Tombstones Musandam.

A rework of an old negative from my days at Khasab:
Nikon F4 T-max400 @ iso320.

Unfortunately a number of these negatives got irrecoverably damaged when Cyclone Gonu hit Oman in 2007.
I was working on Jebel Shams at the time, needed stuff from Muscat and had a rather traumatic encounter with a deluge of water hitting the road we were on. Eventually got back to my house, only to find rather a lot of water in the rooms; one of my files got wet with rain coming through the window edges – it was all my Khasab negatives. Managed to save a number by rewashing in Kodak Photoflo solution, but some had gone beyond even the wonders of scanning and fixing in Adobe Photoshop.  I was a lot more fortunate than many people, I’m only complaining about negatives while others lost their lives, houses, belongings and some businesses never recovered.
Hay-ho  such are the tribulations of life.

Not much information about these tombs, rather a lot of them with no real indication of which village they came from, even their age was in doubt; I got a lot of conflicting answers for that question.

Into the unknown.

The problem with checking files after all my stuff was delivered from Oman is finding images that I had forgotten about.
I had a habit of using my Digital camera for colour, then moving the lens to a film camera for B&W. As long as I did not disturb the tripod, I was able to get exactly the same image on film. A laborious task you may think, but if someone saw me change cameras (especially when it was the D800 to Nikon F2SB) it always ended in a conversation about how old the camera was. Gosh you still use film, I remember my Father or my Mother had a film camera. You must visit my village and take coffee & dates, I will show you some good places for photographs. That statement was gold dust ! I have lost count of the times I had been shown a place I didn’t know existed.
The one thing I take away from Oman is the hospitality given to visitors/strangers: I miss the welcoming face combined with “can I help you?” or “please come and have coffee” we don’t have that here.

Salalah/Muscat via Route 31.

It’s approximately 1000 km from Muscat to Salalah and this must be about halfway.

At least 2/3 of the journey is across desert and in the summer the temperatures can be upwards of 50 °C (122 °F) which takes its toll on both car & driver. Travel is best done at night in the summer months, but this has the added danger of Camels walking in the road. Sometimes there is very little if any cell phone signal, so don’t breakdown otherwise it’s a long walk. Although phone coverage is a recent worry for some people; it’s not very long ago that there was no communications at all outside the few towns that were en route. People forget that up until the late 1970’s there was no tarmac roads outside Muscat, so phone coverage was the least of travellers worries. 

Fruit stall – Salalah Dhofar.

These stalls are on the side of the coastal road out of Salalah and have traded in one form or another for many years. It may look a little rough & ready, but no one seems to mind as their fruit is always fresh and inexpensive. For anyone who may not recognise the bamboo like poles, it’s Sugarcane: cut and sold as a sweet chewing stick.