Goodbye Dubai, Hello Muscat

On Tuesday morning when we woke in Stansted’s airport hotel, it didn’t seem at all likely that we would be leaving. Swan had told us our names were not even on the manifest for the newly-chartered flight and we should not actually have left home without being told they were. They offered a flight from Birmingham leaving on Wednesday evening with a 5-hour road transfer on Thursday from Dubai to Muscat. We called our travel insurers who said if we wanted to abandon the whole trip, we could do so with no penalty, and that’s what we resigned ourselves to. But as we were there, we went to the checkin at 0700 and lo! Two couples didn’t turn up. So we boarded as standby passengers at the very last moment, and thanked our stars for a turnround of luck.

Of course, we saw nothing of Dubai, arriving at 2100 and sailing at midnight: just the lights on the skyscrapers as we drove past. Two more ports of call have been cancelled, to get the itinerary back in line. So we spent Wednesday at sea, recovering ourselves and grateful to be here.

Today we are in Muscat, Oman, probably the most immaculately clean city in the middle East. John stayed on board this morning while I went on a visit to one of the old forts with which the country is littered, calling in at an oasis on the way back. This is based around a warm spring, and being a Thursday (already?) there were families preparing for picnics and barbecues. Here it’s a winter pastime, in the summer it’s far too hot.

Tomorrow and Christmas Day we will be at sea, and it seems the satellite link is very week at sea, but then we arrive in India on Sunday.