Day 254: On to the Middle East
Saying goodbye to Africa and arriving in the United Arab Emirates.
By Noah Strycker
Contributor, 51ÁÔÆæÈë¿Ú magazine
Published September 12, 2015
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September 11, 2015: Dubai, United Arab Emirates —&²Ô²ú²õ±è;Livingstone dropped me at the Entebbe airport around mid day, but not before we nabbed one last new bird in Uganda, a flock of Weyns’s Weavers in a papyrus swamp. This concludes my two-and-a-half month tour of Africa and a wonderful romp around Uganda. (If you ever find yourself in Uganda, look up Kalema Livingstone—a fantastic birder and an incredibly nice guide.) Time flies!
My nonstop flight to the UAE this afternoon was delayed by a sandstorm and touched down in Abu Dhabi after dark. The flight itself was a luxurious five and a half hours long—enough time to watch a couple of movies and just relax for a while. Most of my air travel this year has been in short hops of less than two hours, barely enough time to adjust to a new location before hitting the ground again, and I’ve come to appreciate the occasional longer leg.
The flight tracker showed us taking a wide arc around the borders of Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and I briefly considered the fact of flying to the Middle East on September 11 before getting distracted by the displayed weather in Abu Dhabi: Sunny and 41C (106F). Whoa! Birding in a 106-degree sandstorm could be interesting.
A science teacher named Oscar picked me up and, at a late hour, we patrolled a deserted dirt road in the desert, looking for Egyptian Nightjars (no luck). As the clock ticked past midnight this evening, we drove a wide highway into the outskirts of Dubai to stay with another friend named Mark. The three of us are ready for a long day of birding in the UAE tomorrow.
New birds today: 1
Year list: 4205
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