Thursday, April 20, 2006

Heading out for the day

It's a beautiful morning and I'm going to Khor Fakkan for an academic get-together today, which means out of the city on good roads through desert and mountains. Beautiful. This isn't the type of desert you see in Lawrence of Arabia: the sand is a different colour, and this is coastal, not the deep desert of high dunes; but it rolls to the horizon, and the trees look African. You don't get palm trees in the desert, but you do see a lot of trees with thin drooping branches like a willow, but all with neat horizontal fringes like a Beatles haircut, at the limit that the camels can reach to nibble. Camels - beige, golden brown, dark like burnt toast. Goats near the villages - in all colours. And the road goes through the coastal mountains, parallel to the wadi routes, past the carefully irrigated farms, orange orchards and palm nurseries. Oh it's good to get out of the city!

I'm also happy because of who I'm riding with, two of us out and five of us back. We're always so busy at school that we simply do not have time or energy for conversation, so the prospect of an hour or so in a car is very appealing. Lovely!

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