As I promised earlier, I am going to share some travel impressions from various journeys I had the chance to experience since last Christmas.
Let me start with the Sultanate of Oman, were we stayed for a couple of days last winter, before heading to Dubai (this will be another post).
Having only seen Muscat and the surroundings, I am not in a position to judge all of this country, but honestly, for what I have seen, I believe it to be very beautiful. Ranking the 59th most peaceful country in the world, according to Wikipedia, Oman occupies a place apart in the Arab world.
If I were to give the country a “subtitle”, I would call it “men at work”. The Sultanate’s booming economy calls for plenty of new buildings and roads, hence demanding a giant workforce. Every evening, you can thus see huge grapes of exhausted “men in blue” waiting for the bus to transport them to their temporary homes.
What is interesting about all this construction going on, is that the country sticks to a more traditional architecture with buildings reminiscent of the tales of 1001 nights rather than skyscrapers. The amazing Sultan Quaboos Grand Mosque, with its main prayer room able to hold over 6500 worshippers and its colossal chandelier made of Swarovski rhinestones is a brilliant example of what is going on in Oman.
Since this journey was not one of my “art-related” trips, I brought only a small and light camera with me (a Sony nex5; but I have since upgraded to the Alpha 6000). When discovering the many beautiful birds in Oman, I was actually very happy to have brought my X-Mas present with me – a Sel 55-210, which, to be quite honest, is not a top notch super zoom, but the price/weight/convenience ratio is just great.
(Sorry, I have to update: I just had a look at my metadata and apparently, I also took a Fujifilm XE1 to this trip, alongside the Sony one… And while I am at it: The two last pictures were taken at home later with a Canon 5D MKII. And no, none of this is a sponsored post. If I share the camera’s names, it is because I know that this post is a bit “off” on an art blog and I thought some of you might want to get some more “practical” information out of it.)
A last word about possible acquisitions – Oman is famous for its incense…
