And there goes the title for the weakest pun ever for a title.

Anyway, it’s probably fair to say that the lack of rain was the least surprising thing about my trip to Bahrain, a small island state in the Middle East (near Dubai, Qatar etc for those wondering!).

As you might expect, it’s a kinda toasty place. Even though this was the “cold period” of the year, it was already around 20°C at 7am when I was out running and the Arabian sun, well, it hits and sizzles bloody hard, whatever time of the day!  How anyone can survive in the summer when it’s 50°C in the shade is beyond me (well, actually, I do know: they live indoors with A/C, travel to work in cars with A/C and work in offices with A/C). More to the point, how anyone can RUN most of the year is beyond me, beyond blowing their brains from the boredom of treadmills indoors.

Anyhoo, Bahrain: the island is tiny – sort of Jersey-size which, for those who don’t know Jersey, is sort of the size of Paris. Like most places in the Emirates area, it has this general feeling of “how and why can a place like this pop up in a desert” though the proximity to the sea makes it feel a little less dystopian. As you might expect, the economy is heavily based on Oil & Gas (and a few other smaller titbits, notably a humongous aluminium smelter). Tourism is a little more limited than a few neighbouring countries who pitch themselves as having the “fun factor” (e.g. Dubai) or religious history (Saudi Arabia), but there are still a few people popping over. The bridge to Saudi brings a lot of Saudi people over who may be looking for a bit more of a “fun” weekend.

The capital city, Manama, is very clean and seems to have been mostly built in the last few decades (at lest in terms of what’s on the water front). A lot of it is reclaimed land which, in terms of running, is very handy: flat as a pancake!  

As I was really busy every day I was there, the only option to get out and about was the usual horror show of getting up at 6am. Bleh. So, gunky and bleary eyed, I was out on the streets feeling like a zombie. I probably looked like one too, other than the Lycra (come to think of it, a zombie wearing Lycra and carbon-plated shoes would be a very ominous sight).

With the amount of time I had in the morning, I could only go so far. I’d found a little loop which went around Bahrain Bay and Reed Island which both used to be open sea not that long ago. Hotels and other shopping centres are still being built all around the Bay but, conveniently, the fact it isn’t finished meant it was also very empty compared to other streets.

As one can guess, the city is very much built for cars, as you might expect. It means that crossing can, at times takes AGES. I think it twice took at least 5 minutes to get given a 20 second slot to dash across a massive highway at one point. In this bay, all good. So good actually that, for the first time in a million years, I got a KOM on Strava!! (KOM: best recorded time over a certain segment) The time was not actually that impressive and it probably reflected how few people run as much as anything else, but beggars can’t be choosers! THE BEST: me. Ha.

With money not being a usual constraint, there are a lot of architecturally very impressive buildings to run past: one, the World Trade Centre, is slapped on loads of postcards and a bit of a symbol of Bahrain but also, amusingly (and they don’t over-advertise this too much), a symbol of bad architecture and planning. Granted: the three wind turbines between the building are stunning.

However, and this is a big HOWEVER: if you turn them on, they make the whole building shake, and the blades reflect the sunlight and blind the workers. Oops. So they’ve basically “unplugged” them from the energy generation system and only switch them on for an hour or so in the morning before the workers come in. Ah well. It certainly looks cool!

What else to note: it took me a while to notice, and I only did so after someone pointed it out: there are very few, almost hardly any, drains along the road. As it rains so rarely, it’s not cost effective to put them in. It does mean pretty bad road flooding when it DOES rain however.

And it’s hot. Lots of palm trees. Lots of welcoming people. Lots of sand. Quite a lot of feral cats. Lots of tall buildings. Lots of gated communities. Lots of sun. No rain.

Like Dubai or any other desert city, the whole place does feel a little out of place and ‘wrong’ for a desert. Though not as wrong as a Christmas tree plonked on a Bahraini bridge. Nope.  

Heat

Speed

Arabian-ness