After arranging customs formalities for seven hours at the airport, Ronald and I finally loaded the windshield into the car that day and drove off to the workshop. We again filled the house in just one day, and a few minutes after midnight, Uroš, Arthur and I finally set off from Muscat. In the morning, the boys woke up delighted at the dunes.
The cavalry has undergone quite a few changes and has finally treated itself to 100 and then to 400 km of cross-desert driving; first between al-Wasil and Sinaw in Sharqiyah, and then between Sinaw and Haima. The leaf suspension was taken apart at the workshop; the leaves were cleaned, the twisted ones were replaced, and everything was then greased up. The vehicle is now significantly softer and finally comfortable to drive. We washed down the engine, replaced all the oils in the vehicle (except for the servo steering and braking oils), while Xizhu repaired the ventilation fan, which gave out a few weeks before I departed from Slovenia. Carmen and I were forced to drive fast in Turkey and Iran in order for the warm air to blow into the cabin. In the next few months, we will urgently require non-heated draught as the temperatures in the Omani desert are getting pretty high. A few other things have been done, but the vehicle was unfortunately poorly painted as the colour has started to come off after just 500 km of cross-country driving.
The terrain with the rocky and sandy desert alternating was a joy to all of us. We also encountered camels, dug in into the soft sand, searched for passes between the dunes, raced at full speed on the tracks and remained on all four wheels. Towards the end of the off-road section, thousands of approximately 8 cm long flying locusts rose from the ground in front us, flying just in front of the windshield and in parallel with us at over 40 km/h! The scene was reminiscent of a sci-fi movie.
Before the last, 490-kilometre stage towards Salalah, we ate and drank at a (professional) Fruit-Juicer as it said on a board in front of the establishment. We were also visited by the police, who were there to satisfy their curiosity. The police officer was turning the driver’s and registration licences in his hands in the dark without even knowing what he was looking at. He was more interested in the standard questions of origin, job, address, the house and the number of passengers. As always, these conversations end with a vacant look of the police officer, indecisive crumpling (grrrr!!!) of the documents and searching for the next question ... which he cannot come up with, so he slowly returns the papers and wishes us good luck on our journey.
Salalah has given me David, but has taken away Uroš and Arthur. According to the plans, Arthur is going to spend a few days here, while Uroš has been unexpectedly summoned on business. He therefore organised the change of a flight ticket in just a few hours, and will be flying to Masqat when this text is published on the Internet. Because of the problems Uroš had with his flight, David and I will continue on our way to Yemen in the morning. His visa expires in an hour and a half, so in order to avoid the 20 euro fine for overstaying the visa, we left Oman today. Well, almost everything has gone wrong with our visit to Yemen.
But us “Latinos” talked about life and the radical changes we have made to it while Uroš was arranging his flight ticket. Arthur left his job of an attorney, which he finds detestable because of all the muck it involves, and replaced it with a bike. He even set out on the trip without a mobile phone (something I managed to do for the last time some 10 years ago). He was only given a phone as a present in Indonesia. David felt something call upon him to see the World, so he gave up his company car, telephone and laptop, and quit a well-paid job. He has been on the road for nine months and doesn’t even carry a photo camera with him. I would say this is very close to complete freedom. Those who thought I was free must have realised after the events of 19 January that I am far from it. We all experience pleasant and difficult moments, all of us feel we would prefer to return home from time to time, but sometimes we think that we could continue travelling for the whole of our lives. And we are all searching for answers that we will find within ourselves in the end. And we will have found that they have always been there. Only, that we had to go to the other side of the globe to find them. Spending an afternoon in sand and in the middle of palm tress makes you think. Have a pleasant skiing session!
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