Making it Official...

Salalah is somewhere you go deliberately, you can’t really stumble upon it as it's an hour and a half flight or 10 hour drive from anywhere else really. Six months ago I had never heard of it, never mind being able to guess where it was: southern Oman, sandwiched between the Dhofar mountains and the Arabian sea. It cultivates coconuts and bananas, and leopards and hyenas live in the mountains. According to the Telegraph, Ranulph Fiennes describes it as “simply the most beautiful place on earth", and that’s a pretty good stamp of approval I think. The city boasts the ruins of Sumhuram, a port dating from 100 BC. More recently, Salalah’s glory days were in the 13^th century, fuelled by the incense trade. It’s also where the His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, was born. In August and September It’s a holiday destination for people from all over the peninsula who come to gawp at its lush bright greens, the result of a transformation brought about the khareef. It’s home to the Port of Salalah, a significant port – and location for the opening scenes of Tom Hanks’ recent film Captain Phillips, and a massive airport expansion project. Now, it’s my home for the next two years.

 

One of the first things I had to do after arriving in Salalah was to arrange my residents’ card and my Omani driving licence. Before I could do that, however, i had to get some passport photos (with a blue background)....not for Salalah a boring Kodak photo booth, oh no. We entered a tiny photo studio, hot, dark and narrow, the walls covered with pictures of previous clients looking suitably serious (the one exception was two young guys in shades being cool in front of a backdrop of a city skyline at night...). I was ushered into a dingy blue side room, complete with wilting photographic umbrellas . The photographer deployed his hand-held camera and after about five minutes the result was a slightly stunned-looking picture of me, now on my Omani drivers licence. Next step: The Royal Oman Police.

Neat concrete buildings provided a nice contrast with the cars which were parked everywhere and at all sorts of artistic angles. We decided it was sensible to pick the biggest building to start. Inside it was filled with rows and rows of weary-looking people. My heart completely sank as there didn’t appear to be any signs, or even anyone to ask. Suddenly a Morgan Freeman lookalike in a dazzlingly white dishdasha and a multi-coloured muzzar swept in and saved the day. He led us back and forth, in and out of buildings, corridors and rooms for what seemed like an absolute age. Sometimes we waded through the crowds, and sometimes we waited patiently. I was ushered into a ‘women only’ corridor to be photographed and finger-printed by a manicured women in a black abaya and then whisked away to be photographed and finger-printed again by a second woman. The instructions: ‘wait’, ‘come’, ‘stand’, ‘sit’, ‘go’, were fired at me in various combinations.  Then followed a brief but entertaining interlude for all, produced by my complete lack of understanding as to how the eye test for my driving licence was supposed to work. Then, out of the heat, queues, and corridors - and after assuring the clerk that I didn’t require a heavy-goods licence even if it was a bargain at only 2 OMR more than the 20 OMR payable for a standard licence - our Omani Morgan Freeman handed me my driving licence and my residents’ card in just a little under two hours.  It was a pretty exhausting process, but pretty impressive nonetheless. The most amazing thing of all was that it turned out the man who spent those two hours helping us, and without whom we’d probably still be lost in a corridor somewhere, didn’t even work there...