My favourite kind of weather forecast

Muscat

Day	Weather	Max. DayTemperature (°C)	Min. NightTemperature (°C)	Wind Direction and Speed (mph)
MonNight weather	Clear Sky		29	SSW 5mph
Tue Day weather	Sunny	40	27	NNW 13mph
Wed Day weather	Sunny	43	26	NNW 15mph
Thu Day weather	Sunny	42	26	N 9mph
Fri Day weather	Sunny	42	25	ESE 16mph

Last updated at 11:45, Monday 30 May

A fortress straight out of the Arabian Nights

So, first foray out of town last weekend, up into the mountains behind Muscat to the town of Nizwa. The country inland from here starts off as a mountainous desert with little towns that have sprung up around water sources, creating islands of green between the towering rocky heights.

The trees are mainly acres and acres of date groves, with houses scattered in between, all fed with water from the mountains. The water is channelled through systems called falaj, and any village or town is completely dependent on these falaj to survive.

The other thing that every town needed in this area to survive was a fortress of some kind to defend its people, and Nizwa has a corker! Walking up to it your are confronted by the massive tower, which looks pretty impossible to even consider breaching, and high walls surrounding the inner sanctum. The tower is apparently mostly solid, made up of chambers filled with many many tons of rubble, and I read one book about cannons firing at this particular tower and barely making a scratch!

The surprising thing when you get inside is how much space there is, with rooms and passageways in all directions and on several levels. This means that there was lots of stairs, arches and little nooks and crannies to hide from the sun, so that those inside the fort can stay cool while those on the outside are baking in the sun. There was also a pretty nifty museum in the basement with lovely AC and a model of the fort complete with amazingly realistic trees!

We spent a good hour roaming up, down, in and out, which was pretty good going considering the 40 degree heat! This fort has been beautifully restored, and although many of the rooms are empty, some of them have been furnished with carpets and artefacts, and it's not hard to imagine what the others would be like, complete with soldiers lounging inside during the heat of the day. Bet most of the fighting took a break for lunch around here!

But the thing I loved best was standing at the top of the tower, looking out over the town and the tiny people moving about below and feeling completely invincible! Close your eyes and you can imagine watching the enemies approaching from on high, raining down arrows, cannons pounding in every direction and pouring hot date syrup on enemies who dared to come too close ... bring it on!

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside ...

The working weeks are busy busy busy, so the weekend (Thursday and Friday here, just to be confusing!) have been the only time so far to go out and explore. Haven't made it outside Muscat yet, but even in town there are plenty of lovely spots, and we had lunch in one of them the other day, the Capital Yacht Club.

View Larger Map

This Club is one of two yachts clubs along the east coast down from central Muscat town (spelt Masqat here) - on the map above it is in one of the little bays between between Sidab and Al Bustan, just above the big marina.

As you can see, the mountains fall straight into the sea on this coast, and the Capital is located in one of hundreds of little private bays. This is great as it means that we can lounge around on the beach in normal swimming costume and swim in the sea without offending anyone or feeling stared at - no Nigella-style burkinis needed here!

The club also has shaded tables, umbrellas with loungers, an outdoor bar (yes, with alcohol!) and a restaurant with a massive patio, so you can munch on fresh seafood while staring out at the waves ... there are also some small boats, and as sunset approached we saw little motorboats appearing from all sides as people came back from a day at sea. Am hoping to get into the boating thing at a later date, but for this trip we contented ourselves with swimming, squid and lying back with a cold beer. This is going to be a hard few years ...

My very own Chateau?

So, 48 hours in and I'm still reeling from the many days and weeks of admin, packing and goodbyes, which has been topped by slight jet lag (OK, only 3 hours, but am feeling it for some reason) and getting used to the heat - 45 degrees! I ask you, how on earth is anyone supposed to even think in these temperatures? So overall, still a bit unsettled and not at peak performance ...

But things are looking promising so far. For starters, although I don't have a place to call home yet, I am in the meantime staying in a self-catering hotel room (self-catering as long as you don't want to eat anything that can't be microwaved that is) which looks like a toy castle; haven't you always wanted to?!

I think this is supposed to reflect traditional architecture - by law every building in Muscat has to be white or off-white and have some aspect of Arabic style to it. Having said that though, I'm not really clear what they were going for here ... the inside as you can see is mildly more convincing, with the pointy doorway and fabulous fake wooden beams. It's also got a huge comfy bed and all the mod cons (including that all-important AC and a fan), although the choice of upholstery is a little peculiar ...

Anyway, far more exciting is beyond the walls of the Chateau, which is handily located mere metres from the sea - hoorah!

I have been down here for a stroll at sunset one day, and on another day I just sat to sip a little coffee at one of the beach-side cafes, reading my book and watching the world go by. Sundown brings everyone out from their air-conditioned houses to run around (the kids), play football (the lads) or just sit down and appreciate the view / muscle (me and other women). And then it's off to find some yummy fresh seafood for dinner ... could be worse!

Back in the water

Well, the drought continues in Jordan - the rains are now at least a couple of months late, we've had about two hours total since I've been back in Jordan. In fact, its gotten so bad that the country had a national prayer session this Friday to ask Allah for his mercy in a special rain prayer called the istiska' prayer ... Seems unfair when it's so cold and wet in Europe, so unbalanced ...

Personally, I never thought that I'd be craving rain, but after all the desert time I've had recently, I was certainly craving water this weekend, so I jumped in the car and headed down to the Red Sea, more precisely to Tala Bay south of Aqaba. And yes, it was sickeningly fantastic - 30 degrees, sun all day, splashing about above the coral reefs ... you know. So in case it helps you guys surviving the Big Freeze, here are some pics to warm your cockles ... or something ...

After falling out with my previous Aqaba hotel (long story for another time), I went with a recommendation from friends who came down for the day. It ticked all the boxes for me - clean, lovely lovely friendly staff, and great environment to just relax, as well as a stone's throw (really!) from some great reefs. Above is the comfy swinging chair I spent many long happy hours in, reading, eating, drinking tea, crocheting and especially chatting to all and sundry ... and below is a nearby beach, which on a Friday was pretty busy with local families enjoying the day off, but still friendly and not too busy to go snorkelling off the jetty (most Jordanians are not great fans of swimming, so more than 10m out and you're only contending with the foreign tourists)

I had a great time snorkelling, there's a surprising variety from one site to the next along the coast, and there were plenty of beautiful things to see - shipwrecks, live coral like the beautiful valley of brain coral below, and of course some great fish, including a whole family (posse?) of lion fish (locally called chicken or turkey fish, very poisonous), clown fish playing around near their home anemone (in case it's not clear, this anemone looks like it has suckers at the end of its tentacles), and those incredible clouds of brightly coloured fish that you see around larger corals. I'm still working on getting the photography sorted out - one photo in ten doesn't come out blurry, damn those waves! - but hope you can get some idea from these examples ...

lovely carpets of brain coral

clown fish and their host anemone on the right

weird purple thing nestled in the coral which moves when you touch it -

think it might be a carpet anemone?

fuzzy I know, but I swear it's a lion fish!

(the little buggers hide under ledges,

and taking photos whilst diving is not easy!

And then at the end of the day, it's poolside for sunset - the hotel I stayed in was 'dry', but Aqaba itself is a duty-free zone with many alcohol shops, and lots of naughty local partakers, so I must admit to having had a sneaky beer in my room after my shower, before enjoying this view with Arab friends and endless rounds of tea - magic ...

Desert food - more meat!

One of the advantages of being in Wadi Rum over the Eid holiday (true for anywhere in the Muslim world for that matter) was the large quantities of food available at every turn - weeks of work in the gym undone in mere days! It's been a while since my last food blog, and I only just realised that I don't think I've introduced you yet to Jordan's only real claim to a national dish, so welcome to the heavy yumminess that is mansef ...

I spent an afternoon with some women in the desert watching them cooking a mansef from scratch, so below for your illumination is a step-by-step account (you won't see me helping out though, as an honoured guest I was banned from even thinking about doing any work! Never mind eh ...)

So first you need a large amount of meat - and in the Middle East, when they say meat they usually mean lamb. You will have trouble if you're not a lamb-lover here ... and forget about any veggie main courses! This lamb was sacrificed the day before to celebrate Eid, so the meat was pretty fresh, and I got to watch the man of the house cut it up ready for cooking ...

The other main ingredient of mansef is jamid, which is basically dried and then rehydrated yoghurt - here in the bowl are the last few grains of dried jamid, which is mixed with water to turn it creamy again. The drying and rehydrating process also gives it a slightly different flavour from just fresh yoghurt, more ... meaty?

So basically, the meat and jamid are chucked in a large saucepan with salt, pepper and plenty of water and left to bubble for ages, and that's mansef! The meat is served with rice, which is cooked with fried onions and a bit of oil so it's good and sticky, which is important because you should eat mansef with your hands - everyone around one bowl, grabbing handfuls of meat and rice, squishing them in your hands into a ball and then flicking it into your mouth. Messy food!

Or if you're feeling a bit posh, you can eat it with shrak, which is a kind of very thin flat bread. I watched this being made too, but am completely incapable of recreating it, as the skill needed to turn it from balls of dough into very large and thin discs looks like it takes years to perfect ...

The very thin bits of dough are literally thrown onto a very hot upside-down wok over the fire, and cook in seconds - delicious!

Desert people

After doing the tourist thing of touring castles in the middle of nowhere, I went down to Wadi Rum with the sole aim of resting and spending time with my many friends there who have taken care of me and my friends over the last year, and especially those who got me out of a fix when I broke my leg there ...

Those few days were bliss - no pressure to do touristy things, no programme as such, just lots of drinking tea, sitting around fires, driving around aimlessly in jeeps and reminding myself of why I love Wadi Rum so much despite unfortunate incidents in the past. Where else can you sit with multicoloured dunes and mountains all around, sharing sage tea with one or more adorable (and frankly rather handsome) Bedouins and just relaxing ...

I'm more than aware though that I still lead the charmed tourist life, so it was great for me to be able to spend some time during these holidays with the families of my Bedouin friends - a chance to get to know people in their own environment rather than in a tourist camp, meeting women and children (at last!) and seeing how they live. I've talked before about how I can't imagine living in this kind of environment day in day out - I would miss Radio 4 and the cinema too much! - but it was good to experience the lifestyle first-hand and to see that yes, it is hard, but people seem just as happy as we do in our modern inter-connected multi-faceted world ...

The Bedouins were nomads in the past (Bedou is the arabic word for nomad), but they almost all live a settled lifestyle now. Some of them have 'upgraded' to houses in villages, but there are still plenty who live in traditional Bedouin tents in the desert, and I went with my friend Suleiman to visit his granny and other family members in their encampment east of the Wadi Rum protected area.

As you can see, life is pretty simple - there was one large black hair tent, divided into three sections for cooking, living and receiving guests. Apart from that, there were areas for the animals (sheep, goats, chickens, young camels), water basins and, in these modern times, a water tanker to refill them, as well as another tented area used for toiletry needs - I must admit to not having used these facilities, so no details to report, but I'm guessing it was pretty basic - not one for you, urbancynic.

When there aren't things to be done, or when guests turn up, everyone gathers in the guest area to drink tea and catch up on the day, how ever member of the family is and any exciting news or gossip from the village. While I was visiting, some relatives from Saudi Arabia turned up and the family divided into men in the guest room and women in the kitchen, but this doesn't seem to be the way things are most of the time, and I'm guessing the rather more conservative Saudi relatives (the women with their faces covered, something you never see in the desert) were the reason for the segregation - keeping up appearances, even out here!

In the moments when everyone isn't sitting around drinking tea (and frankly, there doesn't seem to be that much time left to do anything else!), there seems to be a division of labour, although I'm not entirely sure it's a fair one. Here is what I have observed people doing over the last few months;

Children:

- herding sheep and goats

(involving walking many miles a day, occasionally comically riding small donkeys)

- carrying things for their parents

- playing

(a lot of this, with whatever comes to hand - hopscotch in the sand, rolling tyres, throwing things, banging things into the ground with stones ...)

- going to school

Women:

- cooking

- cleaning

- washing clothes, dishes etc

- washing children

- milking

- collecting eggs

- weaving, sewing etc (but not crochet I have discovered ...)

- shopping

- sitting around drinking tea

- having babies (lots of this still - 8 to 10 kids each not uncommon!)

Men:

- driving tourists around

- driving around looking for their camels

- mending the car

- killing and chopping up animals

- hunting

- training camels and/or racing them

- sitting around drinking tea and smoking nargileh (hubbly bubbly)

blokes actually doing some work ... and drinking tea

As you can see, some things are the same the world over - women keeping the ship afloat, while I can't help thinking that men get to do more fun stuff ... but at least out in Wadi Rum, everyone seems to find the time for family, friends and to just kick back and relax. And drink a nice cup of tea ...