International Trip - Part XI: Bahrain

After our time in India, we began the long trek home. That trek took us on another red-eye flight from India to Bahrain, the third time flying through that airport. However, this time we had an entire day lay over before taking another red-eye flight out. The airline paid for a day stay at a hotel, 24-hour visas into Bahrain, and a tour of area. Bahrain ended up being my favorite stop of the entire trip. Here are a few of the things that we saw:

These first five picture are from an amazingly beautiful Muslim mosque in Bahrain. We got to go inside and take pictures while we were given a little bit of Muslim history from a very educated and well-spoken tour guide. What an amazing experience.







From there, we went to a museum which detailed the history of Bahrain. According to our tour guide, the country used to be the place where many Middle Eastern cultures believed that the second life (resurrection) would take place first. So many people brought their deceased relatives into Bahrain to be buried. There are still many places where you can see the massive number of mounds of earth where people were buried. But as the population and economy of Bahrain grow, the burial plots are being exhumed and the cemetaries are being built over. They have moved some of the exhumed burial plots to the museum and put them on display, as seen here.



The picture below depicts a traditional Middle Eastern Muslim wedding ceremony. The bride is carried into the home of the groom and a big feast/party commences.


What caught my attention as I read the description of this scene was the part that said something to the effect of: "The party continues as the newlywed couple consummates their relationship." What? Did that just say what I think it said? I asked our tour guide my question, and he assured me that the bride and groom do not consummate their marriage in front of the entire wedding party. He explained that what happens is that the bride and groom retire to the bedroom (usually upstairs) and the party commences downstairs while they consummate the marriage upstairs. Nobody in the wedding party is supposed to leave until the newlywed couple re-emerges and rejoins the festivities. I guess that's better than doing it in front of everybody, but that's still some serious pressure on those newlyweds!

After the museum, we were taken to an old Portuguese fort (apparently the Portuguese have fought and/or conquered just about everyone everywhere at some point in time). It was a beautiful place, and not a soul around except for us - which was quite a welcome site after being mauled by vendors in India. Anyway, this fort is now used for a lot of photo shoots and stuff like that these days. You can see why in these pictures.






Here is the picture of what I believe we were told was a hotel. They built it with these windmills to help generate its power.


Finally, we drove out to see the "Tree of Life," which is this huge tree out in the in middle of the desert, with nothing growing even remotely close to it. Supposedly, nobody is quite sure how the tree gets water to sustain itself. It just reminded me of the Joshua Tree album from U2.


And there you have it - an eleven-part recap of my spring break trip that I took over two months ago. Thanks for bearing with me. As you can imagine, we all pretty much felt like Professor Warnick on the remainder of the trip home - from Bahrain to Paris to Atlanta to Salt Lake (and a drive to Logan).