Deep in Sheep Country

Dunstan Downs, Canterbury, South Island, New Zealand

Happy Birthday Skye! It’s Skye’s 8th birthday! Time flies huh?!? The last time we met Skye, was in 2018 in Auckland, when she was only a tiny 2 years old!!

Dad, Hazel and Jason’s family are planning a New Zealand trip in November this year. It’d be Jason and family’s first trip to NZ to see Kim! Unfortunately, we’ll not be there for the ‘family reunion’ this year. NZ’s beyond our budget for the time being. Our plans aren’t fixed yet, but we’ll probably make a trip to our India home at the end of the year instead. Lots of unfinished stuff to attend to as usual. So, NZ will have to wait!

Anyway, here’s a continuation of where I left off in my last post of NZ. From Wanaka, we went north, into Canterbury. I wanted to see Mount Cook. What? It’s the highest peak in New Zealand! We’re this close, how can I not give it a try?!? But we had precious little time left, only 2 more nights in the South Island, before we fly back to Auckland. Here goes our adventure!


Heading to the Lindis Pass, on the Tarras - Lindis Pass Road (NZ State Highway No 8) – A view of the hills from the Cluden Hill Summit


North to Aoraki! On the road through the Lindis Pass, State Highway No 8, Otago, South Island, NZ


We’re in Canterbury! Lindis Pass Viewpoint


The track to the Lindis Pass Summit Lookout, at the Otago – Canterbury Border, NZ


We found our camper van spot for the night, Dunstan Downs, a sheep farm, with some facilities for camping. Not great, but not bad too. Ever used a thunderbox toilet? You can try it here. Guarantee, you’ll hate it, haha!


Anu at Dunstan Downs, South Island, NZ, Dec 2018


The main house and office of the Dunstan Downs High Country Sheep Station


OK, we’ve had a good night’s rest. Time to move again. A long journey awaits.


Another Lavender Farm? NZ Alpine Lavender, on the Mount Cook Road. We’re heading to Mount Cook!


Shucks! It’s all rainy, and clouds in Aoraki. Guess we’ll not be able to see Mt Cook after all. Better luck next time. But I consider ourselves lucky already because this was the first and only time that it rained during our entire 1 week trip of the South Island. New Zealand is famous infamous for its wet and windy climate. While we were enjoying ourselves in the South Island, Dad, Hazel and Kim’s lot were fending off the pounding rain in Auckland. For more photos of the Aoraki/ Mt Cook area, check this earlier post.


Heading back into civilization, Anu at Lake Pukaki. Behind in the horizon, below the storm clouds, is the Aoraki Mount Cook National Park


If only we could fly… Red Cat Biplane, near Twizel’s little airport

That’s all for now. Gotta head to Cromwell fast, have to find a place to sleep for our last night in the South Island before it turns dark. See ya!

What We Did in Wanaka

The heat’s definitely back in Dubai. Bye-bye outdoors, for the time being. And I suddenly find myself super-busy, involved in a big tender, which is a good thing in slower times like what the company’s having now. So, it’s back to picture posts of our past journeys in faraway places. Faraway places are something I always look forward to. When’s our next big adventure? Hmmmm…


Anyway, here’s a continuation of my last post of New Zealand’s South Island, the Road to Paradise. From there, we headed to Wanaka, the town famous for this little tree in a lake… Why? You tell me… (Read on to find out more)


The Crown Range Summit was where we stopped the last time, “Wanaka, here we come!” On the Crown Range Road, Otago, South Island, New Zealand, Dec 2018


The hills are alive, with flowers and trees – the missus’s favourite things


Whoa! What’s this? The Fence of Lost Bras? Is this where all the lost bras end up? Lost a bra? No worries, head over to Cardrona, NZ. It must be there, somewhere… Nah, this is actually a promotion for breast cancer awareness. Support the cause by donating to the New Zealand Breast Cancer Foundation!


Finally, Wanaka! Wanaka Town sits on the southern shore of a pristine lake with its namesake, Lake Wanaka

Wanaka is famous for having ample ‘Instagram-able’ spots, like #ThatWanakaTree, above. Apart from that, there’s also Roy’s Peak Lookout. But that’s a 6.3 km hike up the hill from the road, and the same distance back. Nah, that’ll take too much time, and it’ll be too much for the kids (and ahem… yours truly, maybe). So, we decided to head to a kid’s place instead – the Puzzling World. (Hell, when you’ve got kids, you’ve got to think of places for them to enjoy also. Hills, valleys and hiking is wonderful for us, but the kids? They’d prefer a playground, any playground, even at home, over a long hike!) So, here’s one for the kids!


“Mommy, run, that tower’s falling!” Don’t worry boys, that uncle is holding it up. He’s actually Atlas the Titan, in human form, cursed to hold up the leaning tower of Wanaka for eternity…


What’s this? Some new fitness fad? Lean back and enjoy??


A wall of Nelson Mandela’s. I bet you, this is straight out from Netanyahu’s bad dreams… “Repent Benjamin! Is killing people alright for you?”


What’s so fun about a maze? But kids love mazes. “Yeah, c’mon, let’s find our way out of this!”


“Where’s the toilet, mommy?” “No, not this type of toilet!!!” I didn’t know Romans used toilets for meetings?!? “Awww, that smells awful. What did you eat, man?” The Puzzling World is a ‘museum’ and park of optical illusions.


And weird inventions like this one. Tired, eh? Kids?




Time to go. Let’s make a stop at the Lavender Farm for mommy! Before we head off further north, to find our next place to park our camper van!

See you, till I see you!

The Good Ol’ Dry Days

A dry dam… along the E102 Road, in Ras Al-Khaimah territory (I think), just before the turnoff to Hatta Road. Let’s see whether I can find a name for this in Google Maps… There it is! Wadi Al Munay Breaker. Breaker? Shouldn’t it be ‘Dam’ instead? Who named that?

Whoa! Not again? Last week, there was another rain scare in Dubai. Yup, the UAE announced another round of distant learning for schools on last Thursday and Friday, and our office (including our dear head office this time) asked us to work from home last Thursday. Sure enough, rain came on Thursday, and we had half a day of rain. It wasn’t bad. There were no massive floods like in April. There were a few localized puddles at known low locations (and it added a little bit of water to the previously flooded locations which still haven’t been completely cleared).

No big deal. But, …what’s happening?? Is this due to global warming?? We’re supposed to be a god-forsaken desert, aren’t we? We’ve had more rain in the last few months than I’ve ever experienced in my 10+ years in this desert of a place. At the apartment that we’re staying in now, I remember we’ve had no rain for something like 1.5 - 2 years. And now there’s rain every few weeks?!?

Are we turning into a tropical friggin country? Have the prayers of the UAE people finally been answered? (UAE airlines artificially ‘green’ the UAE region in their in-flight maps that show the planes’ flight paths when they fly over the UAE. You’ll see the normal brown-yellow of Iran, and then, lo and behold, the UAE’s all green and nice like it’s a friggin tropical country!) Now, there’re mosquitoes all over the friggin place, and they’re growing fatter by the day. Where do these critters suddenly come from? I thought they didn’t exist in the UAE (except for our house, because Anu’s a giver of life. Her garden’s full of life: trees, plants, birds – I can’t count how many generations of doves and sunbirds that our garden has produced, ants, butterflies, slugs, etc, and of course, pesky mosquitoes).

People here no longer post photos of having tea and picnic in the rain. Previously, when there’s rain, it’s like a water fair! Frolicking and playing in the rain like babies who’ve never seen water before. Now it’s pictures of cars inside water, homes damaged by water, but there’re still some funny ones of people with too much time on their sleeves paddling their kayaks in the housing area streets… And, there’re no more talks of cloud-seeding. “Huh? What? What’s that??”

Anyway, I’m not much of a sucker for the rain. I’ve had enough rain, and mosquitoes, in Malaysia and India to be too big a fan. I especially don’t like the mud and muck that the water leaves behind. But I do like the occasional downpour that cools things down and bring life to the wadis. And the smell of an impending storm and the sound of thunder in the distance. That’s always cool to me.

It’s been a week since the last rain, and it feels like we’re finally getting back to being a desert. Things are steadily heating up. It’s mid-May after all. In the previous years, it would’ve been a friggin oven by now. This year, the heat’s a little slower, thanks to the rain. It’s still OK to walk out in the gardens… But it’s coming, the dry ol’ days. “Die, mosquitoes, die!”

Here’re some photos of when things were ‘nice’ and dry, when we had to go hunting for water in the dams and wadis of the UAE, just to have some fun. A last picnic post before we head into heat wave territory… It’ll have to be at least October, or more like November, before we could think of camping again, sigh.


Another photo of the Wadi Al Munay ‘Breaker’ / Dam – dry as a bone, Nov 2022


Another dam, Siji Dam, Fujairah, Jan 2022


Oh, there’s the water!! There’s actually more water further upstream, and at the old dam site, but it somehow wasn’t very accessible




Fooling around at Wadi Siji Dam


Don’t forget our picnic! Wadi Siji, Jan 2022


Wadi Shawka Dam! Feb 2021


Wadi Shawka Dam Park, Ras Al-Khaimah. Feb 2021 was our first visit to Wadi Shawka. Little did we know then, that as time comes, Wadi Shawka would become our favourite camping site in the UAE. No, not the dam, but the wadi itself


Hey, where do those stairs go? Wadi Shawka Dam


What do you think these are for? A stand for some performance?


Beyond the dam! Hey, it’s quite interesting


Huh? What’s this? People picnicking? How did the cars come in? If they can come, so can we. We’ll find a way, hehe


Wadi Shawka, Ras Al-Khaimah, Feb 2021, the first of our visit – Just you watch, we’ll be back!

There you go. Visits to some of the ‘lesser-known’ dams in the UAE. The more well-known dams are the Hatta Dam and Rafisah Dam, which are usually crowded, not really our cup o’ tea.

The Big Deluge

A new lake in Motor City… (complete with cars, buses and trucks)

I’m back! It’s been a crazy time. A week-long Eid holiday, where we went over to Oman, again (it’s fun, and cheap comparatively, coz we don’t need to fly, and no visas are needed), followed by the biggest floods in the history of the UAE (and Oman, I presume). So many people lost their cars, and belongings. A handful of people lost their lives in the UAE and 20+ people died in Oman including 9 students and their driver who were swept away in their vehicle by the torrent! We’re lucky, because we got back from Oman a few days before the floods started, and also, I managed to get back home before the flood became impassable on the day the rains hit the UAE, thanks to the wise decision of our site-office, who told us to leave early (before lunch). Those colleagues at our head office weren’t so lucky. They released the staff at 4pm. By that time the subway and roads had been inundated, and most were stuck in the city till the next day!

Here’s an account of the things that happened and some photos of the chaos I saw!

On Sunday, 14-April, news came of the devastating floods in Oman. But we’ve been warned, from the week before, that there’d be rain in the UAE. We just didn’t think it’d be that big. Sometimes the rain doesn’t even last an hour!!

On Monday, 15-April, we could already see dark, ominous clouds in the distance. All of the UAE were waiting for a rain party! Hell, this is a desert. Rain’s a blessing! We received messages from the schools that they’re switching to distance learning for the next day. All government departments were already working from home. Only silly, private companies were still going to work. What would some pesky rain do? Chehh…

On Tuesday, 16-April, we woke up to a wet day. Hey, it’s been raining in the night. How cool! But it’s stopped. No messages from the office, so off I went to the office. The roads were wet, and there’re already puddles in some of the known low spots along the way, nothing too big for yours truly to handle, ahem. But strangely, I could see cracks on the asphalt roads, which I hadn’t noticed before in all the other times of rain.

Wow, the air’s nice and cool, I don’t even need AC. There’s some sun in the horizon, but directly above us, the sky was already like a thick grey blanket, and it’s darkening by the minute.

The rain came at 8.45am. A strong, pounding rain. Actual rain, not the puny, sandy sort of rain that we usually get here that dirties the car and everything else, and leaves little to no sign of water on the ground. I betya, loads of people would have been out taking videos and photos for their social media posts! There’s lightning and thunder and everything else. Heck, this is ‘exciting!’

At about 10am, our office admin said we could leave, before the floods became too bad. This is especially so for the people who live in Sharjah. They’re more prone to waterlogging and traffic is unimaginable in those times. I had some work to do, and decided to sit it out until lunch.

I left at about 1pm. … “Shite, they’ve friggin blocked the road (an 8-lane highway) which I usually use to get home. No problem, I’ll just use the other way.”

WTF! Not this road as well! Now, I’ve got to go the opposite direction, heading north (instead of south) passing through the area where my office was, but I could now see that the road which I used to get to the office in the morning, was already flooded and closed off, and there’re stalled cars in there. A few sedan cars were being pushed by people wading in water. The highway’s jammed because all the cars had to squeeze into the 1 unflooded lane, from the original 6-lanes. (Those who had the guts made use of the second lane, which had some water, but not that much that it’d stop your car!)

Luckily, I got on to another highway that went south and managed to get to near where we stayed, but I still had to get thru a few neighbourhoods and major roads. And I came to a standstill in front of a ‘river’ with a few cars floating in it! (Below)


Al Qudra Road, 2.10 pm, one lane passable, if you dare (if you’re an SUV, truck or bus). No, definitely not for sports cars… The silver and red cars on the right were already stalled, as well as the white sedan, up ahead


Whew, got through. This was Motor City, Dubai at 2.50pm. Gotta get some provisions, don’t fancy coming out in the rain, later on. Look at the clouds. “The next big one is coming!”


It’s started again. Got home just in time. Oia Residence’s parking entrance ramp on the left. “The road ahead is already flooded!”


The day after. The same road as above on Wednesday, 17-April, 5pm


Hey, we have a new ‘attraction’ in town, Motor Lake! Hey kids! Be careful!


This ‘lake’ took the authorities 5 days to clear. It’s actually a low part of a 6-lane road (Al Qudra Road) and is one of the main entrances into Motor City, our neighbourhood

Wednesday, 17-April was a working from home day, but we had to get back to work on Thursday, 18-April. One good thing was that Google Maps had all the blocked roads marked. (It’s amazing how up-to-date it was), but still, it led me to this place (below). “To pass or not to pass??” What a conundrum


Sheikh Zayed bin Hamdan Al Nahyan Road, just outside Dubai Silicon Oasis… I sat here (with scores of vehicles beside and behind me, …cars, buses, heck, even trucks) waiting for some brave souls to make the crossing, just to see how deep it was. Seeing those few stuck cars in the water, which include SUVs, doesn’t help muster up any courage. After 10 minutes or so, a pick-up truck with high wheels, made the crossing, along the yellow-line, going in between the abandoned cars. It’s through!! I followed… Whew, no problems. In my rear-view mirror, I saw another car starting the challenge… There you go!

Thank God. We got through the disaster, with no problems. Some of the areas took more than a week to clear. Some parts are still under water till this day. Some areas were without power and clean water, due to power cuts. Some roads became canals, with sunken cars. God help those who suffered recover quickly.

The Little Mosque in Tabuk

Another express photo post coming up!


Masjid Al-Tawba, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia – The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) camped at this mosque’s location when he was in Tabuk (of course, the mosque has since been upgraded and renovated, but not to a grand scale as you can see). No, you can’t stay there. It ain’t a hotel, and you aren’t a prophet…


Prince Fahd bin Sultan Avenue, the main shopping boulevard of Tabuk, next to the Al Tawba Mosque. It’s nearly empty as you can see. It’s the peak of summer (Aug 2023)! No one’s crazy enough to venture out in the midday sun in summer (except yours truly, ahem)


Ahhh… that’s more like it. Prince Fahd bin Sultan Avenue in the evening. This was near one of the company’s guesthouses. This was where I got my Saudi SIM card

Ramadan’s ending. Today’s the last day of the Ramadan work day for this year. We have a full week of Eid Al Fitr holiday this year! 9 days in total including both weekends! This is the first time I’ve experienced that, thanks to Eid falling on either next Tuesday or Wednesday! Wow! If only we had some spare dough to splurge on, God knows where we’d be heading to. (I can think of sooooooo… many).

Anyway, an advance Eid Mubarak to all of you out there! Have a blessed and joyous Eid! Selamat Hari Raya! And for the non-Muslims, happy holidays!

Here’re some pictures of a little fort in Tabuk, a city in the north-western part of Saudi Arabia, that’s become the base for the mother of megaprojects, the stupendous NEOM Project, a development the size of Belgium, from scratch!

I was actually there for work (yup, related to NEOM), and there’s nothing much of an attraction inside Tabuk itself, but WTF, I’m not gonna give up an opportunity to ‘discover’ the city a little, huh? Especially seeing that the company’s guesthouse is pretty close to some places of interest, hah!




Tabuk Fortress – This fortress is near the Al Tawba Mosque, and marks the end of the Prince Fahd bin Sultan Shopping Boulevard


It was built during the Ottoman Empire’s time and is now a museum of sorts for Tabuk


The ‘Welcome Saudi’ website sez that you need to buy a ticket to enter, but no one’s around when I visited (heck, it’s the middle of summer, on a weekday, and no one visits Tabuk for a holiday). So, there you go!


Moi, in Tabuk Fortress. Surprised how I got a photo taken? (Met some fellow stray visitors, haha)


Ayn al-Sikr, the Spring of Tabuk – Tabuk Fortress also features a water spring which the Holy Prophet (PBUH) drank from while he was in Tabuk


A museum account of the Prophet Muhammad and the Spring of Tabuk


Finally, a photo with a friend and ex-colleague, Naresh at the hotel which I was staying in, The Ewaa Express Hotel, Tabuk. We used to work together in the Abu Dhabi Airport Project. He’s moved on since, and I happened to bump into him while I was in a Project site visit in NEOM. Small world!

That’s all for now folks. Eid al-Fitr Mubarak! Selamat Hari Raya! Have a happy and safe holiday!