Sri Lanka: the safari

We saw ancestors of the modern chicken, a leopard lounging in a distant tree, sunset over the wilderness, elephants at arm's length, munching casually on thorn bushes, eagles, eagles eating monitor lizards, monitor lizards, mongooses, rabbits aplenty, wild hogs, and wild buffalo.

It was tremendous. And bumpy. And splashy. A few other park-goers sported cameras that looked more like rifles. For you, our faithful readers, these regular-camera photos will have to suffice.

Spring-time in Stockholm

Stockholm is one third water...

....one third park....



...and one third city.



It is also a hundred percent cute. Here is a public bathroom:

 Here is a phone booth:

And here is a bridge.



When we visited friends in Stockholm a few weeks back, when the city was flooded with spring.The whole world smelled like lilacs.





Our friends live on Kungsholmen, an island brimming with young people. We saw them in full force, running around the island, picnicking by the water, and sunbathing. We have never seen so many buff, happy-looking people in one place.

We expected to find a city -- instead, we often felt as if we were in the middle of a wedding, or a sappy rom com. (Imagine living in the grassy church scene at the end of Funny Face for a week! Only Fred and Audrey were missing.) We couldn't go for a walk without seeing baby birds -- we counted five different kinds. Unfortunately, no good documentation for the goslings, signets, and more obscure sorts of baby duck we encountered. A mallard, and our apologies.












We saw willows weeping, fields of lush dandelions and banks of violets.


We played mini-golf....

....went running, and biked, and even kayaked around the islands, all the while shepherded by our lovely hosts. 

Stockholm is perfect for biking, and we biked everywhere, stopping for fika (the Swedish word for coffee + sweet snack), and enjoying the sunshine. Our hosts were charmed by the warm weather, and we were delighted to be able to move around without breaking a sweat.
 

It was so beautiful out, that we had a hard time going inside. We did make it into the national church, where the royal family has marriages and baptisms. A wonderful impromptu song broke out from other visitors. 

And we had to go in to see the Vasa, a ship which set out on her maiden voyage in 1628, and promptly sank. The Baltic Sea is brackish, and the Vasa remained well-preserved underwater until 1961, when a massive international team managed to pull her up, whole. The ship may not be sea-worthy, but we were impressed anyway.

We didn't expect to enjoy Swedish food as much as we did (Mary Wollstonecraft is far out of date, but she was so damning of the fare that her censure stuck). The tradition of sandwiches for breakfast made us extremely happy, as did other sandwiches: here, skagen, shrimp mixed with caviar and dill on toast, made by our hosts. 

On the sweeter end of the spectrum, we tried chocolate balls and princess torte, and were not in the least disappointed.

Well, Nick was.

But disappointments couldn't linger long. There was so much else to do, and see, and eat, and smell, and chat about. 

 

 

There were cliffs to climb and views to see, grass to loll in and flowers to gaze upon.

 

 

It was a wonderful week of being outside in a beautiful city with dear friends.  

 

Camping at Jebel Yibir

Despite a previous trip to the Northern Emirates, it was still odd to get an email from a friend suggesting we take a trip to the highest peak in the UAE, Jebel Yibir.  Isn't the highest point in Dubai?

It takes about three hours to get to the middle of nowhere, UAE.  (A bit less if you're not particular about the view.) To get there, take the bypass road to the Dubai bypass road. Despite the double bypass you will have performed, expect to find traffic. But there is happier traffic, as well: dozens of camels happily lolling beside the road.  Then, pass through a few small towns, on the lookout for any goats who may wish to cross the road. If you're hungry, stop off at one of the many Pakistani restaurants, where you can get delicious biryani, daal, fresh bread and tea with condensed milk -- but you'll have the wait until the Friday prayers are over.  Even the "24 hour" restaurants are abandoned during prayer time.

After some wadi wandering, we found a flat place for our tents.  It must have been a construction site at some point -- we found pallets and old metal doors with the UAE falcon, which were useful wind screens for the fire.

We went for a scramble downhill to a wadi, and up a cliff face the next day. Near the wadis there are amazing wildflowers.

From the wadi, we scrambled up our mountain...

...from which we had views of both the east and west coasts of the UAE.

On the way home we stopped off at some crazily orange dunes on the way to the UAE's (heavily irrigated) farmland. The dunes first appeared as a deep orange glow about the horizon....and slowly materialized, into burnt orange sand, stretching in every direction.