Cost of life in Muscat?

Now I know that this topic is probably going to attract a few people to this blog and sorry to those who are actually not going to get a straight answer to their question. This post is inspired by a recent post published in Italian by a friend who rightly confirms that the answer to the question at the top is all relative.

I know too well how badly one wants to know the cost of life in a city where he/she may potentially move to. If someone makes you a job offer how are you going to know how far the monthly dosh is going to take you? And more importantly, are you going to be able to save?

These are the same questions that we had before moving over here and despite the large amount of blogs  available in the cloud and the discussion forums on this topic it is in fact all a little bit confusing.

 The kind of answers that you may get to the above question in fact could be an immediate "expensive" or a more frequent "it depends". I tag along with the "it depends" with the needle leaning heavily towards the "expensive" because, no shame in admitting it, that's the kinda life we are leading here. 

In her blog my friend posts a table of expenses summarised by someone who obviously leads a (waaaay) more frugal life than us and our circle of friends considering that tonight's dinner event alone will blow and over the entire monthly leisure budget suggested for a couple. 

The thing is that local stuff and local food can be incredibly cheap but set your eyes on any of the imported western standard commodities we so take for granted (things as simple as toilet paper, cakes or even greens.. nothing too extravagant hey) and you may end up blind from the shock.

I am sure that every expat or anyone not paying too much attention sooner or later will have gone to the till and either realised too late that they paid over the odds for something as humble as a familiar looking bottle of water (not me I only buy local) or decided to leave at the till (I did) the packet of "washed and ready to eat" spinach when they realised that it was priced at the equivalent of 10 Euros (washed in gold?).

Yes it is not a joke (though this is often the subject of hilarious conversations with friends). Since the day I once discovered (horrified) that the price of a 9-roll packet of a popular European toilet paper brand is almost the equivalent of 12 Euros (if I had ever bought it by mistake I would have probably framed it like precious archaeological grade papyrus after discovering that it doesn't even come with the dog!) every now and then I take photos of the extravagantly priced items that I come across when shopping (because I am sure nobody would believe me if I just told).

So considering that the local currency (Rial) which by the way is expressed in 3 digit decimal point, is roughly the equivalent of 1.95 EUR or a weaker 1.74 GBP see what you make of the items in these photos. 

Now for some of these things there may be cheaper workable alternatives but sometimes if you really want a treat of 6 rashers of bacon for breakfast you may have to bite the bullet and pay the price of gold for it.

Desert crossing, flying food, moody cars and sugar dunes

I am sitting on the passenger seat of a comfortable 4x4. My jaw has dropped slightly, my eyes are wide open behind the sun glasses that protect me from the strong glare and I keep on repeating the same sentence over and over again: “wow, it’s unbelievable. Wow.. wow.. wow”. In the car I am excited like a little child anticipating a wild ride at the fun fair. I run out and jump around white dunes… getting sunburnt too in the process.

It’s our third and last day of a long weekend spent on a desert crossing / Indiana Jones’ style adventure. I kinda knew what to expect from the final destination as I had previously seen some photos but seeing the spectacle of the sugar dunes for real is just an experience from another planet. Plus with all the diversions we had en-route I wasn’t sure any more whether we were going to reach this dream-like landscape of floury sand.

Our adventure started with a set plan (that had to be revised a few times) with a night stay at one of the established desert camps in Wahiba Sands. We hit the road the following morning with other 5 cars to head south and came back 3 days later with all sorts of grains of sand lodged in every nook and cranny of the body, clothes and cars. Dust on the face and hair coated us like glitter. It was all worth it.

It is hard to explain what these experiences are like and the photos never quite convey the real sense of adventure or the awe we experience when seeing new paradise-like places for the first time.

Desert crossing is desert crossing: it is a lot of fun with often a lot of unexpected surprises. Getting stuck is at the order of the day (although I have to admit with pride that I was the only one who didn’t and I had trouble suppressing my grin when S. took to the wheel after me and got stuck literally 2 minutes later.. :-P )

Amongst the notable events while crossing the desert I can quote: a friends’ car jumping in the air as they went over a dune loosing all the contents of their cool boxes (meat, eggs, salads and tortillas) all over the inside of their car. I mark the words of  my friend once out of the car with jelly legs and in a fit: “I saw something flying past my face and splattering violently against the windscreen. My sunglasses fell off my face and for a moment I wondered if that mushy stuff on the windscreen was in fact a piece of my brain”.

They lost all their food on their very first experience of desert driving while the jerry can spurted its contents inside their car leaving them to continue the rest of their journey accompanied by a pungent smell of petrol. All I can say is that from the comfort of our 4x4 that was following behind, their car jump looked extremely spectacular.

  

Luckily at that time their dog was in our car.

Another event that almost threw the whole trip upside down was one of our friends’ Range Rover becoming a bit moody and threatening to leave them stranded in the middle of nowhere afloat on the sea of sand. We decided to set camp and spend the night engulfed in the total quietness of the desert just a little bit ahead of where we had planned to. We though the car would need a rest.

The following day didn’t start well: the car was overheating, the fan stopped working, the engine was losing power. We all held our breaths as everybody tried working out the cause of the problem and attempted some repairs. Finally while us girls lost ourselves in chit-chat one of the guys found what was jamming the fan: the fan brush melted under the heat of the engine. The car was still losing power so one of our cars towed it (up and around dunes…) to the nearest Bedouin track. We were forced to change our initial plans and try a different route in case we needed a pick-up truck to rescue us.
For some reason after 40 minutes of towing the moody car decided that it was time to reveal the early April fool and started working again as if nothing had happened…. S. has a theory of what might have happened but I am not going to bore you with car mechanics.

Although extremely late on our schedule we continued with our journey. By the time we reached the coast we had missed the low tide needed to drive on a beach so we selected a different route and finally at sunset we reached the beach we wanted to camp on…. Or almost.

We had reached a headland and our path was interrupted by water. It seemed there was no way around and convinced that we could not cross it until low tide returned we resorted to stop there. Not before spending ½ hour arguing on the exact spot we should set camp…. I think everybody had kinda had enough by then.

So we camped there. While paradise was literally round the corner. As we found out the following morning. Not that the spot we camped at had anything wrong; but 5 minutes ahead were miles of uninterrupted white sandy beach backed by a white desert!

In the morning while the others left to head back towards Muscat us and another vehicle decided to linger a little bit longer and explore the area.
That’s when we found the track to circumnavigate the headland and found the sugar dunes.

The photos speak for themselves. Another fun packed weekend.