A Desert Oasis Town

I’ve always imagined an oasis to be some sort of a lake or pond with a few palm trees flanking it surrounded by acres and acres of barren sandy desert. This apparently ain’t so. Not here in the UAE anyway.

Here’re pictures of Al-Ain a typical oasis town in this part of the world (I presume). It’s a part of the emirate of Abu Dhabi and is about an hour’s drive inland from here in Dubai. It sits just across the border with the Buraimi oasis of Oman. There're no lakes, no visible water body of any kind as far as I’d seen. But yes, there’re palm trees, date palms to be precise, swaths of it all over town, especially at the location that looks like the middle of an oasis in the map. Went all over the place looking for the oasis, and what do I find, a freaking date palm plantation that looks almost exactly like our oil palm estates.


Al-Ain Palace Museum – see those palm trees at the back just behind the palace wall? That, is the oasis of Al-Ain.


This place used to be a palace for the ruling clan of Abu Dhabi (hence the name Palace Museum)


Anu and a museum / palace guard


The road to Jebel Hafeet, a hill of crumbling rocky outcrops that’s a tourist attraction near Al-Ain. What’s of interest there? Well, it’s a friggin HILL OK? You don’t get no hills for leagues around this place.


Development at the top of Jebel Hafeet – Fancy that, a tower crane?


A restaurant, or more like THE restaurant at the foot of Jebel Hafeet

Forts of Gulf Arabia

Bukha Fort, Musandam, Oman - the fort is that tiny structure near the bottom of the photo, dwarfed by the immense mountains behind

Forts, castles and the ilk have always been one of my favourite subjects... The Arabian versions are smaller, way smaller than their Indian counterparts. Some of the houses around where we're staying now in Dubai are actually bigger than the old forts around here. Imagine how this area have changed huh?


Sharjah Fort, in the middle of a friggin roundabout surrounded by apartment blocks - beautiful?


The entrance of the Al-Ain Fort (a museum now), most of the old forts & houses are museums of one kind or another now.


The remains of a fort near the Badiyah Mosque, in the Emirate of Fujairah, east coast UAE


The Badiyah Mosque (the small cute looking mud building), reputedly the oldest standing mosque in the region (1300 years old)


Khasab Fort, Musandam, Oman


Khasab Fort up close with Anu


No this is not a fort, it’s our trusty hotel in Khasab, where we had to cough up 800 bloody bucks (dirhams) for a night in two adjoined rooms with a shared bathroom. (We went with our Malaysian friends – Sree Ganesh & family)


Members of the trip, in our dhow (Arabian boat) – from right, Sujatha, Anu, Vishnu (Sujatha’s son with face concealed by bag), Yashwini (Sujatha’s daughter), Sree Ganesh (father of the two kids), some total stranger who happen to protrude into our picture.