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Day 2 , 9 February 2014
A series of chain of events happened after we got to sleep in the crampy tents, I got twice rudely awaken by wild donkeys, three bouts of cold heavy rains which dropped the temperature well below my comfort zone.
The last straw was to hear ladies' gossiping that was 20 meters away from us which were quite intriguing as it make me wondered why they are not snuggling in their tiny comfortable sleeping bags instead when outside temperature is near zero degrees. After a short eavesdropping on their ladies' talk, it was time to suit up and take a leak in nature and boil some water for hot drinks later, as it seems that in high altitude water took awhile longer to boil.
Apparently, it seems that I am not the only one getting a earlier wake-up call by the ladies and all of us got together for a morning stretching exercise and also for our very first morning meeting which two of us got to share our thoughts.
After breakfast, we remarkably packed up the tents and loaded up all the items to the vehicle in a much organized way and got ready to move out by 30 minutes earlier than expected. Big applause to my teammates for this marked improvements, and hopefully that we will improve better management as the days come along.
A short briefing on the usage on the GPS device conducted by our OB Oman instructors and we were off to the first checkpoint of the day. The Oman mountain trek terrain was quite challenging and manageable but not the unforgiving weather which posed a huge challenge for most of us as 9 degrees Celsius with howling winds were a big hinder to us, which we really did not expected this, but this is part of the Outward Bound experience, to expect the unexpected.
Upon reaching the first checkpoint, we got the first bad news of the day as we need to cancel the rest of the mountain trek due to worsening weather condition, for safety reasons. We would need to proceed to our desert trek immediately as bad weather was fast approaching. Second bad news was to backtrack and search for a lost camera and we told ourselves not to lose anything more on this journey.
Good news of the days turned out that the lost luggage of our OB Singapore instructor, Iskandar, was found and safely delivered to OB Oman's Muscat office which have been arranged to be delivered to him. Second good news was that we got invited to a local Omani house in the Jabal Akhdar region for coffee, dates and snack which was an eye-opening introduction to Omani culture. Lastly, we got to lunch at an eatery at Birkat Al Mouz instead of having our normal lunch ration at the courtesy of our Omani instructor.
Ending of the good nasi briyani meal meant the start of our long journey to our desert base camp which we reached after last light. We had to cancel all our dinner plans of having cooked chicken, macaroni, etc instead of simple bread and instant noodle. We were all simply too tired to cook up an elaborate dinner after setting the tents and offloading of items from vehicle.
To close up the night, we had a rare downpour at the desert and that a little dampen our spirit but hopefully, it well be better tomorrow. I will have bragging rights to tell my friends that it is raining in the desert.
-Maurice Ang, aka "Mohsin"
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