The world's hardest to find major tourist attraction
On the first day, Lorna, Lucy and I woke up to rain. Really, rain. I go to a desert, and it rains. Golly, golly gosh. So we decided to go and look for the Tree of Life, one of the few things in
After we had driven by a number of winter camps, where people go to relax and light barbecues next to the oil pipelines, we passed the oil museum. It was shut. Apparently it has been shut every time they have ever driven past it.
We tried another road, and another when that one stopped abruptly at an oil pipeline.
Lovely Camel Farming Bloke, or LCFB from now on, looked at the map and sniggered a bit. Obviously, he had a more realistic view of the map than us. Lorna asked if he minded if we patted his camels, and after a bit of sign language ��" his English was not great, and none of us spoke Arabic, so on balance he definitely gets to win ��" we realised that he didn’t mind at all. In fact, he was very proud of the camels, which he said belonged to a sheik (or possibly not ��" there really was a lot of a language barrier and he also might have been teasing!). The camels were surprisingly friendly. He then said he had baby camels, and would we like to pat them too?
Of course we wanted to pat baby camels.
After a short trip off road and through a village with a dead goat, we found the Tree of Life. The Tree is quite a nice tree, except for the vast amount of graffiti marring its branches. Unlike any other tourist attraction I have ever been to, there is no information at all. Not even a sign. I only recognised it from its pictures on the internet. There is a sign, but it says that you must not go any further or you will be shot.
On the way back, the rain had worsened to the level of ��" oh, a softish shower. Unfortunately, even a soft shower on dusty, oily roads makes them into a skating rink. And so the locals react to rain the way a Southern Brit does to snow, by either ignoring it and skidding all over the place or driving at half an inch an hour. The picture shows a bus that came over the hill, waltzed straight sideways to the road and landed on the desert verge. Another couple of metres forward and this would be a much, much shorter blog! Luckily, everyone stopped. Whilst we were catching our breath, a lorry came round us, round the bus, honked and carried on ��" traffic really is ��" um ��" interesting here!
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Close to, the Tree is covered in graffiti and burn marks. It is a real shame; the tree is striking and could be so lovely, and people spray paint their names on it.
i have to say, I found the journey to the Tree more fun than getting there - it felt like a real quest. there is no sign telling you about the Tree itself, although, helpfully, there is a sign telling you that if you go any further you are liable to get shot. You'd hate to get that wrong. But on the way here, we passed some interesting oil lines, the highest point in Bahrain, the winter camp grounds, and the camel farm where I got to pat some baby camels. So it is definately, definately worth the journey.
