After a week in Oman we flew to Amman. So confusing.
Amman is the capital of Jordan, which is a tiny country squeezed between Palestine, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The welcome-to-Jordan airport experience rated as the world’s second dumbest airport (coming and going) – after Chennai, (where we were nearly deported).
Amman is beautiful. Steep, steep hills set around old Roman ruins. An amphitheater in the bottom of the city and an ancient citadel looming over it. It felt busy and confused after gracious, calm Oman. One of those places where there are 8 people doing every job in the shoutiest most confusing fashion, and achieving nothing.
There was a huge, traditional Arab wedding outside our hotel room one night (at 10pm – WAY past Nana-o’clock) which was noisy, and clappy and fabulous.
There is a very, very good Roman site called Jerash just north of Amman. The kids hadn’t seen a real Roman city (well, there aren’t many around) so it was very cool for them to walk up avenues and see temples and fountains etc.
We saw 3 extremely well preserved amphitheaters in one day and had amphitheater saturation. A novel experience.
After looking around Amman we drove south towards Petra. We stopped at Madaba and Mt Nebo to look at churches, mosaics and the view of Israel and Palestine, looking over the Dead Sea. I enjoyed the view – I GET geography, but I don’t really GET Old Testament, so I wasn’t sure what I was looking at a lot of the time. I should have gone to Sunday School. Or a Madrassa.
The mosaics were pretty cool, especially the ancient map of the Holy Land. Ate OK food. Lots of cucumber salads, eggplant, flat bread and hummus. Very similar to Omani food but more flies and less dates.

Here are some beautiful fish in the Muscat fish market. They had hundreds of types of fish – from sharks and huge tuna, to anchovies and octopus.

Firstly, this is what 50 degress C looks like.

Muscat, is somewhere I’ve always dreamt of going. I have strange dreams. It’s the capital city of Oman – a sea port, on the old spice route, where dhows sailed back and forth to south east Asia and China for thousands of years. Very exotic and romantic and fairy tale. Ali Baba, Sinbad, Scheherazade. Above it is Iran, and below is Yemen. Behind it is Saudi Arabia. Facing into the beautiful Arabian Sea.
In reality of Oman is like Sim City. About 40 years ago they discovered oil and gas reserves and the Sultan (and the country) became mega-rich. So everything in Muscat is new and shiny and bold and 40 years old. There wasn’t much there to start with other than some mud brick building and old forts around the harbour. The city’s new infrastructure – like roads and street lights is huge and perfect; there’s a drive through (halal) McDonalds’s every 50 mtrs; hospitals, free university education; new mosques; expensive SUV’s and 4 wheel drives; but no sky scrapers or western architecture, not culture-less and generic …like Dubai-alike places. Everything is Arabian, so it’s very tasteful and beautiful and elegant. Pale pastel and white low rise buildings set against the palest pink and salmon coloured barren hills.
But what Oman doesn’t have is any people or water. All the menial work is done by Indian, Sri Lankan and Filipinos. All administration and business is done by expats. The Sultan is quickly trying to build an Omani workforce from the tiny population – but it takes time and more than 1 generation to stop being illiterate tent people and start running a country.
Once you leave Muscat (which is pretty tiny) the countryside is ancient and original and bare of ANY vegetation – like 2 thousand years ago, but with an expensive road running through it. The population is very sparse. The once nomadic people and their camels live in villages now, but there’s still camels wandering everywhere. Major traffic hazard.
It’s austere and dramatic and stunning. The people are reserved and handsome. Not unfriendly, more uninterested in Grey Lynn housewives and their offspring. It’s so intensely hot and dry that you don’t really see anyone. The country is vast and there’s hardly any people in it anyway.
You quickly get excited to see trees – which are always/only date palms. Or any agriculture around the oasis’s, because it’s brutally dry and crisp everywhere. 50 degrees. Easily the hottest place we’ve ever been.
If you got out of your air conditioned jeep and walked around in the sun with no water I think you would die in about 2 hours.
The other thing about the new, amazing road is that there aren’t any roads off it. There’s only ‘no road’. A dry river bed in a wadi or camel tracks. We nearly rolled the car in some sand dunes. It sucked. There were tears. And no alcohol to make it better.
Jack and Mol were pretty gob smacked by some Bedouin people we visited in their (fancy, big) traditional tent.They couldn’t handle that anyone could choose to live with the heat, and flies and camel stink. That the kids there could play or read or relax when outside there were one million camels and death-in-2-hours.
The food was fantastic. Hummus, flat bread, cucumber salads. Lamb (goat?), Nile perch, lots of eggplant and dates, dates, dates. We didn’t try camel. We’ve ate in very safe places again – but there’s no ‘eating on the streets’ anyway, because people don’t hang outside when its 50 degrees. They sit in cafes smoking and drink thick gritty cardamon coffee, or milky sweet saffron tea. No alcohol – poor things. Public places are shady and smell of frankincense or rose oil (with a hint of camel dung). There’s a lot of beautiful carpets and floor cushions. It’s very elegant and charming and serene. The opposite of noisy, stinky wet India.
We visited a couple of towns – Nizwa, the old capital which has a famous castle, and Sur, on the coast which has forts and old mosques. The most amazing thing to see is the landscape. Huge and scary and dramatic.
I think it matched the fairy tale picture I had. I’d like to go back at a cooler time of year and visit Salalah in the south, where there are plantations and cool breezes … but it’s too close to Yemen to go this time.

In the enormous, new, spectacular Grand Mosque.

Cooling off. Lots of fish and frogs.

An oasis!

Dates. And date paste. And coffee.

Inside a Bedouin tent. These are pretty fancy, but traditional Bedouin people. The kids were reading a kindle when we arrived.

The first 3 or 4 hours of dunes are interesting …

More not-road.

Beautiful, cool interiors.

A not-road.

Trees! Whoopee!

Delicious saffron tea.

Eating dinner in 42 degrees.

There is a great deal of this.

The odd, 70’s Sultan’s Palace.

Omani interior decorating. (The only guns we saw were old and hanging on walls. But every wall.)

and doors. Here are some from Jaipur.

I don’t think Jaipur is my favorite place in India. It is 13% gorgeous but 63% squalor, disease and filth. The rest is traffic, mud and chaos. It is erroneously called the Pink City, when is is in fact terracotta and garbage colored. Stink City would be more appropriate.
We saw the beautiful Palace of the Winds – which is really a big wall of windows that the Maharajah’s women could look out at the world through.

Then we went for an elephant ride. Much better than the dangerous crazy elephants we rode in Sri Lanka that kept trying to smack us off with sticks. These were elegant, slow, stately old lady elephants who seems quite happy to plod up a steep hill to the Amber Palace on top. Painted ladies. In these photos I am wearing my ‘happy elephant riding face’ – it’s new.

We henna’d our hands in the maharajah’s palace (even the boy, which is regarded as a little Glee in India and got some funny comments) and we had delicious food everywhere – but very safe. Only hotel and fancy-pantsy restaurants – no street food.

A beautiful garden in a lake

This awesomeness is the world tallest brick tower. It was built in 1192 and it is so very beautiful. You have to picture green parrots flying around it’s redness …

So many gorgeous things to see here – not enough time to see even half of them. Here’s The Jama Masjid to start – India’s biggest mosque.

And this is the Red Fort – much tidier and more restored than the last time I saw it.

Sometimes India works, and sometimes it doesn’t. This time it was brilliant.
It’s monsoony and steamy and wet everywhere – but much cooler than China. And we’ve seen such beautiful things. The children have a magical filter where they only see piglets and puppies and parrots – not the freaky parts.
Molly sighs at the beautiful sarees and kurtas – she calls them butterflies – and loves seeing ‘flocks of butterflies’ everywhere.
Jack said, “The reason India is so crazy is because they have to employ far too many people to do every job, so they can all be employed, so they all get confused” – I thought that was quite profound.
Here’s a door and a floor – for starters …

The food has been great. We’re playing it pretty safe – no street food. Jack and I have had bad stomachs – but from China, not from India. Nearly gone.
Here’s some food shots – mostly dosa which is the kids favorite. Everything is ridiculously colorful.

Aren’t they pretty? Jack is a good photographer.