Iftar in Sama'il

I went out to Sama'il with the family of a friend for iftar.  It had rained that afternoon and there was standing water all over the roads, so not all of the family members were able to make it to their grandmother's house for iftar.  Sometimes there were wadis in the way.

I wasn't able to take any pictures, we were in a hurry to get there before maghrib was called, so I'll borrow someone else's.  This is the largest thread I've seen of pictures of rain and clouds (source).

Sama'il fort, which I saw from a distance:

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Sama'il is in Dakhiliyya province, about 40 km from Muscat, and Wikipedia tells me it has a population of about forty thousand.

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I do at least one embarrassing thing every time I eat at someone else's house.  This time, I bit off half a fresh bone-in herring and chewed.  And chewed.  And chewed.  And then my friend's mom leaned over and showed me how to split the fish open and pull out the spine fringed with little bones before eating it.  It was really obvious I'd never seen a herring before that wasn't pickled or canned.