In Eid, after the ceremonial handing over of H’s PADI registration as Advanced Diver we left UAE on Tuesday 30th September. We were heading south on the coast road to Sur in Oman for turtle watching and potentially more diving. Sur is a 7 hour drive from our then position in the NE tip of UAE. Half way, just north of Muscat, the sun set, H’s hunger pangs overwhelmed him and the car took an automatic B-line to the gates of a house H had once visited with a friend. So we were turning up on spec, unannounced and uninvited to a friend’s friends whom H had only met once. We stayed for three nights.
T and G are a New Zealander and Australian respectively, of Irish Scottish and Welsh descent. As us English rang the bell and peered over the villa’s wall they were just tucking in to two large plates of steak, egg and chips. After a couple of jubilant bear hugs, as if we should have arrived yesterday, I was told to sit down in the kitchen and drink a large glass of wine whilst H was given money to go and buy a cooked chicken. Four bottles of wine later we all fell into bed, and H&I were instructed to sleep in and stay as long as we liked. So we did. Over the next 3 days we ate a lot of G’s favourite food: meat. Unfortunately for an Australian he failed to operate his BBQ so most of the food was cooked in the second kitchen in their enormous villa. G is the COO for a company that contracts to Gas Rigs. The second kitchen is adjoined by a maid’s room and a scullery. There is no maid.
Lots of time was spent consuming victuals. So in our own small way we also celebrated the commencement of Eid feasting along with the Muslims of Oman. We passed up the invitation to share in the neighbour’s goat, cooked in a pit dug out of the earth. Quite how H managed to consume so many fried eggs and steaks in one day we can only wonder. On a visit to a supermarket I rebelled and bought a melon, peaches and grapes. T caught the wave of my assertion and added a pot of yoghurt. Breakfast the following day left me hungry by lunch. Who’s the fool?
In those three days, H drove me to Muscat which is a coastal city set in and against a backdrop of large stony mountains. It is full of forts on the top of each peak and on the ground palacial Government buildings and large palaces, including a rather Western Super Mare lido looking palace which is one of the Sultan’s palaces. This is set in its own bay, defended by the cliffs and the predictable forts, and has evidently been visited by numerous Royal Navy boats, going by the HMS Fox (etc) graffitti in white chalk on the cliffs. G&T drove us to Nakhdar Fort (well we were driving around NW of Muscat on a vague trail, and happened upon it) which is a pre-Islamic giant set in a large oasis of date palms, surrounded by the typical Omani scenery of the Jebal Akhdar mountain range.
We drove on, and decided to explore what was at the end of a sign. This turned out to be a massive wadi basin encircled by, yes you’ve guessed it, majestic mountains. Once we’d left the tarmac our track took us past camels and villages and, as we carried on, a white dot appeared near the summit of the highest ridge of mountains. We travelled on and on and the white dot revealled itself as an improbable village. We couldn’t see a way up there. We carried on. The track narrowed, sharpened its incline, turned improbable corners split into a myriad of choice other tracks and yet indicated that the major way was up. And up. To 1500m. And then we had to walk up through the town to the farms. They were fruit orchards of pomegranates, grapes, lemons, apricots and irrigated platforms for vegetables. H and G scrambled round almost to the summit and discovered that this was in fact an old trading route that would have taken us up over the Akhdar summit to where we had walked and climbed and camped last December.
Well it would have taken H there, because scrambling up crumbling rock edifices with large drops beneath seriously does take me to the limits of what I’d like to be doing with my life and is not something I’ll dread and then love. I know my limits. H set about planning his adventures with his best friend who’s coming in January. He started talking about ropes. As this was happening I turned my attention to a young smiling Omani man who had appeared over the hill before the summit and presented me with pomegranates and lemons and wanted simply to talk. This is instinctive hospitality, interest, welcome, smile and generosity. I was ashamed not even to be able to reciprocate with a line of Arabic, let alone a gift from my country.
Finally G&T (aptly named) invited us to travel to our original destination (given a three day delay) of Sur with a friend of theirs and his family. On the trip down we took a turn into the Wahibi Sands for some dune driving. The sands stretch 180 south to the Omani coast. A lot of fussing about with letting down tyres was preparation for H to test his car on the sandy slopes. In the meantime a mean looking battered Toyota Pick Up arrived. Driven by a colourfuly dressed, deeply smiling and not-authorised/accompanied-by-men woman in stiff nose/lip covering mask. She shook all our hands, advised us on our tyres and invited us for coffee in her tent 4km down the road. There and back H did his dune driving. I objected to the luggage in the back of the car banging around my head, got out, and waited under a tree.
Late in the night H and I drove from Sur to the beach where the turtles lay. “There are too many people already on the beach, more than 100″, so said the baggered looking Rangers. “Come back at 5am, it is better”. Unbelievably for a couple known to arise at 9am for a 9.45am flight out of Bolivia/Colombia/Manchester we did achieve this. (For the record we did actually achieve those flights too). And so we sat in a queue of Indian people for access to the beach, were eventually let on, only to interact with the Rangers again, helping them with their English and the ratio of them to Indian tourists, to keep the beautiful Leatherback turtles’ access to the sea free. At one point my British Imperialist tones were heard to say, “Well if you want to lie down in front of the turtle on its way to the sea, just for a photo, so let me too take your photo, to send to www.stupidtourist.com”. This is the nearest I’ve ever come to being generalist in objection to people of a single nation. I could not fathom the ridiculous attitude of people who come to see beauty only to treat it as a plaything. We later learned that three years ago there were no Rangers at all, and up to 3,000 tourists at any given morning were to be found RIDING the turtles.
Oman is a beautiful country. Its people are akin to how I experienced Colombians: conscious of heritage, open in approach to strangers, hospitable and proudly, naturally generous in their welcome and help to others. Oman is a country rich in strange and diverse flora, fauna, mineral, geographical, historical, aquatic, cultural, and archealogical wonders. Its brilliance is the direct intelligence and scope for discovery present in both people and country. It has a tourist industry whose customers seek these richess.
In the hotel in Sur that we had spent about 4 hours, owing to that failed late night attempt to see turtles and a subsequently successful early morning trip on off road tracks back to the same beaches, I found a newspaper. Its front page headline:
- “Brand Oman: developing and communicating a strong national brand will help speed up development, says the Oman Brand Management Unit. … Brand Oman is experienced everywhere – from government run websites and the food served on Oman Air to the way people are welcomed at Muscat Airport. Branding is all about getting a slice of the world’s attention and a slice of its wallet. The only way it can be done successfully is to send out powerful, consistent and truthful messages. … Nation branding is quite a recent phenomenon, mainly derived from product branding. We are talking about products like Pepsi or Nike which send messages to customers.”
The cultural, historical, social, environmental and geographical riches will be conceptualised as commodities and marketed. The instinctive, natural, personal, values-led, spontaneous openness and generosity of the peoples will be bottled as the reception the tourist receives from the flight crew on their plane. Once commodified, the Omani way of being must surely become an artifice with all integrity thereby lost.
- “The new logo, which will be officially launched in December this year, will reflect the country’s culture, its people, products and services and is expected to go a long way in positioning the country as an attractive destination for tourists.”
I would like to meet people, not a ‘consistent national image’ and have exchanges not superficial and instructed ‘Have a Nice Days’. I would like to explore and discover, not take an organised tour to designated sights to consume. Apparently Malaysia and Singapore created “strong brand images for themselves” and are now ”re-branding themselves in an apparent move to further strengthen their position.” What does this mean – telling people to stand on their hands, eat apple pie and speak French?
I ranted about Brand Oman the entire journey home** – away from the turtle beaches that could do with more management and less marketing, and over new road building projects that are decimating the surrounding mountain side in their thirst for stone. I want to visit a country, not a product.
** Note to self: I am still ranting, evidently.
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