Desert Road Trip

Silhouette of my roommate against the desert sunset.

A while back I went on a road trip. You might ask, "Where to?" To which I would say, "No where in particular." My roommate and I had rented a car in order to do a few things around the city, and so when we ended up with a free weekend with a car we knew we had to go somewhere. I had heard that along the desert highways which stretch the vast emptiness of sand and rock there were some desert castles to be seen.

So with no real destination really in mind, we headed out. We drove towards a "Nature Preserve" that ended up being less than impressive. However, along the way we did happen upon a few of the desert castles, all of which were relatively unpopulated. That said, we did make friends with the Bedouin man sitting in a tent outside one of the castles, and he then offered to show us inside the castle.

The castle itself was pretty impressive; bigger than I'd expected. Especially considering it's out in the middle of nowhere in the desert.

As we were walking up to the castle we were talking with him as best we could in his Bedouin Arabic. My roommate, making conversation said, "How are you?" and he replied "Better than you!" and immediately burst into laughter. Apparently this is an Arabic joke that we'd never heard before. (We've since used it, and gotten mixed results; some people laugh, some people get kinda put off.)

Getting a friendly High Five on the way in when we when found out that he was doing "better than us".

Inside the castle were mostly just empty stone rooms. We walked up some stairs, and the whole place was mighty impressive to be in and check out. I didn't get too many good pictures of the inner parts though.

Admiring a thousand year old plus stone doorway. It was crazy how well the castle was preserved for being built in the 8th cent AD.

Our little Bedouin tour guide (he was really tiny!) was very knowledgeable about the history of the place. Every room we stopped in he had an interesting fact to tell us. For example: there were something like 60 rooms in the castle, but only 1 "toilet." And even that was a hole cut into the stone floor. That's alot of guests for one bathroom....

A view of the inner courtyard. I know, I'm "haram" wearing shorts and all, but we were on a road trip and I figured I could wear them stealthily.

After all was said and done, we walked back towards his tent. He invited us in for tea, but we were quickly losing the daylight that we had left and we wanted to get back on the road as quickly as possible. Getting turned around in the desert at night would've been not too fun. We thanked him and tipped him (dunno if he expected that or not), and said our goodbyes.

Walking back towards his tent. Desert in every direction.

We did several more hours of driving that day, and we didn't get home until very late that night. On the way back home, we passed through an outskirt "suburb" on the edge of the capital city that we live in. In that smaller little outskirt city there was this huge mosque. It looked brand new, and it was very pretty lit up in the dark of the night.

I love seeing the various mosque styles the world over.

We had a great time driving and discovering some new areas that we'd never been to before. We saw a lot of the desert that most people don't normally venture out into. I definitely want to return to explore the many other areas of the desert that I've yet to see.

عيد‏ استقلال (Independence Day)

I can't really think of a better holiday than one that includes grilling, swimming, fireworks, being outdoors, and just chilling with friends and family. Accordingly, of all the holidays celebrated in America, July 4th has got to be my favorite. Living where I live, I was really concerned that I wasn't gonna get a proper July 4th this year. Thankfully I got a pretty good Middle Eastern approximation.

I will say this, when a bunch of Americans get it in their minds to throw a good holiday celebration you better believe you will get a good holiday celebration. There were hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon (which are dirt cheap over here), fireworks, and lots of people (even one Briton). The only things missing were my family and friends from back home, and the swimming. But hey, this is the desert I wasn't expecting to be able to swim really.

Now back to the American determination thing. Being that there is a ready supply of fireworks available to be purchased throughout the year (locals set them off every night to celebrate anything and everything - mostly weddings) we decided to purchase us some fireworks and have a little show of our own. We would not be denied our fireworks show!

The ground team prepared to set off some electronically ignited fireworks in sequence.

While a friend and I sat on the roof waiting for our cue to launch the high flying aerial rockets.

The crowd gathered and waited for everything to go.

The ground crew lit their fireworks one by one, and then at the last second...

We started launching the rockets off the roof!

I must admit, I was pretty impressed with the size of the explosions we got from the rockets.

They were much better than I thought they would be.

Afterward, we came back down and lit what seemed like hundreds of sparklers for the kids.

Which they seemed to thoroughly enjoy. I almost got burned once or twice by a runaway child with sparkler, but managed to escape unscathed hehe.

It really was a great night and I enjoyed the time I spent with my American friends. Sometimes it's nice to take a break from this culture and just do something completely American. Hope everyone back home had a great 4th of July!