Camping in Oman
My dad's an engineer, and has lived all round the world, including stints in several of the less rabid Middle East countries.

Oman is a great place for scenery. Mountain ranges (Jebels), valleys (Wadis) make for a really interesting drive around a country largely untouched by buildings or permanent roads.

In order to get a bit further out into the rocky wilderness, we decided to drive much further out than normal, to have a look further afield, set up camp overnight, and drive back the next day.

So there was two or three families, each in a 4X4 - we set off and drove a few hundred miles off road, then plonked down, built a very very small fire out of what was essentially kindling, and settled down with some sandwiches and water from the cool box. Eventually it was time to call it a night and get into out tents.

But, I was sharing a tent (with my sister) and the desert heat, combined with two bodies in there, proved too much to bear on the comfort stakes, and so we dragged the mattress out of the tent to sleep under the stars.

Now, this being the desert, there was practically no humidity at all, and very littl epollution.
I have never seen as many stars in the sky as I have that night.
The stars were simply spectacular.
But not as spectacular as the leonids were.
Hundreds and hundreds of tiny mini-meteors arced above us, vaporising into light in their final moments burning up through the earth's atmosphere. There was just far too many to count, arriving from a few a minute to one a second in frequency.

Absolutely fantastic, and I have only ever seen more than one meteor at a time on one other occasion (Budapest).
Then for added amusement, one of the fuses went in the 4x4 on the way home, so the A.C didn't work, and the electric windows couldn't be wound down. Nothing quite like travelling over a rocky desert with four people in the vehicle, with the bare minimum of air circulation in +35c heat!
(SigourneysBeaver took off and nuked the entire site from orbit on, Thu 29 Mar 2012, 17:26, Reply)