my first trip to a foreign country was, oddly enough, the UAE. It was also my first visit to a desert, or at least the edge of a desert. And, true to Wehmeyer's words, it began my love affair with the desert. Why? I don't really know. Maybe it is representative of the fact that our tastes grow more exotic as we grow older. It might just be the isolation of the desert, and anyone who knows me can testify to the fact that I am not a person who likes crowds. Or maybe it's just the peace and quiet, which is also very appealing to me - especially as I pass into my dotage. As the great Canadian philosopher reminds us, "I need a crowd of people around, can't stand them day to day." My job requires me to be out in the world, and so I appreciate the times when I'm not out there all the more. Over the last couple years I've developed a real love affair with the Silk Road, which I'm sure is representative of this entire process. I know that when I was on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert a couple of years ago in western China I was just blown away by the mystery and power of the place. Hopefully my trip to Samarkand and Bukhara actually comes together and I give in to Chet Baker's proposal of "let's get lost."

Ice Cream Thursday

Ever since the beginning of the school year I've been taking the two administrative assistants in the University College, Aya (lower left) and Roma (lower right) for ice cream every Thursday afternoon. Mainly I do this as a thank you for their incredible hard work - and also as an apology for my general churlishness. Here's a picture that Roma snapped with her new IPAD. Although I look like a ghost I sort of like this shot. I told them that it was representative that I'm already fading away (I've started receiving emails from the ZU HR department in regards to the protocol for leaving, although I won't be taking off until this summer at the earliest), but the girls would have none of it. They spend all their time trying to convince me to stay - and they assure me it's not because of the ice cream.

Sandstorm

Apparently this time of year produces many sandstorms, and today is no exception. Here is a view outside of my window from around 1:30 p.m. When you're driving in it, not surprisingly I suppose, it feels much like a blizzard white-out in Vermont. I can't imagine what it would be like out in the desert, although it has inspired me to drag out my copy of Lawrence of Arabia for reviewing. Even my eyes feel gritty. And just for comparison's sake - here's what it has looked like every other day since I arrived in August.

In Cold Blood

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there' . . . The land is flat, the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them."

Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

A long delayed posting from the trip west with Sanford. Of all the moving experiences that travel has brought me over the last few years, oddly, the one that I can't seem to get out of my head is the short side trip to Holcomb, Kansas. As I've discussed, Sanford Zale is a great travelling compansion and happily went along with my odd requests. And one of the oddest was to extend our trip a little further west than we originally planned. Our goal was to reach Guymon, Oklahoma, and so we were going to follow US 50 west and then drop south down to Guymon. However, I realized along the way that if we continued a little further along 50 we would come to Holcomb, Kansas, the small town featured in Truman Capote's classic novel In Cold Blood. I had not read it in years, and Sanford had never read it, but it just seemed like a perfect fit. Sadly, we didn't even spend much time there, mainly because it was at the end of a long day's drive, and we then had to turn around and backtrack so that we could make it to Liberal, Kansas, our last stop before crossing into Oklahoma and Guymon. We never found the house itself, nor, for that matter, much of the town - at least the town I remember from the novel.

We did find the beautifully simple and quiet little Holcomb Park, which is dedicated to the Clutter family. Maybe everyone should read In Cold Blood, and I'm thinking about making it required reading in my COL 120 Concepts of Community class if I come back to Champlain.

Here are the actual word of the Clutter Memorial. I love it since it celebrates their lives, and doesn't mention Capote or the novel or the movie - and even the murder itself is downplayed (I've included the one brief reference in bold):

"CLUTTER MEMORIAL

HERBERT AND BONNIE MAE FOX CLUTTER FAMILY

Herbert Clutter, son of James and May Clutter, was born May 24, 1911 in Grey County, Kansas. He grew up on a farm near Larned and graduated from Kansas State College with a Bachelor of Agriculture degree in 1933. He worked as an assistant County Agent in Montgomery County following graduation. He moved to Garden city after his marriage to Bonnie Fox in 1934. He was employed as the Finney County Agriculture Extension Agent for 5 years until he became engaged in farming in 1939. The family lived 2 miles west of Holcomb where Herb raised sheep and cattle as well as feed grains and wheat. They moved to a farm on the south side of the Santa Fe Railroad just west of Holcomb in 1948 where he continued the farming operation which included raising grass seed crops. He also managed a dry land farm 23 miles NE of Garden City.

Herb was active in many activities which included: Holcomb Community Club; Holcomb School Board; Farm Bureau; Grange: Board of the Finney County Community chest; Chairman of County Road Committee; member of the Agriculture Committee of Garden City Chamber of Commerce; Chairman of the Farm Labor Commission for Finney County; Community Committeeman of the Agriculture Credit Association; Trustee of Southwest Community Hospital Inc.; Director of Western Kansas Development Assoc.; First President of the National Association of Wheat Growers and the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers; Board of Directors and President of Garden City Cooperative Equity Exchange; member of the National Farm Credit Board; member of the National Grain Advisory Committee; and other state and national agriculture committees and boards.

Bonnie Mae Fox, daughter of Arthur B. and Mae Fox was born January 7, 1914 in Rozel, Kansas. She grew up on a farm there and attended the St. Rose School of Nursing in Great Bend. She was married to Herb on December 2, 1934 and moved to Garden City. She raised four children and was involved in many community and church activities. The children were all born in Garden City. They were Eveanna Marie Clutter Mosier, born June 26, 1936; Beverly Jean Clutter English, born October 11, 1939, Nancy Mae Clutter, born January 2, 1943 and Kenyon Neal Clutter, born August 28, 1944.

Herb and Bonnie were community and project leaders for Sherlock Strivers 4-H Club for many years. The family belonged to the First Methodist Church in Garden City where Herb taught an adult Sunday school class many years and Bonnie taught in the children's division. The children were active in the youth department and the adult choir. Herb served as chairman of the building committee.

Eveanna, Beverly, Nancy and Kenyon all attended Holcomb Consolidated Schools. They rode the school bus to and from school. Most of the school activities occurred during school hours which made it possible for the young people to participate in many different activities. The family's leisure activities included entertaining friends, enjoying picnics in the summer and participating in school and church events. They used the Garden City Public Library a great deal and enjoyed the community music events and band concerts at the park in Garden City. Herbert, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon were killed November 15, 1959 by intruders who entered their home with the intent of robbery. The family was buried in the Valley View Cemetery, Garden City, Kansas."

Maybe what I like about it is that it is as much an elegy for a region and for a lifestyle as it is for a family. I loved my drive across Kansas, and I saw a lot of good and bad. The people were unfailingly and sincerely warm and giving - so much different than the cold Northeast. However, there was also so much anger, most of it, in my mind anyway, so misdirected. We passed so many really graphic anti-abortion signs along the road, even though there aren't that many abortion providers in the entire state. There was definitely a dark undercurrent to life there. It's as if the plains are dying and they are looking for someone, anyone, to blame.

Which begs the question - what's the matter with Kansas?

William Allen White, the Sage of Emporia, asked the question a century ago. He proposed that, “Kansas is a state of the Union, but it is also a state of mind, a neurotic condition, a psychological phase, a symptom, indeed, something undreamed of in your philosophy, an inferiority complex against the tricks and manners of plutocracy -- social, political and economic.”

A decade ago Thomas Frank, in his own brilliant What's the Matter with Kansas?, revisited the question. To him Kansas was representative of that skillful shell game that the Republicans play when they misdirect folks to focus on social issues while actively pursuing an economic policy which is destroying the lives of average Americans. Not surprisingly, when What's the Matter with Kansas? was published overseas it was entitled What's the Matter with America? Frank wrote:

"Not long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers - when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists' furthest imaginings -- when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work -- you could be damned sure about what would follow.

Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."

So, we find someone else to blame. It can't be our fault. I remember talking to a student at Champlain last year who, during a discussion on inequality, went on a little rant about his frustrations with seeing some poor folks on public assistance while his mother had worked hard her entire life. My point was that maybe his rage was, like that of Kansas, misdirected. I told him that if he wanted to get mad at someone he should get mad at corporate America, and that it was highly unlikely that any poor person had ever done him or his mother any real harm, whereas the policies of the ultra-rich were making their lives so much harder.

And yet, it can never be that simple. It is certainly never our own fault fault - or it is the fault of someone further down the food chain. It reminds me of the words of Perry, one of the killers of the Clutter family. "'Am I sorry? If that's what you mean - I'm not. I don't feel anything about it. I wish I did. But nothing about it bothers me a bit. Half an hour after it happened, Dick was making jokes and I was laughing at them. Maybe we're not human. I'm human enough to feel sorry for myself." Maybe that is what is most cold, the disintegration of a region and a society. In the face of the death of the plains people are looking for an answer, and they can't get their brains around the complexity and enormity of the global economy - and they can't believe that the rich of their own country would sell them down the river so shamelessly (because, well, hell, they're going to be rich themselves someday) so it's easier to blame the poorer or the darker or the more, in their mind, morally bankrupt. As my brilliant friend Sanford Zale, the Sage of Sayville, so eloquently put it - any Kansas politician who spends his time trying to shut down strip clubs while the state is dying around them should be charged with treason.

Al Kutaini Restaurant

One of my best attributes as a traveller, and the one that always scores me points with folks overseas, is that I will truly eat anything anywhere (and, really, once you've had donkey wine there's not much excuse for turning your nose up at other dishes). Americans have the reputation of being finicky eaters overseas and rushing to the local Hard Rock Cafe. And as I always say - then why in the hell didn't you just stay home? On my recent trip to Salalah I had several great meals, and twice went to a local Pakistani restaurant called Al Kutaini. Since I had rented a car - and why I haven't been renting a car on earlier trip is beyond me - I had much more options for just exploring and bumming around. On my first night in Salalah I drove to the city centre and parked on 23 July Street, which is one of the main thoroughfares in town. After walking around for a couple blocks I decided to try the Pakistani place. When I arrived it was pretty deserted, and they seemed more than a bit surprised that I popped in for a bite. Salalah does get a lot of western tourists - I ran into many Europeans, especially Germans and Russians - but I guess most of them don't come to the Al Kutaini to eat, which is a pity because the food was both really good and very inexpensive. I think my dinner, including chicken handi and chicken dhaal and dessert cost around $4 (after eating a $15 cheeseburger for lunch at the Crowne Plaza). The treat for me was the waiter, who I immediately classified as the saddest waiter in the world, even though I'm sure he wasn't really that sad and seemed pleased that I had come in - he even brought out, with a certain understated flourish, some butter naan, which I had not even ordered. It was all fantastic, and at the end of the meal he gave me a key chain with the restaurant information on it - which I will truthfully always cherish. I came back two days later and it was much more crowded because it was a Friday night. I had a different waiter, but mine came up and came me a very quick and sheepish smile before passing me on to my replacement. If I ever come back to Salalah, and I will very soon, I will definitely be heading back to the Al Kutaini.

Appearing Nightly in Salalah

The band performing at the Crowne Plaza in Salalah. I think the sign says it all.

Camel Bath Time

And one last camel picture. Well, maybe. Here is a shot of a couple of them cooling off in a little tidal pool, and you can see the beach and the ocean in the background. It was across the street from the playset discussed earlier, and they must have gotten overheated from playing tag with the cows..

Cluster Headaches and Cluster Other Descriptors

Lately I've been having a run of cluster headaches. Luckily, I have reasonably mild versions of the condition which is sometimes described as a "suicide headache" (because of the intensity of the pain). Here's a lovely little artistic rendering of one by J.D. Fletcher. What is odd about this latest rash of cluster headaches is that I haven't had them in something like fifteen years, and I remember a dreadful stretch back in Atlanta when they first manifested themselves. Apparently the disappearnce or reappearance of them, sometimes for months or even years, is pretty typical. I have many of the common features, which are very similar to a migraine: blurry vision, hypersensitivity to light, an unset stomach (it almost feels like a bad flu is coming on in a rush - in fact, with the initial reappearnce a couple months back I thought it was the flu) - and, for good measure, a feeling much like a tamping rod being driven through the back of your left eye. Luckily, as I said, I have pretty mild symptoms - and I can't imagine what the bad ones are like. I've had four in the last couple months, and why they have suddenly returned is a mystery. I've been dealing with a lot of stress and uncertainty lately, but that's hardly the first time I've dealt with that. The one that came to plague me on Tuesday roared up like a tsunami. I was sitting working on my computer right before a meeting with my vision suddenly went blurry - almost as if an eye doctor had dropped down a couple ill-considered lenses. I stumbled my way down to the other campus for my meeting, more by memory than actual navigation, and bruted my way through the meeting (although a couple people later asked me what the hell was going on, so I apparently didn't pull it off that well) before heading home to the quiet and darkness of my apartment.

Now, to make the matters worse, I discovered that the mask for my CPAP machine was broken. As I'm sure I have recounted, I have what my sleep doctor one time described as profound sleep apnea (he told me this after explaining that they recommend treatment for anyone whose throat closes 5 times in an hour during sleep, before telling me that mine closes 80 times in an hour). So, not having the mask, and thus the use of the machine, is not much of an option. It's not as if I'm going to die or anything, but I would snore so loudly that you can hear me in the next Emirate, and I would not get much sleep - and more importantly, not nearly enough oxygen to my brain and other organs. Now there was the conundrum. I called the company that provides my CPAP machine and they agreed to send on replacements, although that also meant talking to CIGNA, who will, doubtless, deny the claim even though the machine keeps me healthy and I, allegedly, automatically qualify for replacements parts every six months (as we can all agree, CIGNA is of the devil). However, the company refused to ship the equipment overseas (even though I told them I would pay for it), because, hey, rules are rules and the health of the patient is not their concern (and this, of course, led to an appearance of the infamous Scudder temper, but we'll leave that for the courts to work out). This meant that I had to have it shipped to a friend at Champlain, who will then attempt to overnight it over here to Abu Dhabi, where it may or may not arrive. OK, first part of the chore accomplished, but that still didn't help me now. The obvious answer: super glue! But where to find it? I eased my way down to my car and made my way to Spinney's, the closest market to where I live. They didn't have super glue, or, for that matter, any type of glue. I asked the lady at the counter if they had glue, and then she repeated the question to another guy, who reaffirmed that they had no glue. I asked, "any suggestions?" His response, "for where to get glue?" My response, "no, dumbass, for a dependable online dating service - of course for where to get glue!" [remember, I was in pain and therefore not my usual convivial self] Suddenly he lost his interest in helping me find glue. However, another guy in the queue chimed in and said, "a gas station or the airport - the only places in the UAE to get glue." Now this didn't really make much sense, but I was in too much pain to consider the logic. At that point I got back in my car and went in search of a gas station. Luckily, before I made it to the gas station, I passed by Al Raha Mall and pulled in there. My first stop was at a pharmacy, which was a failure (pharmacies in the UAE are almost entirely reserved for medical supplies or drugs), but the nice lady suggested I try Lu Lu's, which is a chain supermarket - and which was right across the mall. Luckily, they had super glue (although they were not at a gas station or the airport, so it may have been black market super glue) and I was able to eventually repair my mask and I haven't died yet (or maybe the smell of the super glue is just making me think I'm alive). The only issues that marred the successful super glue venture were 1) eating at the mall - it was late and I realized I hadn't eaten anything since lunch so I went up to the food court and had a "burger" at Burger Hut, whose motto, I believe, is "as viewed from a distance, with your eyes squinting, we might be Burger King," and 2) getting back from Al Raha Mall - because of the complexity of highway construction in Abu Dhabi, once you leave Al Raha Mall you have to travel eight kilometers one way on the access road (or the slip road, as our British friends would say) before you can turn around to head back where you started). Still, all things considered, it was a successful, although just thinking back to it is giving me a headache.

The Peace of Green Fields

Just another picture from last weekend's trip to Salalah. I think this is the very definition of rugged coastline. What strikes me about the picture now - and what struck me about it when I took it - was how much I wanted to get down to that beach. Like a lot of things in life, I suppose, it may not have been as magnificent as it looked from a distance, but it is an image - and an ideal - that I think I will hold in my heart for a long time. Marcus Aurelius proposed that the peace of green fields is always within us. I think I realized that unofficially long before I realized it officially. When I was growing up and things became unpleasant or even just boring I would always retreat to tramping around London with Sherlock Holmes or hiking through Middle Earth with Frodo. Growing up in the country in Indiana literature was my other world, which in reality was my inner world. When I began to travel I began to expand my green fields: the cliffs overlooking the Wadi Arabia up past the Monastery at Petra in Jordan; the beach at Port Elizabeth in South Africa; Lucca in Italy; the Ajanta caves in India, just to name a few. And now I'll add that beautiful beach at Mugasayl in Oman. Now, since I've never been there it may end up like the beautiful rocking horse from Inherit the Wind, but I guess it doesn't matter what it really is anyway. What matters is what it is in my heart.

Rials and Visa Musings

Here's a somewhat blurry picture of some Omani Rials, which is my pick for prettiest currency (or at least the one that, at the moment, I think is prettiest). It is unusual in that it is one of the few currencies, other than the Euro or the British Pound obviously, that is actually more valuable than the US Dollar. The Dollar, even considering the pounding that it has taken over the last few years, is almost always more valuable than other country's currency, so you're always factoring in so many Rupees or Forints or Lira to one Dollar. In the UAE the Dirham is tied to the value of the Dollar so it never changes - I normally do the quick calculation of three Dirhams to one Dollar (which is not actually exactly correct, but close enough for figuring purposes) when I'm considering a purchase. Other currencies move up and down versus the Dollar (it's usually best to just get cash out of a local ATM, which will have better exchange rates than currency exchange booths, especially in an airport). I've recounted the time I almost spent $200 on a wooden Santa Claus decoration in Budapest because I lost track of the value of the Forint (I thought I had found a great value for $20). It's a lot easier in Europe when almost everyone is on the Euro. In regards to the Rial, the Omani currency, at the moment it's around 2.6 dollars to one Rial - and on my first visit to Muscat it was around 3 to 1. I tend to still do the quick calcuation using the 3 to 1, although in the opposite order than the Dirham/Dollar exchange. While waiting to board the plane in Abu Dhabi I decided to go ahead and trade in some Dirhams for some Rials. Using my brutish math skills I reversed engineered the two exchange rates and figured that it would be around 10 Dirhams to one Rial, and was pleased when it turned out to be fairly close to that rough estimation.

I also had a pleasant experience when I arrived at the airport in Muscat and queued up to pick up my Omani visa. Well, it ended up being a pleasant surprise. Initially I was a little annoyed because the woman at the Oman Air counter in Abu Dhabi didn't give me my ticket to Salalah, which meant that I could not easily transfer through at the Muscat Airport, which required that I pick up the visa and then pass out of the airport and back into it to get my boarding pass on to Salalah - but that's another story. With most countries that require a visa - with obvious exceptions in regards to places like Russia and India - you can just get your visa at the airport, although that can be peculiar as well. I remember on my first visit to Kenya I had gone to the trouble of getting the equivalent of $50 in Kenyan currency because the guidebook stated that the visa fee was $50 - except that they really wanted $50 in American Dollars and were highly indignant that I was actually trying to foist off Kenyan money on them, and the guy behind the counter sulked off to exchange it into US dollars, with, what I am sure, was a healthy carrying charge. Any travel agent can also help arrange for you to get your visa in advance, although it is pricey. My advice would be to definitely take that approach with places like Russia or India, but many other places make it much simpler to just do it at the airport. I took that approach with Zambia one time and the visa "stamp" in my passport when it returned was little more than handwriting on top of print - and the folks at the Lusaka airport seemed amused that I had done it in advance. Anyway, as an American resident it would have cost 20 Rials - or a little less than $60 for a single entry visa - but because I am a GCC resident, or at the very least I have a GCC residency visa (as compared to a GCC national), it only cost 5 Rials.

Ebony and Ivory - Or Something Like That

I was also going to entitle this post: Camels Redux. Here's another odd picture from last weekend's amazing trip to Salalah. This shot features some camels and cows playing happily together on a child's playset. Apparently those rumors of internecine camel-cow turf wars aren't true. They seemed happy enough. I didn't stick around long enough to see which one pushed the other on the swings.

Evidence

Analysis of evidence. I suppose that every discipline claims to have a monopoly on the best approach - or maybe the only true approach - to analyzing evidence. For example, my good friend Mike Lange makes a compelling, although obviously flawed and utterly incorrect, argument that Anthropology is the one field that is truly interdisciplinary and correctly analyzes evidence. The correct answer (and here I am channelling Sanford Zale) is History. Anyway, beyond that, I was thinking about how much you can learn from simple observation. This was probably inspired by rereading Marcus Aurelius or my friend Cinse's blog - or maybe just reflecting on how much I love the Sherlock Holmes stories and hate the recent film versions. When you are travelling the hotel rooms themselves provide a wealth of information about the culture of the place you are visiting. For instance, here are some pictures I took in the room where I stayed in Salalah, Oman. They are pictures of the complimentary prayer rug in the closet and the little sign on the ceiling which provided you with the direction of Mecca where you should face during prayer. I have stayed at lots of rooms in Islamic countries that did not provide this material, which speaks to the fact that Oman is a deeply Islamic country, and also has a lot of Islamic visitors and that there is more co-mingling of folks (that is, the hotel where I was staying, despite having many of the amenities of a classic western hotel was not exclusively a western hotel - and in that way I do think it reflected life in Oman, where the distinctions between different social or religious or economic groups seemed more fluid than in other countries).

It also made me think of opening up a bedside table in a hotel New Delhi and finding a copy of the Bible, the Quran and the Bhagavad-Gita, which perfectly expressed the religious diversity of India. Of course, after making that point, I also have to reflect upon opening a bedside table this last summer in New Orleans and finding the following: a map, a flashlight, a bottle opener and condoms. OK, Sherlock, what do we make of that?

Camels

Yes, another post about camels. Over the years I've posted several times about camels, and here's another one (with another to follow). They are contrary beasts, but I do love them. In the space of a couple days in Salalah I bet I saw over two hundred camels. They were all over the place. Now, when you're driving around the UAE, especially when you're commuting between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, you do see the occasional camel, but that hardly prepared me for the camelfest that is Oman. Sometimes I saw single camels strolling along, and at other times I saw groups of twenty or thirty camels. I suppose part of their prevalence might relate to the fact that it was the dry season and they were being driven further afield in search of food.

On the first day that I was out driving (more on that later) I came across a stretch of road with a camel crossing sign. This made me smile as I reflected back on the moose crossing signs in Vermont, and how they never lead to me seeing more moose (in twelve years in Vermont I've seen exactly four moose, and it's not as if I don't go looking for them). However, not five minutes after seeing the camel crossing sign I came around the corner, thankfully in time, to find six moose holding forth in the middle of the road. Like moose, camels aren't particularly bothered by anything and will just stand there until they decide to move - or their herder whacks them on the butt and makes them move. Right on the outskirts of Salalah I saw a camel stare down a speeding truck, which thankfully swerved at the last minute to avoid a crash. Sometimes I would see an Omani herding them along, but other times they just seemed to be roaming around on their own. As I crossed into the foothills I saw a lot more than I did on the coastline itself, although I also saw some down by the beach. They were often in the company of cows so apparently they must get along fine together.

Salalah

Just returned from an amazing long weekend in Salalah, Oman, and, rest assured, that there will be way too many (but not enough) posts dedicated to it. I had been to Oman several years ago, but that was a visit to Muscat, which is in the far eastern part of the country. This time I visited Salalah, which is in the far western part of the country near the border with Yemen (more on that later). It is less than an hour flight from Abu Dhabi to Muscat (in fact, almost exactly the same flight time as from JFK to Burlington) and then around an hour and a half from Muscat to Salalah. I flew on Oman Air, which was a good experience with the exception of a couple oddities which I'll discuss later. I love Oman and if I stay here I suspect I'd end up heading down there once a month. The Omanis are so wonderfully friendly, or, as my great friend Jyoti elegantly put it, "god's children." The country is amazingly beautiful, with an almost unmatched combination of sea and coastline and mountains and desert. Because of the peculiarities of the monsoon winds the southern half, including Dhofar where Salalah is located, is sub-tropical, and constantly reminded me of India. It is definitely the dry season right now, but it still felt lush on the coast with lots of coconut trees in abundance. Muscat and Salalah are the two biggest cities in Oman but they couldn't be more different. You can drive between them and it is supposed to be about as sparse and desolate as you can imagine with almost nothing in between, which, of course, makes me want to go. The coastline is amazing with miles of sandy beaches and, especially once you get past Mughsail, cliffs that rise up out of the ocean. Just extraordinary.