A Nomad Among the Bedouins #66 - Zahra - elders carry guns and daggers as part of their culture. I did not see much of that in Muscat, which is quite a modern city. However, in other smaller cities and rural areas, it was quite a common sight. I think they are just a male ornament, like you would see pathans carrying guns in tribal areas in Pakistan. In all of King Qaboos`s pictures that I saw hanging from the walls of shops and restaurants, he was shown wearing the dagger - which is also a national symbol.

Not all bedouin women wear the mask. Only the married ones do. Unmarried girls just cover their heads.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins for those interested in viewing some pictures of my travel to oman, please see them on unplugged...

zahra - thank you for your kind words

salim - homosexuality say aagay jahaN aur bhee haiN...u sound fascinated by beastiality. please see the camel pictures i posted for you on unplugged. thanks!

thanks everyone for your comments!

A Nomad Among the Bedouins ZahraJ # 59 - ``I landed with an open mind, but I found my surroundings to be very fake. Even the magnificent structures had something missing. Somehow, I cannot exactly point it out.``

I share your sentiments about the magnificent structures in Dubai missing ``something``. And that ``something`` is people :) It is true, there are hundreds of new condo towers that have gone up in the last 2 years or are under construction. But it seems that most of them have been either bought by the investors who live abroad, or they are bought by institutional buyers who later sell it to individual customers who mostly live abroad. So it is surprising when you go to places like Dubai Marina and dont see many people. As for your comment that surroundings in Dubai are ``fake``, I would suggest the word ``hyped``.

However, let me mention what I often heard expats in Dubai saying: There is NO culture in Dubai. It is really just a conglomeration of people coming together because of the open business environment, good (tax free) salaries and the construction boom. I strongly believe that for a ``culture`` to take root, you at least need to have presence of women. It turns out that women make only 27% of the population of Dubai! This was a startling revelation for a man like me who has a (very) soft corner for fairer sex.

However, my travelogue was not about UAE, it was about Oman. A very different culture and a very interesting culture. Omani seafarers were quite successful in establishing distant colonies to the point that Zanzibar in Africa served as their capital for some time. Gawadaer in Pakistan`s Baluchistan was their possession too. So I request that you PLEASE not lump Oman with UAE.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins #55 ZahraJ #55 ``I do not like to visit or land at a place where I have nothing to relate to....Going back to your write-up, I simply dislike the mindset of the area addressed. I guess when I said the area, I implied the UAE mindset and mentality...On my end, I have simply no desire to visit any Muslim Country except for Morocco and Egypt.``

I am a little curious as to know what you mean by ``UAE mindset``. Have you visited UAE? The impression I got from my recent visit was that its mindset is nearly approaching that of Americans – consumerism.

As for your dislike to visit a place where you have nothing to relate to, well, it kind of reminds me of an interview of Bill Gates a while back. Interviewer asked him what he liked to read in his spare time. Frankly, I was expecting him to say that he read about new trends in technology and the competitive landscape. Gates responded that he liked to read on the topics unrelated to his profession and interests, such as arts, music, astronomy – things he did not relate to in his daily life. I guess he did so because he wanted to learn something he did not know :)

So my point is that there are several reasons why a person should not visit a place. But having ``nothing to relate to`` is somewhat of an unwise reason :)

A Nomad Among the Bedouins ZahraJ # 45 ``I am positive that your narrative is far more positive than the place itself. Personally, I would never venture out to travel to any of those areas. I simply dislike the environment and culture``

Zahra, I think I know what you mean. I guess we all have our own reasons that move us. For me, it is not the glass buildings, the order, the cleanliness of malls in Boston that moves me...perhaps after practically growing up with these things I dont find them ``exotic`` enough. The exotic part to me is the culture, the chaotic markets, the ruins, the geography of distant places and distant people...and the curiosity to know how differently they live from me that drives me to that. It is hard for my cousins in Pakistan to share my enthusiasm for visiting Raaja Bazaar instead of Jinnah Super in Islamabad. I dream more about traveling the length of Silk road than about visiting Paris and Stockholm.

I think we are all genetically programmed for ruggedness since humanity lived like that for hundreds of thousands of years. It is for the same reason that millions of americans leave the comfort of their homes on Labor day and head out to pitch a camp in the wilderness with unclean bathrooms and eat undercooked meat. So it all depends on how successful we are in suppressing our genetic programming. And you seem to be pretty successful at that :)

I should point out one classic mistake we make when we encounter a new culture: we judge it on the basis of the culture we come from. This turns us off and keeps us from experiencing it.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins aimie # 43 - ``i wish i could write a proper comment about your article but am too involved in my dissertation that words that may appear now would be; hegemonic brandscape, starbucks, globalization and so forth. others words will just falter right now. ``

aimie, why dont you be honest for once in your life and tell me straight out that whenever you are interacting with me you become nervous and at loss for words? See, that would be much easier than coming up with all these excuses such as ``disseration`` :)

aasif # 44 - ``On a side note, kudos to chinese shoe makers of kidRus, as their shoes survived the desert of arabia``

hahahha...Actually I had written a para about my shoes in this article but then i took it out since it was making the article too long. What happened was that in all my wisdom I went into the desert with my usual hiking shoes. Little did I know that that was about the worst choice I could make. While walking in the sand, you have to pretty much take your shoes off every 20 steps to take out the sand that fills in them. I then looked around the tents to see if there were any extra pair of chappal type shoes that bedus wear. I did find a few, but then I ran into my usual problem: they were much smaller than my foot size. yeah, having a large foot size has its problems.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins Shobig #39 ``That is why I come across a teenagers every now and then who has seen more countries then I think I would manage in my entire life, ... This must have something to do with the insecurity, instability and uncertainty of life that has somehow gotten buried deep into our psyches, indeed along with many other reasons.``

Exactly my feelings! I also think there is another subtle but important element that is an advanatge for westerners vs. desis - a western passport. I am sure more young people from pakistan would love to venture out and see the world, but getting visas of other countries is a herculian task. For a western young man, all he needs is an intention and time. They can scrap some money together, either through parents or their own part time work to finance their traveling. Other than the airfare, traveling is pretty cheap and affordable if you are going anywhere in central asia, east asia and africa. You have to be willing to stay in cheap hostels and eat from street vendors...

A Nomad Among the Bedouins twintopaz #40 - ``Atif..i guess you took the desert safari in Dubai and all the rattling thus produced this imaginary tale? right??``

Twinto, is it because you have been living in that region for years but never found the energy to visit Oman, while Atif travels all the way from Boston and goes to Dubai AND Oman AND other counrties in the region? Must I post pictures on UP to calm your jealous feelings? :) Fine, I will post in a day or so. Look out for it ;)

A Nomad Among the Bedouins ZahraJ # 37 - ``Based on your past interacts on Chowk, I thought that you loved those shrieks``

Are you equating my interacts with ``shrieks``, Ms. ZahraJ? :)

``Well, I guess it is not necessary that everyone should come across the same destiny on visiting a desert.``

Very true. It is not necessary. But as a saying goes ``dil dil hee tao hai`` :)

A Nomad Among the Bedouins Urstruly bhai - Thank you for your kind words

dr sahib - thank you

Salim - Your humor is much more effective when you conceal its cheapness with revving vocabulary :)

A Nomad Among the Bedouins salim #29 - ``So, you did manage to make it a rear-wheel drive vehicle``

no, camels are 4 wheel drive. riding camel is not much different than driving a car. its reins are like the steering wheel which you can use to turn it left or right. its belly is like a gas pedal, the more you press it the faster it walks.

and before you gleefuly and dreamily ask with drool coming out of your mouth whether there is an equivalent of car`s ``stick shift`` on camels as well...no, there is no such thing.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins #23 ``Certainly, Hindus, despite the obvious reluctance to leave India, did manage to reach out to Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even as far as Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam``

Burma, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia are all interconnected countries and come in the same geographic sphere of influence of what is today India. The exploration that made europe what it is today resulted from leaving their immediate spheres of influence and crossing seas to make colonies amongst entirely different people and in entirely different climatic regions.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins #26 - actually I was the camel driver myself. But feel free to share your personal experiences with prodding.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins salim #23 - ``More and more I am noticing that desis are discovering this exciting obsession.``

I am sorry to report that that is not the case. You maybe seeing more of desis just because we are 1/3rd of the humanity. But as a percentage, we are no where near what you see from other races. Our desi culture puts strict importance on ``saving`` money. Traveling requires an investment with no tangible benefits.

I have found europeans to be the most enthusiastic travelers, much more than Americans. In fact, traveling is almost institutionalized in europe, whereby they spend a year abroad before starting their university. Nearly 60% of europeans hold a passport, compared to only 10% of americans. I have come across 18 year old europeans who have traveled from europe to east asia and back, using land route that took them through india, pakistan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, china and various ethnic/religious fault lines.

Besides europeans, australians, japanese and koreans, who form bulk of the international travelers, increasingly I am also seeing middle class malaysian and indonesian tourists...

A Nomad Among the Bedouins jang #15 - u wrote ``arabs, vikings and mongols all had tough homelends so they had to go overseas.``

I think this partly explains their outward looking spirits. But one can argue that the arabs had a tough homeland for many milenia. Why did they begin to expand only after 632 AD? And how can one explain the very comfortable and lush green and warmer homeland of Spaniards and Portugese, and their quest to circle around the world and establish colonies? And how can one explain the quest of Papuans to seek out distant polynesian islands? As for chinese, they were quite outward looking too. Some historical research indicates that long before Columbus, it was a chinese ship that had landed in what is today USA.

My (unscientific) analysis suggests that the ``outward looking`` spirit of a people is a result of one or more of these key factors:

1- internal wars and hunger
2- resourcefulness and a tradition of learning
3- a leader with outward personality
4- quest to spread an ideology
5- A martial tradition

Mongols fit nicely into #3. They rose out of no where. They never had a tradition of expanding beyond northern china before 12th century or after 14th century. It was really just the presence of one man, Ghengez Khan, who sowed the seeds of outward expansion. And within 2 hundered years, they had either withdrawn or melted in their conquered populations.

A Nomad Among the Bedouins #14 - Godot, now that you mentioned it, I will post some pictures on unplugged in a day or so.

#16 - Subroto, thanks for liking it. As for the natural humor, I really just wanted to write what actually happened, and the thoughts that crossed my mind during my travel. ``Forced`` humor would have taken reader`s attention away from desert experience.

#17 - perhaps you are right. thanks for liking it.