It matters when someone travels from Paris to Salalah and tells “Oman’s roads are the best” in course of her four-and-a-half months journey. In her challenging road journey, her attention was always on the condition of roads, as she and her husband decided to go for their first leg of global tour
along with their five children aged 2 to 15 years.
They named their campervan Hori7on, which reads like Horizon but the numeric 7 signifies a group of seven, including parents David and Laure and children Leon, Gaia, Joah, Marine and Alan.
Michel, the grandfather of the children, who was already in Muscat on a tour visited Salalah and remained with them for two weeks.
Both David and Laure liked the ‘no problem’ approach of Omanis that gave them huge sense of security and enough privacy during their stay in Oman. “Every time they would say ‘no problem, you can go here, you can go there’ at the same time they respected our privacy. We were really impressed with this uniqueness of Omani people and may be due to this, we decided to stay here more than our scheduled plan.”
David and Laure were surprised over the people’s love for His Majesty Sultan Qaboos, as every Omani they met, mentioned about the great leader and his contributions to the country. “Their sadness over the loss of the ‘father of the nation’ and pride of becoming responsible citizens under his guidance, made us think — can a country’s leader be so popular?”
Laure found her Salalah visit interesting for the fact that she is interested in essential oils. Here in Salalah she could find huge potential for frankincense oil. “It really excited me because I work in essential oil sector and find Salalah has huge commercial potential.”
Commenting on the purpose of her journey, Laure said, “Purpose is to show children the world. We passed through Turkey, Iran, UAE and Oman. It was very interesting because there has been big cultural difference between Europe and Middle East.
By coming here you know the issues, people’s behaviour, landscape and even religion.”
“It is very good for the growing children to witness all these changes from their own eyes,” she said, and added that it was a kind of education for her children.
It will take one year for David and Laure to cover their scheduled journey. When asked about how they were managing the studies of their children as were out of school for one year, Laure said, “There is a provision in the French education system in which you can keep your children out of school if there is a scope of regular instruction.” David is a teacher by profession. He takes care of the instruction part under the ‘home schooling’ concept in France.
The children thus are learning their lessons mostly on roads. Once they finish their tour, they can join their school without any loss in academic session.
The team Hori7on is likely to cover 14 countries before returning back to France. “We will be in France in August and as of now we have covered a distance of 3,500 km.”
Among the children Marine was happy over knowing cultures of many countries, as food varieties of the countries impressed Alan.
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