Oman

Map

May 7–10, 2009

Owners of new cars keep their speed under 80 kilometers an hour for the first thousand kilometers to break in the engine. Everyone who purchases a new car in Oman is given green license plates.

After a thousand kilometers, these are swapped out for regular orange ones.

The police have blue plates.

The military has brown ones.

Commercial vehicles have red plates. The cars used by driving schools are always painted with diagonal brown stripes.

Roundabout warnings appear well in advance, like the railroad crossing warnings in Russia.

The “steep incline” sign is magnificent.

Oman is fun only for oil workers, there’s practically nothing to do here otherwise. Interestingly enough, people come here from the neighboring Emirates to see the local mountains, because the Emiratis themselves have nothing but sand. The only people who’d find these mountains interesting are geology students—you can see all the strata. But overall it’s a pretty dismal sight.

It’s very rocky.

Very hot.

Very monotonous.

Suddenly—bam!—a text message arrives.

We wish you a happy Day of the Great Victory! Sincerely yours, Sberbank of Russia.

It’s very boring.

Very dreary.

The only joy on the road is watching the criss-crossings of wires: at a certain point, they form the shape a star for a split second.

Very monotonous.

The reason for this is that it only rains once every five-six years here. And in the interim, everything dries up. But when it does rain, the country is transformed. Torrents of water rush down from the mountains towards the ocean with incredible force and speed. The riverbeds of these torrents are called wadi.

There’s even a special traffic warning sign here for wadi.

Special storm surge markers appear on the road immediately after the sign. They’re white on the bottom and red on the top. When the water comes up to the red part of the marker, it’s unsafe to continue driving. (You can find something similar in Australia.)

The pedestrian on signs shuffles along with his pants sagging.

The garlic sellers look bored.

A customer arrives at the fish market right before closing time to get a discount.

A monument.

Only little girls can walk around with their heads uncovered. Teenage girls and women must cover their faces.

That’s a girl on the sign.

Every bathroom has a bucket of water with a small dipper on the right-hand side of the crapper. The Emirates have showerheads on the right-hand side, but Oman isn’t quite so advanced yet.

The previous sultan was a horrible traditionalist and isolationist. He barred foreigners from entering the country, and until forty years ago, the gates of Muscat (the capital) were locked down every night. Those who didn’t make it inside in time had to spend the night outside the city walls.

It’s hardly a surprise that once his son (the present-day sultan) returned from his studies in Great Britain, he quickly deposed his daddy from the throne, opened up the borders, and stopped locking the capital up at night. This is his palace.