“Is the car really supposed to sound like that?” Mrs J tilted her head and listened intensely to the rat-tat-tat sound escaping from Ol Martha, my trusty old Pajero.
It wasn’t supposed to, of course.
We had passed the checkpoint on the road to Salalah without any hickups and shared a few laughs with the guys checking our papers. “You have come from Muscat? In this car???” was the general theme. I was getting a bit defensive and over and over again assured the doubters that Ol’ Martha was, in fact, a brilliant car. Well, apart from being stuck in 3rd gear, of course.
We were now on the final stretch down to Salalah. The long descent which always took my breath with its beauty. Green, soft rolling hills which almost made you believe that you were in New Zealand on a film set for a Lord of The Rings movie; if it wasn’t for the grazing camels. But the serenity was severely disturbed by the tat-tat-tat sound coming from the struggling car. We pulled in alongside the camel fence and popped the hood, like we had seen done in movies. I am not really sure what we were looking for, seeing as our combined knowledge of cars could be written on a post-it note. The tiny kind.
“I did see a weird flashing sign on the dashboard. A bit like Aladdin’s lamp” I admitted. Mrs J got the Pajero manual out from the glove compartment. It was yellow and brittle, but she found the bit which clarified the Aladdin’s lamp. “We need oil!” she informed me. In the midst of our trouble the irony wasn’t wasted on me. Here we were, in an oil producing country, having skirted the oil fields and its nodding donkeys on our way, and now we were stranded — because we had run out of oil.
It didn’t take long before a friendly Omani driver stopped and offered his assistance. He tutted loudly as he pulled out the bone dry oil dipstick, and went to his own car to find a half-full bottle of oil. “You can make it to the nearest garage on this”’ he explained “good luck”.
Rolling in to Salalah, Mrs J was googling where to find a mechanic and Google maps took us to the place, after a few failed attempts. “What did we do before Google?”, Mrs J mused. “Asked real people...?” I volunteered. Mrs J ignored me.
This was Oman’s Detroit. Street after street with car shops, car repairs, car dealers, car upholstery, everything car. Yet, there was one major problem. Everything was closed. The entire area was as dead as a fish out of water. Mrs J got back to Google. “National holiday in Oman”, she read. We stared at each other and Ol’ Martha took the opportunity to cut out the engine with a deep sigh and died. “Well, that was fun”, Mrs J mumbled to no one in particular.
Let’s just say that getting a taxi to come to a deserted industrial area on a national holiday, find a hotel and finally having to rent a hire car, was not exactly what we had planned. But that’s life for you. We had to leave Ol’ Martha and instead pile all our camping gear into a taxi. The hotel staff kept a straight face as we dragged tents, sleeping bags and clattering pots and pans through their lobby, with as much dignity as we could muster.
I had promised Mrs J a trip of a lifetime. So far she had gotten that. Reclined on a kingsized bed, newly showered, in a clean crisp white shirt, she smiled like the Cheshire cat. She was in heaven. “I think I love Salalah”, was the last I heard from her before she fell asleep. I sent a guilty thought to the poor Pajero we had, without any loyalty, just ditched at the curb. “We’ll be back for you”, I silently promised her, before I too had to surrender to sleep.
It had been a long journey — but we were finally here.
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