February 15, 2011 Indigo, Bisyah and the road to Salalah

We were up at 5:30 am for breakfast and quick stop at Haramel to get a lap top and drop off food from our refrigerator. We had been out at the Gills house for a very interesting wine tasting party that Janette had won as a raffle prize at the TAISM ball. OUA, one of the liqour suppliers had donated the wines and lead the tasting of 22 persons divided into 2 teams with the wines costing a total of over $1,400. It was hard to get up this morning as we did not get back with the driver till well after 11 pm.

Salut near Bisyah

We took the inland highway to Nizwa and then continued on to Bahlah in order to make a quick stop at the souk in order to find the indigo dyer by the name of Amer. His shop was in the alley to the right just where the road became one way. I left with him the 2 scarves I had tried to indigo dye but which had not come out the strong blue color I wanted. It sounded like Amer left his cloth in the dye for days and not the 40 minutes I had done. We will see in a few weeks when I get it back.

We proceeded down the road towards Bisyah where we were going to have a tour by Michaele of his archeological site at Salut. It was very impressive in terms of size, age and contained both bronze age and iron age artifacts as well as pottery from India and Iraq, again showing trade taking place even in 4,000 years ago. Michele graciously offered the name and GSM phone number for another archeologist working at the Khor Rorhi (Sumharum) site near Salalah.

We had forgotten what a sand storm was like!

We drove for 6 hours through a sand storm part of the time, and on roads that were under repair, so bad they needed repair, or were beautiful as they had just been repaired! The road is 2 lane, flat with not much of interest. There are only a few rest houses along the 1,000 kilometer road, so we called ahead and reserved a room at Qitbit. For $60 we had the best room available.. Mini frig, AC and TV with CNN, but no hot water in the room and water on the floor being soaked up by a towel. The rest house is not on a power grid and uses a generator. They served us a dinner of rice, chicken breast, hummos and Arab bread around 7:30. We had carried mosquito spray and sprayed the room twice in hopes we would not have a sleepless night. We confirmed our route to Shisr where the archaelogical site of Ubar is reputed to be located. Made arrangements for breakfast at 7 am.