Unreal reality

I am looking out the window as we approach Abu Dhabi airport. I've done this so many times you'd think I should be reading my newspaper instead, but the views never cease to amaze me. In fact, before I talk about the views coming into Abu Dhabi, let me say a quick word about the views coming into Muscat: Stunning.

Oman from the air

Actually, perhaps I should say more than just one word. If I were a geologist, which I am not - although sometimes I get mistaken for one - I would definitely get really excited by the approach into Muscat. Even as a non-geologist I cannot help but be seriously impressed by the stunning mountain formations that encircle Muscat and in fact are present all along the north-eastern part of Oman. I could go on about this being an incredible example of fold-thrust belts and tectonic movement. Suffice to say they are some pretty impressive rocks!

But back to Abu Dhabi, where we are still on the final approach into Abu Dhabi International airport. It's desert and it's flat. By rights there should be nothing here but sand as far as the eye can see. And there's certainly sand - lots of it - but scattered amongst the lines of dunes are geometrical shapes on a massive scale. Totally out of place and totally artificial, but impressive nonetheless. Evidence of man's efforts to outsmart nature is everywhere. Patches of green are juxtaposed against the dull beige sand. Long lines of motorways, dead straight, head off into the distance. Those motorways have strips of green along them - hundreds of kilometres of it. There are neat parallel rows of trees - probably hundreds (thousands?) of hectares of them. As we get a little closer to Abu Dhabi the "suburbs" come into view. I cannot help but be impressed by the sheer scale of what man has done here, and I am equally impressed by the perfectly symmetrical layouts of the housing estates. I am appalled and impressed in equal measure. Those housing estates have been designed to be geometrically impressive from above, with circles and wavy lines in amongst the straight lines of the through roads; the engineer in me is seriously impressed by how they manage to get all those lines so straight and get those shapes so symmetrical on such a scale. Each intersection is a perfect circle roundabout. Mosques are spaced at regular intervals.

Everything is artificial however. Not only that, everything green was to be artificially watered, and that water has to be artificially created. The massive desalination plants in Abu Dhabi are probably the largest in the world (The UAE could have a similar slogan to Texas: "everything is bigger in the UAE"). To be fair, the irrigation uses mostly wastewater - so the desalinated seawater is at least used twice, Virtually all of the power to run the desalination plants - and power all the lights along those hundreds of kilometres of road and to run all the millions of air conditioners necessary to make it actually possible to live in those houses - comes from fossil fuels. The carbon footprint of this part of the world must be stunning. It must be said, however, that there is a recognition of this and there are efforts being made to introduce renewable energy sources.

Yas Island

Further on the approach, we fly over Yas Island, which sort of typifies the whole "if we want it, we'll have it made" approach. The shallow waters - a gorgeous pale blue colour - have clear navigation channels dredged in them to lead to the rather out of place marina (a marina in the desert?) There's one of the many gorgeous - green - golf courses and of course the now-iconic Ferrari World. The blue F1 track stands out as we pass low over it on final approach.


Looking out over all this man-made geometrical perfection, I can't help wondering what will happen when the oil runs out and the lights go out. Not having any drinking water is going to make life pretty uncomfortable to say the least and I imagine not much of that green stuff will stay green for very long without constant irrigation. At least there's plenty of sunshine, so if solar power systems have indeed been implemented by then there may be some chance of this place not simply returning to its natural state as the desert blows back in over the deserted (and as soon as I typed that, I realise what a great example of an unintended play on words that is) streets and housing estates.

Browsing the web on this subject I came across a terrific example of the sort of thing I'm talking about. Not Abu Dhabi, but its more brash neighbour, Dubai. These two images are taken only 25 years apart! I wonder what it will look like in another 25 or 50 years? The images show the Emirates Golf Club. Notice also in the background (top right) of the 2013 image the artificial island (there are rather a lot of these in this area).

Emirates Golf Club - 1988

Emirates Golf Club - 2013

English, anyone?

The more I travel, the more I appreciate - even if English is not in fact my "mother tongue" - that I had an English language education. Despite the best efforts of supporters of French and probably several other  languages - not to mention the abortive efforts of the supporters of Esperanto - English has become the de facto world language. And having gone through the effort - which never stops - of learning another language, I appreciate the fact that English has become the universal language even more. But what an illogical and complex language English can be! Whenever I struggle with yet another seemingly illogical and unnecessarily complex rule of French grammar for example, I remind myself how difficult it must be for a non-English speaker to make any sense of English pronunciation as well as some of the grammar.

I was reminded of this yet again by a couple of signs I spotted while wandering the streets of Muscat. I particularly liked the idea of keeping the door "close" - after all you never know when you're going to need to have a door nearby! And this restaurant sign is crying out for some punctuation, or simply a complete re-write. Still, in both cases you know what they mean, so who's to say it's really "wrong"? Communication is after all about getting the message across.

Another example, just seen in the Oman Daily Observer: "... a major upgradation work of the main pipeline..." Sometimes the creativity is quite impressive! And who says this new word isn't an improvement?

And here follows a trilogy of images that has no direct relevance to the subject of this post. However, these pictures show a little of what there is to see in Muscat: characterless, quickly-built cubes of cement as buildings, stunning mountain backdrops to rather ordinary architecture, generally in white, with a liberal smattering of air conditioners, satellite and other dishes, and the odd unexpected innovative touch.

Home sweet home - complete with views (of a construction site)

Typical Muscat scenery - air conditioners, communication dishes and mountains

The view from the (glass) elevator - monochromes with a dash of colour

The Supermarket Tourist

I have an unexpected day off in Muscat. After a leisurely breakfast I debate with myself what to do next: "Catch up on all the paperwork and sort out your inbox", I tell myself. "You must be joking!" I reply, "Here I am in Oman having just been working for the week and you want me to work some more?" "You've been here before", I counter, "been there done that. You've been procrastinating with the filing so now's your chance to get back on track". And so it continues for a while as we negotiate with each other. In the end we reach a compromise and I do some work before heading out of the hotel for a random walk. Since it's winter here it's very pleasant although the sun is strong and I've forgotten to bring a hat, which might restrict my walking to some extent.

Welcome to Lulu Muscat

The Lulu hypermarket is not far from my hotel, so I head in that direction, thinking that I might find a hat there. In any case I have an ulterior motive; I like supermarket tourism. You can learn a lot about a country by wandering the aisles of the supermarkets and there's always some interesting stuff for sale which you'd never see back home. Even in these days of international supermarket chains and with many items seemingly ubiquitous, there are still always some local touches to discover.

Rice, anyone?

The Lulu is enormous, by any standards. Vast aisles seem to disappear into the distance, many of them with a bewildering assortment of variations on the same type of product. The rice aisle - yes, an entire aisle devoted just to rice - is a case in point. Not only are they selling rice in 20 kg bags (like you'd see in most of Asia as well, but are unlikely to find at your local supermarket in Houston or Melbourne for example) but there's a seemingly endless array of different types and brands of rice.

Colourful choices

The more I walk around this supermarket the more I am impressed with what's on offer, and which items are clearly bigger sellers than others. Apart from the rice aisle, I notice that the sweets aisle is similarly impressive. Then there's the cakes and bread section, which is not only huge, but also clearly is biased towards sweet things. Sugar is everywhere and it's no surprise that diabetes is becoming endemic in this part of the world. I pass by yet another display cabinet full of sweets, this time they are all varieties of Backlava - gorgeous but oh so sweet!

Sweet distractions

Other things which seem to be popular in large quantities include paper tissue products and I see one man stacking an entire trolley with what looks to be 24-packs of toilet paper. Tissues take up another aisle and I recall that in fact you do see boxes of tissues pretty much everywhere, including in most cars, often on the dashboard. The ample use of water in most bathrooms leads to an equally ample use of tissue paper - not particularly environmentally friendly.

Of course dates and spices are big sellers here and again the variety is bewildering. Here, you don't simply buy some dates, but you look for a very particular type. A bit like the olives in Spain, which are arrayed in huge vats of so many varieties that you wonder who invented them all.

More colourful choices

I note that they sell the same bottles of water as my hotel. But here they cost 60 baisa whereas in my hotel they charge 1.2 rials (1200 baisa) which in anyone's language is a pretty impressive mark-up! Who wouldn't want to be able to charge 20 times the retail price and get away with it? Nothing like a captive market to let you set the price point.

I continue my walk and decide to do a bit of Mall (Shopping Centre) tourism. The Muscat Grand Mall (MGM, no relation to the film company I suppose) is air-conditioned and big. Not a patch on the Mall of the Emirates or The Dubai Mall mind you - it would be difficult to out-Mall that city, but big nevertheless. I read that the Dubai Mall is "the largest shopping mall in the world by total area, with over 1200 shops". Well, I'm in Muscat, so the MGM will have to do. The MGM seems to be a bit of work-in-progress and is decidedly modest compared to some its peers. I take a quick walk through the Carrefour (I am a supermarket tourist today, after all) and am surprised by how small and decidedly unimpressive the Carrefour is - especially compared to the Lulu I've just been in, or even its namesakes in France or Abu Dhabi. No wonder the Lulu is teeming with customers and the Carrefour seems to be struggling to attract custom. 

It's time for coffee and cake and although there's no Starbucks here (which although it serves pretty ordinary coffee, makes a seriously good carrot cake) there's a Gloria Jean's which happens also to have a nice-looking carrot cake in the display. I'm sold. The coffee is impressively different, with a decidedly burnt flavour which at first I find unappealing, but which in fact grows on me. There's WiFi but I need a code, and you need a local mobile phone number to receive it. The waiter obliges by giving me his phone number and receives the code for me. Chalk up one for customer service at Gloria Jean's in the MGM. Yes - I really should be trying something a little more local than Gloria Jean's, but there's not a lot of "local" here in the MGM.

Tiffin-Carriers (Dabbas) loaded in the Dabbawala truck

Walking back to the hotel I pass by a construction site just as couple of Indian workers from what's obviously the catering company are loading their truck with the "packed lunches" of the workers. Crates of Tiffin-carriers (Dabbas) are being loaded up; somehow this just seems great: here's a modern construction site in Oman; all cranes, cement mixers, reinforced concrete and so forth - and lunch is still delivered in the tried-and-true tiffin carrier by the dabbawala as it has been for decades (125 years, according to the Mumbai Dabbawala.) Not really "local" perhaps - the dabbas originate in India and not Oman - but much more authentic than where I've just had lunch.

List "A"

I happen to be standing near an escalator at Abu Dhabi airport. This is not something I normally do a lot of, but I've stopped to check the boarding time for my flight. In front of me is an ATM that dispenses gold bullion. But it's out of order and hemmed in with discarded trolleys. Where else would you find a gold ATM so casually treated? And in front of me is the escalator going down to the departure level where the buses leave from, which is where I will be heading.

The escalator has poles in front of the entrance spaced so that you can't take a trolley onto the escalator. People are walking through, pulling their wheeled bags behind them. I am looking at the different people as they rush by and as always I am impressed by how people come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, wearing an amazing variety of different clothes, from the businessmen in their suits and ties (I've never understood why you'd wear a suit and tie on a long haul flight) to those wearing shorts and thongs (flip flops). Along come two large African ladies. The first has a toddler with her and another child tied to her back with a batik cloth. That brings back all sorts of memories from my time on Africa, where seeing large women with babies tied to their backs, their little feet poking out in front front beneath voluminous brightly coloured batik cloth, is a very common sight. The next lady is not just a large woman, she is a very large woman, not atypical of what you often see in Africa. She's too wide to make it through the poles; now that is impressive! She manoeuvres herself past the poles around the side - she's obviously done that before - and continues on without missing a beat.

At my destination airport there is an interesting demonstration of the type of discrimination that is normal in this part of the world. There's a very clearly defined social and ethnic hierarchy here: a place for everyone, as long as everyone knows their place. Most nationalities (those on "list A") are entitled to obtain a visa on arrival here. The relatively small group of people from these countries that has arrived on the morning's flights is being served by some six immigration officers and the line moves quickly. We are flanked on both sides by several hundred Indian (and probably also Pakistani and Bangladeshi) arrivals - who are almost certainly here to perform the manual labour and other tasks that local people will not or cannot. This select group of several hundred arrivals is being served by what appears to be only two or three officers and there is not a lot of movement visible. Given the number of people I guess that many of them have been waiting for what may well be hours. I have to admit that I'm glad that I'm in list "A".

When I get to the baggage area it's pandemonium, although in a vaguely organised way. There's bags from four flights on my carousel and I start to look for my bag on the moving belt. Then I realise that the entire floor area around the carousel is covered by luggage which had clearly been removed from the belt already since the belt is woefully overloaded. So now I don't know whether my bag is already amongst the piles on the floor or whether it still has to arrive! I start wandering amongst the piles of suitcases and bags and still haven't found mine after my second round, even though bags from my flight are clearly amongst those on the floor. It's not looking good. Eventually I spot my suitcase trundling along the belt, and I can make good my escape from the luggage area. Lots of people are milling around but not many are actually getting their bags. I wonder where the owners of all those bags are? Then I realise they are probably not on list "A", so it's going to be a while before the bags find their owners.

Are you my luggage?

After putting my bag through the X-ray machine (which I am convinced is more for show than to actually serve much useful purpose) I am ejected though the sliding doors to be greeted by rows of Indian faces, interspersed occasionally by hotel drivers (many in their company livery) holding up signs with the name of their passenger, trying to make eye contact hoping I might be the one. I have to disappoint all of them, even while they are disappointing me, since I am also looking for my driver, without - of course - knowing what he looks like. But finally I spot a familiar sign and although he doesn't appear to speak a word of English, we get along famously. Until, that is, I discover he's also waiting for a second passenger, who it turns out is not in list "A".

Once we are finally on the road from the airport, my driver impresses me once more when it becomes clear he doesn't know which hotel I am supposed to be taken to. Now you'd think that perhaps he might have thought of this small detail before we set off (or even before he came to the airport), but I guess that's expecting too much. So we stop on the side of the motorway so I can get some paperwork from my bag, we make a phone call (where would we be without mobile phones nowadays?) to a translator, and we're in business.

My hotel is new and rather stark. The decor is colourful, which somehow conveys an ambience of cheapness. As I walk into the bathroom I think to myself "this is the kind of hotel where there's a squeeze bottle dispenser of body and hair wash screwed to the wall in the shower so the guests can't steal the soap" and sure enough, there it is, in pride of place in the shower. I support I am going to have to go for a walk to the local Lulu (supermarket) to buy myself some soap. Luckily it's winter, so it won't get much hotter than 26 degrees (C) today. I know there's a Lulu nearby from my research before coming and I take a peek out the window to see if I can spot it to judge the distance. It turns out that I have a room with a view - of a construction site. The sun glares straight into the window, making for an interesting reflection.

Room with a view (the Lulu supermarket is in the distance on the right)

Biryani or Halloumi?

I'm in Muscat for a week. Instead of staying at the hotel I've stayed at before, which is a type of resort on the beach, I have been put up in a much more basic hotel close to the centre of town. My room has a pleasant view of the construction site next door. I console myself with the fact that I could have had a room with a "view" of the interior of the hotel, looking into the rather dark atrium. On its website, the hotel claims to have three restaurants. In reality, there's one restaurant which is located in the atrium, and which appears to be only open for the buffet breakfast (which is not bad, it must be said), and there's another restaurant which appears to be only open for dinner which, it must be said, isn't much to write home about. Where the mystery third restaurant is I don't know. So I've been browsing TripAdvisor to see what the alternatives might be and I've discovered that the number one ranked restaurant in Muscat is within about a kilometre of the hotel - an easy walk.


Given that I've had dinner two nights in a row in the hotel's restaurant, I figure it's time to go for a walk for dinner tonight, and I head out in search of Begum's, the little Indian restaurant ranked number one in Muscat by TripAdvisor. I say "in search of" because here in Muscat, like many places in this region, addresses are challenging. When you ask someone for an address, the answer is invariably in the form of something like: "next to the large Porsche dealership, two blocks after the Mega Mall". Or perhaps "the fourth side street after the intersection with 235th street, then it's the fifth house after you pass the service station". You get the idea. The address of my target restaurant is listed in TripAdvisor as: "Way 3521, Al Khuwair Street, Al Khuwair | Adjacent to Zawawi Mosque, behind Marmul Travel" You get the idea.

I find the place, which is a little Indian restaurant in a side street off a service road next to Sultan Qaboos Street. TripAdvisor rankings are generally pretty good, but it's not uncommon for them to be a bit strange as well. It's certainly not the case that the fanciest and most expensive (and probably very good) restaurant is always highly ranked, since the number of people putting in high ratings for tiny and perhaps rather esoteric restaurants might be so large that other, perhaps more worthy, restaurants are swamped. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and so it is with food. One person's gastronomic delight is another's waste of plate space and money.

But Begum's turns out to be pretty much what I was expecting: simple, unpretentious, impressively well priced, casual and serving delicious food. In short: a good choice. In common with any other Indian restaurant I've ever been to, the menu is impressively long, containing a bewildering variety of choice, making a rational selection all but impossible. This is only made worse when you're a single diner, and you can't rely on the "let's order several things and share" method to improve your chances of ordering something you might like. There are quite a few Indians eating in the restaurant, and there's a steady stream of people, mainly Indian, arriving to order and collect take-away food, which I take as a good sign. I'd read that the Biryani was good here, so after a little perusal of the menu (just for appearances) and then some discussion with the friendly waiter, I let him advise me to have the Biryani I had been planning to order all along. I choose the mutton Biryani. Then I'm thinking, "maybe I'll have a naan as well" since I like naan when it's fresh and properly made. So I suggest this to the waiter. "No need Sir, the Biryani will be more than adequate for you" replies the waiter, and the matter is settled. You have to like a place where they suggest you don't order something you don't really  need!

Not quite your bacon&egg McMuffin

The food arrives impressively quickly, nicely served from a copper pot with a little dish of raita and some chutney. I have to admit, even if I am not normally inclined to order "just" a rice dish, that it's very good; there's lots of flavours in there, the mutton is beautifully tender and as the waiter had said, it is more than adequate for me.

As I'm leaving, I reflect on the fact that the price for the entire meal I've just had - which was delicious and well presented - is less than what I've paid for a small glass of mediocre wine in the hotel that I'm staying at. In fact for the price of the meal I had last night in the hotel, I could have paid for dinner for a family of six at Begum's and still had change.

On the walk home I pass McDonald's. There, up on the wall in full neon glory, is their answer to everyone's dilemma of what to have for breakfast: The Halloumi Muffin. I am impressed, but not in a good way.