Almost Two years at Salalah .... a photographic glimpse of this region

End of next month marks the completion of 2 years of stay at Salalah a small town in the southern part of the Sultanate of Oman which does not have the glitz of Muscat or any other city of the Middle east. An outdoor person would really enjoy the stay here as this town is surrounded by Dhofar Mountain range and there are quite a few scenic spot. So many people have written or posted their pictures taken in and around Salalah which are much better then what i have posted here . Towards the end of the post i will paste the link to many more pictures taken by me and my friend

Rugged Mughsayl  coastline stretches with beaches here and there is quite breathtaking

The coast line around Al Mughsayl  is famous for natural blow holes and you can see the water gushing out of the hole each time the wave hits the rocky coastline with a force during the high tide. The pictures have been taken at different times.

Instead of turning to Mughsayl if you keep continuing on the mountain road it leads towards the villages of Rakhyut and Dalkut and then on to the Yemen border and i have never traveled so far as the scenery keeps repeating it self every few miles. Steep curve on the mountains and hence we need to drive on a low gear .

During the rainy season in this region which is during the end of June to end August the mountains roads are covered with mist and at the top the
visibility is very low... less than 5 meters visibility , hence drive slow with all your lights and hazard on.The locals here still drive at a maddening speed on these mountains even when the visibility is low.... thereby leading to fatal accidents .

From the Yemen border road it is off towards Jebal Samhan... Jebal means mountain in Arabic and here we have the famous Darbat water falls.... i have never seen the falls during my stay here since the rains were insufficient the last two years.

We do have Wadi Darbat which is a valley with a lake and during the Khareef (rainy) season there is a huge influx of visitors from all parts of the gulf and also from Oman. This year the water in the lake has further shrunken and hence the pictures you would see here are last years.                                                


                                                

  

               

  

The Above picture is of Wadi Darbat during the Khareef season and one on the left is on a clear day.    There are lot more places such as Mirbat beach... wind blown coconut trees ( see the main picture on the blog), Natural springs , Sink holes which are over 200 feet deep and some ancient port around Salalah.          

 Salalah town itself is quite small and we can cover the entire length and breadth of Salalah in about half an hour. Lots of development now and in years to come it is going to be a Tourist destination of Oman. M/s Lulu Hypermarket opening in January 2011 and towards the end of 2011 Salalah World consisting of shopping mall, Carfour hypermarket,Hotel apartment block, food courts, cinemas and theme park.

Salalah International airport project has also been awarded and it would be ready early 2013. Couple of pictures of Salalah  for you viewing including the picture of the grand mosque opening







Well there are lot more pictures uploaded in Flickr.com and the link to that site is given below so that persons interested can see the same.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rramrev/

A Prisoner of Birth....book by Jeffrey Archer

During my visit to Muscat last week a friend of mine gave me the book mentioned in the title and he stated to me that once I start reading the book I would not put it  down till I reach the last page. As I had to go for work on Thursday morning I decided that I would start the same on my return flight to Salalah... which I did and to be frank the story was gripping and fast paced. Brought back memories of court room proceedings I read and dreamt in my growing years reading Perry Mason novels !!!
Story seems to be similar to that of a normal Hindi Movie where four unknown guys tease the hero's girl friend while they are having a party along with the girls brother to celebrate the decision to get married and a fight ensues resulting in death of the girls brother, who is murdered by one of the four guys and the poor hero is blamed for the same.

Danny Cartwright the hero is convicted to 22 years in a maximum security prison and there he meets his cell mates who are going to be involved rest of his living life. Like in Hindi movies one of the cell mate commits suicide (actually killed by mistake by villain's underling) by mistake as he looks like the hero.... and this window of opportunity gives the hero a chance to escape the prison as Sir Nicholas. The subsequent part of the story is of Danny the hero pretending to be Sir Nicolas works out ways and means to bring the killers to justice.... which he does at the end !!

As my friend promised the story was indeed gripping and i finished reading the book on Friday itself. If you get a chance to read the book please do and i assure you that you would not regret the same !!!! Happy reading

Muscat....A brief visit

A respite from lethargic and boring site work in form a three day management course made me travel to Muscat after quite some time... Salalah airport was crowded as there was an Air India express departure to Cochin just half a hour prior to my flight to Muscat .Some travelers are so confused that it makes me wonder as to how they moved out of India to work in a distant land. Air India express plane had nice picture of Kathakalli dancer painted on its tail.... see photos above.

The next three days was spent within the conference room at Barr Al Jissa resort, Muscat trying to lap up the leadership qualities... the room was freezing cold and in spite of repeated request to the management there air conditioning  temperature was not made comfortable. Climate at Muscat was great and lots of tourists from Germany were having fun at the resort.. relaxing in the sun, swimming in beaches etc making us feel jealous of them.



Eid holidays has been announced and it is from the 15th November to 18th November for the private sector companies much to the disappointment of many expatriates who had planned their travel to their homeland thinking that we may get over 10 days leave as this year both Eid and National Day falls within couple of days of each other. It is rumored that the National day holidays will be announced during the first week of December coinciding with Asian Beach Games which is to start at Muscat from the 8th of December 2010.

I noticed few changes at Muscat which i had not done earlier.... a huge influx of Chinese women are present in Muscat now and many of them are plying the age old profession ... prostitution without any fear of the authorities at Al Khuwayr near the Muscat Holiday Inn and Hotel Ibsis. Becoming more like Dubai these days !!!! View of the dome and minaret of Zawawi Mosque on one side of the building i stayed and the mountains on the other was pretty nice and i clicked using my mobile phone camera.

Back to the normal grind at Salalah now... a relief from the maddening traffic jams there... not that we do not have it at Salalah these days on Robat Street due to the closure of 23rd July Street. The lighting works for the national day is progress on most roads of Salalah and would really look nice during the evenings when they are lit up ( not done till date... maybe on the 18th November they would light up).


Well friends will post more pictures in my next post of random rambling. :)

Racism ....Does it happen only in the Western World

Whenever an Indian is being mugged or killed in Australia or America or Europe the Media builds up a massive picture of Racial tensions prevailing in those countries and the public slurps the news as though it is being targeted on all Indians abroad.
Little do they give any thoughts of what is happening in India right now. I am publishing a excerpt of a chat my nephew had with is friend on the face book which clearly indicates the feelings in our youth.

Akshay: How's the racism goin on there :p

XYZ: Not much actually. I think Indians are more racist come to think of it

Akshay: Lol. Very true. They all hate each other.

Mallus hate tamilians

North indians hate south indians

Bombay hates delhi and vice versa

UP and MP are considered rural

Kashmir belongs to 3 countries

Bihar is considered shitty

All they know about Orissa is flood and drought

Andhra people think other indians are uglier than them so they can feel better

Bangalore people are considered dumb

Chennai people are called "idli fellas"

Bombay people think they are in US and wear shades at 9p.m

Mallu movies are porn according to most indians (non mallus)

South indian movies are creative but the good ones are never famous

Bollywood movies suck and is portrayed as 'Indian cinema' when its just 'Hindi cinema'

India's Got Talent has no auditions in the south

Indian Idol is not advertised in the south

We talk bad about our community not cos we want to but cos of how bad it is. True?

Courtesy: Facebook chat

Well we do see that we Indians are more racist then our western brethren and thinking back of my growing years at Delhi I totally agree with my Nephew.

For a Punjabi  any person from south is a Madrasi... no distinction of which state he belongs to be it Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu , Karnataka or Kerala. Any person coming from east is a Bengali ... whether from West Bengal, Orissa or Assam.  In fact there was a famous television serial “Ghar Jamai” which used this concept.

If you call a person from Bihar a bihari... the next moment you will be having a fight on your hands for he considers this to be a lowly form of address.

North Indians consider themselves as Aryan and are fair skinned and the South India bar for few exception are generally dark and are ridiculed in the north.

You do have similar comparisons in most countries among their populace and is termed Racist.

Come to think of all these then we need to accept that Indian racial discriminate each other and we have no right to cry foul when it happens in another country.

Basically it is the Survival of the fittest ......

Let us hope that our younger generation see through this divide of an immense nation and progress towards prosperity in the future years to come !!!!

JINXED JUNE...... is it a figment of my Imagination

I am not a superstitious person but then there have some events in my life which has uncannily happened in the month of June which makes me wonder if I need to change my way of thinking. I would like to share few moments/ incidents of my life in chronological order  which have taken place in the month of June that may have no relevance whatsoever to the heading of the post.

June 1981- Baghdad, Iraq :- Had taken up a job with an Indian Company contracted to build an entire township in Al Baya  district of Baghdad and a hot afternoon it was, then suddenly the air raid alarm starts hooting loudly. As the project was just starting we had few cabins for staff to stay and couple of excavations for buildings had just started and our only thought was to somehow get to some safe shelter...and if can imagine this we jumped under a cabin..... lol made out of flimsy wood to save ourselves from bombs (Iran Iraq war was underway from 1980). In about half a hour all clear alarm rang and we crawled out from under the cabin thanking that there was no bombing around the camp. It was much later in the evening the gravity of the entire situation struck me.... Israelis had attacked the nuclear facility in Baghdad that day just before the plant was to go operational as Saddam Hussein in an Islamic conference of the Arab world had boasted that the facility is going online and Iraq will avenge by dropping a nuclear bomb on Israel. Had the plant be operational i would not have been sitting here today !!!!

June 1974-Mangalore, India:- Travelled from Delhi to Mangalore as I had got admission in Karnataka Regional Engineering College along with my father who accompanied me for completing the admission formalities and also because this was an occasion for him to visit his younger brother who at that point of time was based at Mangalore. The first time out of the sanctuary of my parents and as a 17 years old lad it was  frightening as well as exciting !!!!!

June 1983 – Chennai , India :-   Back from Iraq and got married on 6^th June.....;) and still married till this day to the same person and have two beautiful daughters !!!!

June 1995- Antwerp, Belgium:- Me and my wife were going around Europe on a site seeing trip from the 2^nd of June for a month and I was staying with our family friend in Antwerp. We had been to various parts of Belgium, drove down to Paris for couple of day, three days outing to Netherlands and were enjoying the sights and chilly weather of Europe. We were booked to travel by train from Brussels to Switzerland on 19^th June but then fate had other things in mind. On 18^th night i developed a severe stomach pain which induced painful cramps in lower parts of my body and was unable to bear the pain. An ambulance was called and was rushed to emergency ward of Saint Elizabeth Hospital in Antwerp at about 8pm and the duty doctor there administered a pain killer and sent me back home. Later in the night at about 11.30 similar uncontrollable pain started and was once again rushed to the same hospital by an ambulance and an emergency life saving operation was conducted by the specialist who by chance was there the second time I was taken to the hospital. The diagnosis was that there was a perforation in my stomach wall and the entire operation took over 6 hours. I was in the hospital for a period of 16 days and my weight fell down to 39 kgs... awfully thin.... not that I was anytime fat ;).

June 2009 –India :- My youngest sister’s husband passed away and I could not travel immediately for his funeral due to procedural delays in my company. However I was able to travel to India for the ceremonial  rites being conducted from the 8^th to 13^th day after death at Chennai.

June 2010 Chennai, India:- My mother passed away on 31^st May morning and hence reached Chennai from Oman on 1^st June for cremating my mother. As per the Hindu custom the eldest son is tasked with this activity.... Though we have crematoriums as per the tradition burning coal is placed on the chest of the dead person and I have no words to describe the feeling that I felt at that point of time.

Well there are so many other incidents in my life but they have never happened in June and hence I have not recounted them here. Thanks for reading random rambling of an old guy you know !!!!!!

In continuation of uncertainity

Today went to the hospital to see Mr. Sharma.... my neighbor as mentioned in my earlier post of yesterday. His entire right side is been paralyzed and he is unable to talk also. His wife has returned back this afternoon and his son is due to be here in couple of days. The reasons or causes are not being speculated at this point of time as the doctors here needs to observe him for 2-3 days. ECG is normal which means it is a stroke but the magnitude of this is yet to be found.... can you believe it that the scan machine has broken down and they are no able to conduct a CAT scan !!!

Well no wonder most people prefer to go to their country in case of operation or serious treatments. Even the locals go to various countries such as Pakistan, India , Malaysia or USA for major treatments. This is the state of affairs here at Oman.

By the grace of god there is no danger to his life !!!!!

Day to day living .... an Uncertainity !!!!

Early this morning my mobile started ringing even before my alarm rang and woke up thinking its my family members calling me to wish me on my birthday... but then no, it was a colleague of mine calling to say that there might be some issues with my next door neighbor Mr. Sharma , a person we know and work in the same site has some problems and they are not able to get any response from within the house.He is over 65 years of age and his wife had just traveled couple of days back to U.K to visit their daughter and she has been trying to call him on his mobile from yesterday night. As she was not getting any reply to her calls she called up a colleague of his and also another person within the building to go to the flat and check.

Door banging and using the calling bell was of no use as there was silence within the flat and it was then decided to break open the door and see if all is well. As per the rule we need to have police around for doing the same and the building manager informed ROP who promptly sent an officer. In the presence of the officer the door lock was broken and on entry my neighbor was found lying in the passage of the flat, unable to talk or get up but conscious. A suspected stroke or a  heart attack is the reason.....immediately an ambulance was called and he was taken to the emergency ward of Sultan Qaboos Hospital.

When i think of this incident it just sends jitters down my spine since i am also staying alone here in Oman and i am not growing any younger ...........

I hope and pray that my neighbor gets well soon without any complications.