Salaam and Hujumbo From Abroad!

By chelsea | February 7, 2018 6 Comments

salaam and hujumbo from abroad! greetings from africa (and the middle east yesterday)! we arrived in nairobi, kenya at 6:30am this morning (after flying through the night and sleeping in a cube). i want to share a few photos and experiences from our time both in muscat, oman and manama, bahrain!

we had quite the jaunt from denver to oman. we took a red-eye to NYC, i had a good cry at breakfast about missing atlas, then a 12+ hour flight to doha, qatar and then a 1.5 hour flight to muscat, oman! to say i was tired would be an understatement, much like saying beyonce has a decent voice.

as we drove from the airport to our hotel, i was not expecting mountains! the mosques were gorgeous and massive.

the location of our hotel was beautiful and helped to shake the jet-lag. turns out falling asleep in the sunshine (with plenty of sunscreen and an alarm set) is a solid way to deal with jet-lag.

something that continues to surprise me when we travel abroad are the very nice hotels by not-the-nicest-hotels in the states. we stayed at the crowne plaza and it was gorgeous. this is not necessarily the case for most crowne plazas in the USA. the one that i still crack up about is the insane radisson hotel in moscow we experienced.

the mountains + the sea is my idea of perfection. it was my favorite aspect of the landscape in oman.

some of the speaking/traveling had to be rearranged so we laid outside for about two hours and then ravery had to get ready to speak that same day. he’s a trooper. i’m glad i wasn’t on because i was super out of it later that night. ha!

we were welcomed by entreprenuer’s organization oman with warm greetings! i was planning to wear a long skirt and a long-sleeved shirt but ravery said, “wear your dress, you look so good in it!” then i did. and then i felt overexposed.

while my exposed knee wouldn’t get a second glance in the states and my dress was an appropriate length, i still should have worn a longer something! nobody said anything and i don’t think it offended anyone but it was more so me feeling a tad out of place.

we were then invited to dinner at a restaurant owned by one of the members. it was iranian food and seriously delicious. we ate grilled meats, vegetables, random dips and sides that even if we hadn’t eaten a full meal in a day and half…it still would have been exceptional! totally worth still not sleeping after 45 hours of travel.

our flight to bahrain didn’t leave until later the next evening so were planning to explore more of oman. unfortunately for us, the president of egypt was in town and they closed a lot of the roads so we couldn’t get to the grand mosque or the souk.

luckily, we are very flexible when it comes to our alternative option of more beach time.

 

here’s the thing about bathing suits in islamic countries; if you’re on a public beach and everyone else is pretty well covered up, you might want to cover up a bit more too. if you’re on a private beach with a hotel or a very touristy spot, most countries we’ve been to are more accepting of showing off the bod.

we hopped a plane to manama, bahrain that evening. it’s a quick flight of about 1.5 hours to the islands of bahrain. we went to manama but unfortunately did not get to explore the city. it was a quick in and out trip and very different from oman.

oman had a very traditional feel in appearance while bahrain felt like a mini-dubai with all the new construction and glass buildings.

our hotel room had a great view of the expanding city!

ravery also rocked his training to this engaged and fun chapter of EO too! we have been invited back to do a workshop together so that shall be fun!

we raced to the airport and thankfully caught our flight to dubai. we had a 5.5 hour layover there and our flight to kenya didn’t leave until 2:30am. yes. planes apparently leave at 2:30am over in this part of the world.

we found something called the ‘snooze cube’ near gate D7 and it was perfect – unless you are super claustrophobic then you will hate it more than you hate elevators. ravery’s wingspan touch both walls. it’s basically a sleeping pod that charges by the hour. you can either get a single or double. we opted for double and the faux-window actually helped more than anticipated!

laying down is a flat-out luxury (pun always intended) whenever you are traveling!

this pod cost us $121 USD for 4 hours. in airport terms this equates to – ‘take my money and let me sleep.’ i added a shower for an additional $7 because running through the airport does wonders on the armpits. worth. every. dollar.

after a few solid hours of sleep, we headed back through the airport to board our flight to kenya (about 5 hours). this flight shall forever be known to us as ‘the holy foot flight of 2018.’ someone removed his shoes (*cough seat 12E cough*) and putrid doesn’t even begin to cover it. we ripped apart our suitcases to hold things over our nose because the smell was nauseating. it did not pair well with the omelettes served for breakfast.

other than that, all was well and now we are going to enjoy nairobi for the next 3 days! tiem to sleep because tomorrow we get to see lions, leopards and elephants – oh my! i’ve been keeping up on my instagram stories so come say hi!

have you been to the middle east before? what was your experience? 

ps. salaam is a greeting in arabic and hujumbo is a greeting in swahili!

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