Rock climbing at Kubrah canyon, Oman

Top-rope climbing at Kubrah Canyon in Oman, December 2013

"Kubrah Canyon is the epitome of what makes climbing here so rad – boundless rock, beautiful weather (in the winter climbing season) and something for every skill level and taste. With twenty equipped routes ranging in difficulty from French 5b to 6c, unequipped crack climbs, bouldering near the entrance and trad options for nut slotters, you’d be back more than once if I weren’t for all the other crags waiting to be climbed in Oman."

A day in the life - guest writer

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF PETER AND HIS AWESOME COUSIN WHEN THEY DO STUFF

guest writer for THE INGENIOUS BLOG OF PETER BADASS JACKSON: Stephanie Hall

This morning we slept in and woke to fresh towels(coz my friend John, whose apartment we were in, hadn't done laundry in a while so the solution was to pick up brand new towels while out on a breakfast run), hot water in tank, coffee, bagels from dunkin donuts, and the sound of Sharjah street life from around our apartment.

Coffee..... Mmmmmm..... Can't wait to go to bed so I can wake up to tomorrow's coffee.


The plan for the day was to go Um al quain which is a different emirate.

Educational moment - the United Arab Emirates is made up of lots of different emirates (that are united!) not just a whole bunch of Dubai. Sharjah is another, umm al quain would be the third we would wander through while here.

John, our most gracious and toweling host, extend an invitation to Peter and I to hang out with his home group for the day. They were going to a small resort to chill, hunt crabs, and eat food. We met the group of some 20 strong, mostly between the ages of 23 and 30, save for a few little kiddies belonging to the thirty something's. The organizers were a couple in their late forties, Jon from the Uk and his wife from India, but both had lived in Dubai for much of the upbringing of their two kids. They had been taking their family to this resort for years to relax on the cute little beach and to crab hunt. Um all quain also boasts the very cool advantage of not being a dry state (unlike Sharjah) so we had a cool box full of beers and breezers.

As it turned out, this resort is a favourite with Russians, so much so that much of the sinage around the place was in Russian. Later on in the evening we would unintentionally piss some of the Russian guests off for laughing too loud. Jerks. But none of that matters coz it turns out we are awesome at crab hunting! With our tridents and giant lamps! We had to wait till after sunset to go out and by that time I was very worried coz it was a little windy and I hadn't known to bring anything warm. Peter, hardcore wellingtonian, laughed the face of our winter, so he was fine.  For reals, it was totally cold! I wore a merino shirt and peters hoodie over my dress and I was still cold!

But I took my 'Arden up pills (although it could have been the crab blood lust that drove me) and we hopped on the boat. A fun thing happened while we took the twenty something minute ride out to the sand bars - John and a southafrican girl (visiting her family while on leave from her teaching job in Mongolia) discovered that they could make cool sounds while allowing the vibrations of the motor to resonate through their body. So they started to harmonise their weird 'AaAaAaAaAa' sounds and then we just all started singing carols and worships songs. This particular emirate is far from the big city so all the light we had was from a small orange haze on the horizon. Just dark water and dark sky all around, and our awesome singing!

THEN WE CAUGHT TONNES OF CRABS! We hopped out into knee deep water, with tridents, about six lamps, and scoured the sea weedy floor for crabs. Upon seeing one, the trick is to stab and pierce the shell. Teamwork sometimes required. It was fun! We got about forty of the unlucky beasts.

We sung all the way back and our crabs were cooked for us.

Terrible trials of the day
- peter and I got a little sunburnt from too much volleyball and ultimate frisbee
-the poor volleyball got stuck up a soooper tall date palm although trying to get that thing out turned out to take as much teamwork, entertainment, and fun as the actual game.
-our wallets some 220 dhirams lighter

What I'm looking for

A girl supported by Save the Children and the New Zealand
Government practices her English ABCs at a Reading Camp in Belu district, Indonesia

Five weeks away from New Zealand, and it feels like the world's changed so much in that time. Typhoon Haiyan hits the day I leave, tearing up even somewhere as adaptable as the Philippines. Mandela passes away, and as we're in Eastern Africa at the time, with colleagues who've met Mandela and received scholarships in his name, the news touches home. Many Kiwis pay tribute, but I wonder if we've missed the radical edge that energised Mandela's peace-building.

With the superb Save the Children project team in Belu district, Indonesia

The last weeks working in Laos, Indonesia and Kenya have been stimulating, exciting, and uplifting. I've seen good things in our projects, like staff who throw themselves into children's education, and the respect this work earns from the country governments. In Kenya especially, I've been so privileged to be part of one of Save the Children's truly international meetings, with 150 staff from over 65 countries, from North Korea to Norway. The way such a diverse bunch handled themselves spoke to me about the bigger picture driving what we do as international development workers. In many ways, the challenges we all face are really ordinary - funding, cohesion in diversity, shifting global geopolitics.. But the stories 

Discussing with our hugely-experienced office head
and school teacher in Belu, Indonesia

of individuals there - a CEO showing solidarity with children and his staff in Central African Republic, a global director really listening to his staff, and leaders of a movement meeting and strategising about tangible ways to improve the world for children. Once again, I'm so proud to do what I do.

At the moment I'm in Muscat, Oman, working remotely and catching up on

Getting to know some of the children in schools in Belu, Indonesia

En-route to Nairobi, Kenya

much-missed time with family. We're trekking, camping, sailing, swimming, shopping, clubbing, cooking, shopping and celebrating. Being together again is special, the first time after four years away. In our cousins, uncle and aunt, we've got something really special, that intangible connection that comes from shared blood, that sense of belonging and home. And that's what the I've found over the last five weeks - travelling to the other side of the globe, and across that distance, finding that these connections form a kind of DNA - home, where I belong.

Journey Home

It is the most distant course that comes nearest to thyself, and that training is the most intricate which leads to the utter simplicity of a tune. 

The traveler has to knock at every alien door to come to his own, and one has to wander through all the outer worlds to reach the innermost shrine at the end. 

My eyes strayed far and wide before I shut them and said `Here art thou!' 

The question and the cry `Oh, where?' melt into tears of a thousand streams and deluge the world with the flood of the assurance `I am!'

Rabindranath Tagore