Arriving in the Middle East

The trip from home to Dubai was surprisingly smooth. I am travelling on non-preferred airlines for most of this trip (not bad airlines, just not the ones I usually use) and so don't have lounge privileges or other niceties that ease modern airline travel.

I got lucky though with an exit row from Canberra to Melbourne (without even asking!) and the transit from domestic to international in Melbourne was genuinely seamless. You don’t have to complete a departure card any more! The Smart Gate was fab. Security screening is still annoying but you don't have to take everything out/off any more, so it’s less annoying than it used to be.

Emirates is a good airline but there'll never be anything good about a 16 hour flight in economy for me. Good points were that the plane was not totally full, so there was an empty seat between me and the guy in the aisle seat, and I managed to get some actual sleep and quite a lot of fitfully dozing, so I'm not completely shattered right now (Midnight AEDT and 5pm local).

We were met at the airport by a lovely guy who had only a little English but was courteous and efficient. We had a three hour drive - mostly East – through the UAE and then South slightly inland from the Gulf of Oman to Sohar.

The UAE is a unsettling place (to me). As I reflect on it, it's like a settlement on some other (barren) planet. As we flew in, you could see all the roads laid out by their street lights every 50m – even way out from residential/commercial areas. When we were driving through the UAE we were on 4-6 lane highways (not much traffic going in our direction, but plenty heading into work) all built recently and in excellent condition. And beside most of these highways was just rocky desert, with some scrub dotted here and there and lots of infrastructure (mostly electrical distribution). Almost like it had been painted/photoshopped onto a picture of the place to show what was possible.

I tried to get some pictures from the moving vehicle of an interesting range of hills that we passed through. I also tried to capture a ‘close up’ of what the rocky hills looked like. From a distance, it all looks like ancient volcanic activity to me.

Rocky hill range in the distance (from the West)
Rocky hill range from the East after passing through it
A ‘close up’ of the type of rock in the hills

We checked into our hotel – the Radisson Blu in Sohar – and paid for early check-in to get to our rooms. Subsequently, we’ve met over lunch to strategise and coordinate about the next two days of accreditation work. Dinner tonight after a brief meeting with our university hosts.

My room in the Radisson Blu in Sohar

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