Arabian Nights

Somehow I've managed to avoid the Middle East in the last few years of my travels, but over the last three months, I've ended up there on three separate trips. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I immediately realized I wasn't in "Kansas" anymore.

In Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, I wasn't allowed off of the plane until I covered myself up in an abaya. You are not allowed to show your ankles, arms, neck or most of your face if you are a woman. It is required that women and men sit in separate sections in restaurants and in waiting areas such as the airport, women are required to sit behind a screened-in area. We stayed in Jeddah for five days. I was not allowed to use the gym or pool, or even eat with the pilots, so I enjoyed lots of in-room service. At least the food, and especially the hummos was good!




Every room in the hotel had a sign pointing to Mecca for prayer - Mecca is only about 45 minutes drive from Jeddah and people make the pilgrimage from all over the world.



Security was pretty good judging by the machine guns surrounding the hotel:




Cairo, Egypt was another stop and where my love of camels began. Eric was with me on this trip and we were so excited to finally be able to see the ancient pyramids! We were in Egypt during the holy month of Ramadan, so unfortunately we were not able to go inside the pyramids. We did take a long camel ride around the desert near the pyramids near sundown, which was absolutely incredible!

A line of camels in the desert:


Eric and I sharing a ride:



It was surreal seeing a structure that was built over 3,800 years ago!



We also stopped at a papyrus shop where the proprietor showed us how the ancient paper was made and served us some tasty Egyptian tea.

A few weeks later, we went to Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi is a growing city with lots of construction, but is much more clean and modern than most cities in the Middle East.

Eric, Andrew and I on the Corniche:




There was lots of shopping in the malls. Eric bought some beautiful spices at the market, which would have been extremely expensive to get back home. Some of them wouldn't have been available at all, like the bright orange Kashmiri Chili Powder.



One evening in Abu Dhabi, we decided to take a desert safari. A gentleman picked us up from our hotel in a utility vehicle and took us out to the Arabian Desert on the sand dunes. The ride was death defying - but really really fun. We took our vehicles into the wide open desert and our driver sped over the huge sand dunes and very high speeds. I thought the jeep was going to flip over for sure a few times:




We saw a baby camel in the desert - she was so cute and a bit lost:



Camels are so photogenic!



After the ride on the dunes, we were taken to an area in the desert where tables were set up under the stars. We were served Arabian tea and coffee as our bbq dinner of kebabs and other local fare was being prepared.



Our dinner:



After dinner, a beautiful belly dancer came out on stage:




At the end of the evening, all of the lights were turned off as we sat on big pillows in the sand. All was quiet as we watched a zillion stars twinkle in the Arabian night sky as we drank tea and enjoyed hubbly bubbly.

After Abu Dhabi, or next stops included Kuwait, Oman, & Qatar. Here is a video of the prayer from our hotel balcony in Doha. The first prayer started at 4am and was broadcast so loud that it shook the windows in our room and woke us out of bed. This was the second prayer of the day and you can hear the hymn being sung throughout the city:



Our tour through the Middle East was quite an experience. We met a lot of wonderful and hospitable people while we were there. We learned a bit about culture and experienced some places first hand that we had only heard about on TV and in the news. While we had to be vigilant in many places, it was cool how we were thrown into a culture so completely different than our lives at home. Trips like these definitely open our eyes to a very different way of life and helped us to understand different cultures beyond what we just read about and see on TV. That being said, we were happy to trade our hot weather clothes in for our warm jackets and boots as we headed back to Switzerland...