A very slow drive through a wadi at an average speed of 10km an hour brought me 6 hours after entering it into Thumrait in southern Oman. It had taken me longer than expected but not as long as a man I met, while we both bought snacks in the town, had taken on his travels.

Daisuke Nakanishi http://www.daisukebike.be/en/index.html had just arrived in the town after crossing the Omani/Yemeni border on his second circumvention of the globe, by bicycle. Ten years at roughly the same speed as my crawl (10kms an hour) made my extended wadi trip pale into miniscule insignificance.

From Thumrait he will travel north into Muscat - it goes without saying, but he will be cycling on the edge of the Rub Al Khali near mid summer and certainly in temperatures around 40Centigrade.

Later in Salalah Port I enjoyed meeting some staff and passengers of the cruise ship Prinsendam who had arrived from Mombassa Kenya – being escorted along the Somali coast by a navel frigate - and they brought with them the first rain of the Monsoon season in Salalah.