Ahmed our driver & guide

Yes there are camels roaming freely (once you get out of the capital Muscat) and frankincense smouldering away at the local souks. The food is delicious (think a combination of Turkish dips and kebabs, Indian breads and curries) and you’ll be sober unless you bring duty free or are staying in hotels where alcohol is allowed to be served.

If you’re planning a trip, whether as a stopover to Europe or your final destination, here are my 5 must-sees:

Muscat:

Spend a couple of nights in the capital city. The Grand Mosque is breathtaking for its architecture, Italian marble, 21-tonne hand woven rug and swarovski crystal chandelier that eight people can walk inside (although not you). Women will need to wear long sleeves, trousers to the ankles, and a head scarf. Men should wear long sleeves and trousers.

Muttrah Souk is the city’s favourite market. It is on the corniche along the seafront and is famous for quality Arabian wares from silver to incense, authentic rugs, pashminas, artifacts and spices. Store holders will urge you to come and buy and haggling is expected.

Can you read what we spelt?

Do a Desert Crossing

Like the famous English explorer Wilfred Thesiger, the first European to cross the desert in 1948, I followed in his camel prints for two days across the Wahiba Sands. Only I was in a four-wheel-drive. From rolling sand dunes to the vast flatness of the Empty Quarter, this is harsh but picturesque country.

Stay at luxurious Desert Nights Camp. If you’re planning an exotic honeymoon, this is the spot. There are 24 permanent five-star tents, each with bathrooms and handmade furnishings and a restaurant with live music under the stars and a visit from local Bedouin to paint henna on the ladies. A sunset drink at the top of the surrounding sand dunes is magic. Try to arrive an hour beforehand as the colours are incredible across the golden rippling sand. They also offer camel rides and quad bikes for some noisy dune bashing.

Nizwa

There are 500 forts in Oman and the 400-year old Nizwa fort is the biggest in the Arabian peninsula. It has been restored back to its original and murderous splendor. Climb the narrow staircase and look up at the murder holes where boiling oil or burning date juice could be poured over marauding enemies trying to enter.

Nizwa Souk is not to be missed, particularly on a Friday. Thursday and Friday is the weekend in Oman and Friday is also the holy day so you will hear calls to prayer from the many mosques and see people shutting shops and dashing off to pray. On Friday the livestock market is the place to be until 11am to watch fervent bidding on camels, cattle and goats. You’ll also find stalls selling furniture, frankincense, sandalwood, pottery, incense burners and more.

Wadi Bani Awf

A wadi is a dry gorge which can fill very rapidly during the rains – and you don’t want to be in one when that happens. Several have dirt roads through them which are kept well graded and mostly free of pot holes. Wadi Bani Awf is one of the most popular four-wheel drive routes. But hold on to your lunch, this is two hours off serious off-roading and while it is open to tourists in their own hired vehicles, I’d not recommend it. Besides, taking a local guide means you get much more out of the trip than the scenery.

Visit the Al Hoota caves to view the stalactites and ‘mites then stay at Nahakl camp in motel accommodation, permanent tents with mattresses, or bring your own. The dining hall offers a simple dinner of curries, dips, salads and breads followed by juice, instant coffee or tea (unless you brought your own wine, which manners would dictate should be consumed in your room).

Salalah

In the 50C+  summer heat, Oman’s southern city of Salalah is a welcome respite. Ironically this is where everyone flocks for the monsoon season as it’s cool, wet and they love the fog that hangs over the mountains between June and September. From here you can make a day trip to the lost city of Ubar, which disappeared from maps and was thought to only exist in legend from 3000BC. But in 1992 using remote satellite sensing, Ubar was found, a developed desert settlement with an octagonal fortress and eight towers, plus numerous pots and artifacts dating back thousands of years. Today it is still being excavated and you can only make out a vague semblance of a city, but for archaeological boffins, this is a gem.

Here is a link to my Oman series for more information on my 8-days and 2200km trek through the Sultanate.

If you’re following my Oman series (you can get to it by clicking on the Rest of World/Middle East category above) you’ll know that I have 8 days to travel about 2500km and see as much of this beautiful country as possible. I think what I love most about Oman is its natural beauty. The culture and heritage is still very much alive today, yet they are ‘westernised’ enough to allow female tourists easy visiting with no head scarves except for when visiting holy places. I would, however, advise the girls to wear loose fitting clothing. You might be happy wandering about in a singlet top and shorts above your knees but these poor blokes have never seen anything like it. Their eyes will be very round and you will be stared at. But that’s ok if you want to be.

The view from my office

So we set out to cross the Empty Quarter (by 4WD not camel, thankfully) which is one of the largest sand deserts in the world. It is so huge it stretches into Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Oman covering 650,000 square kilometres (that’s nearly 3 times bigger than New Zealand!) Roads are a reasonably new addition and in most parts still either being tarsealed or not there at all causing our driver to “use his head as a GPS”. This is not the place to come without a very experienced guide and in some places you can only vaguely make out the tracks of vehicles from a few days earlier across the sand. There is literally nothing and no one for miles and miles. Then suddenly there is someone. We converged at a fork in the road with another 4WD on tour, dust and sand swirls, they gave right of way, and as quick as that they are in our rear view mirror.

I saw a mirage. An honest to goodness, it even looks blue like water and is shimmering across the road like a river, mirage. We all saw it. It wasn’t just my eyes. I didn’t stop (we might have been doing speeds in excess of 150kph in places) to take a pic, but did ask our driver whether it was the human eye that was decieved or whether a camera lens would also capture it. Human eye, apparently.

Here’s a tip: if you are planning on a desert crossing, do not use a nostril clipper for several days before hand. You will be grateful for your nasal hairs and I’m sure as alarmed as I was that my sunglasses kept “fogging” up with dust even though the air conditioning was on recycle. How much more of this stuff is in my lungs! I dare not think.

We drove across much of the desert yesterday to a patch of beach that our guides deemed suitable for erecting our tents. Tents! Pup tents, I’ll have you know!! We had 1 each and honestly, putting the bloody thing up was a test in human skill. The wind got up and Louise’s lifted off like a hot air balloon as the boys ran to help pull it back to earth and secure it with a tent peg the size of a bobby pin. Suffice to say, I don’t camp. And I certainly don’t camp where there are NO toilets, NO shower and indeed NO running water of any kind except the Arabian Sea.

Breakfast: I survived the night!

However, I took a large sized cup of Harden Up and had a great time. Once I got my head into the space that squatting in the privacy of my tent shadow was as luxurious as it was going to get and wrapped my scarf over my face to ward of blowing sand, I really did love the evening bbq of fresh fish caught by a local fisherman and cooked by our great guides, and the sing-along that invariably comes with such camping shenanigans. (I know all the words to Dolly and Kenny’s Island in the Stream and am happy to sing it acapella if requested. It doesn’t happen often.)

We climbed the sand dune behind our tents and took sunset photos, but I could only manage to open my eyes in my own tent after collapsing in a heap inside once I’d got the thing set up, when everyone squealed from about 10 metres above that they could see camels wandering in the distance like a Christmas card. Ahh well, I did manage to take about 173 camel photos regardless.

Here’s another tip: stock up on Wet Ones and tissues for your humble desert bathroom facilities. Of course you could use the sea, but when I tried I was fully clothed trying to avoid the waves of the incoming tide. It didn’t bode so well.

The next morning we set off on our 671 km journey across the desert to the stunningly swank 5-star tented resort of Desert Nights Camp. Ahhhh. Here’s another tip: if you only have a few days in Oman (it’s a 1 hour flight from Dubai and Abu Dhabi) I suggest you boot it down here and stay for 2 of them. This is the spot of the most amazing sand dune photos I took and to have the luxury of running water and a cosy bed just made it heaven.

No Christmas didn’t always smell of cinnamon that is wafted through American department stores or the chestnuts roasting on an open fire on Oxford Street. The original smell of Christmas (remember the 3 wise men bringing gold, frankincense and myrrh to baby Jesus in Bethlehem?) started in the Middle East.

Frankincense trees in Oman

Frankincense has been traded for around 5000 years. It is the sap tapped from the scraggly looking Boswellia tree and grown in Oman, Yemen and Somalia.

Omani frankincense is said to be the best in the world and the more opaque the resin, the more pure it is. You can even eat it. These humble looking trees are so hardy they grow in deserts and seemingly just out of a rock. But they don’t start producing the resin/sap until they’re about 8 – 10 years old. Hence its rarity. They’re said to be declining too and throughout Oman you’ll see small fenced-off areas with trees in them. Unusually I hardly saw fences anywhere in Oman. Cattle, camels and goats just wander where they please and the farmers call each other on their cell-phones (an odd sight) to let them know they have their stock.

To get the sap out, the tree is cut (tapped) so that it runs, then they let it harden on the bark before picking it off.

Buy a scoop from the souk

I have a jar of it that has bark still stuck to each ‘rock’.

Long known for its medicinal qualities, frankincense is used in treatments for asthma and as anti-inflammatories. It smells a lot like pine and I bought an incense burner and coals that you light, then you place a little rock of frankincense on it which melts into the charcoal and smoke wafts up your nose. It’s not a good idea to have it burning inside lest your smoke alarms go off – unless you want to test them that is.

Apparently the smoke is also a good mosquito deterrent so I shall put that to the test this summer. It certainly smells better than citronella.

A typical frankincense burner in Oman

Oman is quite new to western tourists. Most people I speak to wouldn’t know where to place it on a map and certainly don’t have it on their holiday horizon, but I loved it.

The history, traditions and culture remain completely unwesternised (unlike their neighbours Dubai and Abu Dhabi) and only being an hour’s flight from Dubai or Abu Dhabi, it makes for an easy stop over on the way to Europe from Australia and New Zealand.

If you want to read more about Oman, my top 5 tips and the famous desert crossing, click here for my full Oman series >>>

Wadi Bani Awf, Oman

A wadi is a dry gorge and there are hundreds in Oman. But when it rains you want to be tsunami distance away from them as the rising waters washing from the mountains will carry you down to Yemen if you don’t scamper.

In 8 days we’re going to drive over 2200km from top to bottom, Muscat to Salalah, over sand dunes, along dirt roads, on 6 laned tarsealed roads, through the flat and dry Empty Quarter, past tiny towns and oil wells, stop to photograph camels on beaches and the rugged, rocky scenery and torquoise ocean.

We arrived about 6pm at Jebal Shams Camp. The place is full and there are accents ranging from the posh English school-boys to crazy Dutch people doing this crossing by bicycle and local families with cute black-eyed children. Our buffet dinner consisted of plenty of hummus and dips, pita and roti bread, pieces of chicken tikka, fish and spiced beef, cucumber, tomatoes and salad, plus a hot vege curry. Alcohol is not available, but we have a sneaky duty free supply that we just purchased the tonic and coke for at the petrol station just before leaving Muscat so had a pre-dinner tipple as the sky turned pink.

Ok, it’s now 3am and I’m wide awake. The time zone conversion hasn’t kicked in so in bed with eyes on sticks by 9pm means up and about in the dark at 3.

I shall blog…

Beduoin Grandad spinning goat hair into yarn

Remote is an understatement yet there are villages dotted here and there through the wadi with stones for gardens. Kids get bused to school from even these remote villages and that is tribute to their leader who has built many schools throughout Oman. If you look up you can see litter caught in the branches of trees so the rain stories are definitely true.

We have two 4WDs for our little group of 5 plus 2 guides. Lead driver and guide Salim is a slight man of 41 with the curliest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. He speaks in a gentle voice – so gentle in fact that we in the back seat have to crane forward to hear what he’s saying. It’s worth it though as he is very knowledgeable and after a few days with some typical Aussie/Kiwi banter he chortles along with the rest of us.

The two hour drive over the gravel road today was rather quease-inducing with an emergency pull-over required for one girl. Mind you she had consumed half bag of gigantic orange cheese twirls moments earlier. The road is only about 20 years old and is graded every day to keep it clear and as smooth as possible. It’s still pretty bumpy, but you won’t find many pot holes.

It’s mid November and day time temperatures are in the high 20s C. The heat of the day dropped markedly at the summit where we are camping at Jebal Shams Camp. Well, more like glamping. It’s a bit more glam than roughing it. Duvets not sleeping bags are the giveaway.

Jebal Shams Camp at sunrise

I have my own motel-style unit with a modest bathroom and twin beds. The odd mozzie is gliding about but I am armed in repellent and have successfully taken three of them down.

In a couple of hours the sun will rise and I’ll whiz out and take photos. We arrived on dusk so haven’t had a chance to look around yet. We’re also off to visit a local beduoin family after breakfast (Nutella on roti bread for me thanks). They raise goats and the kids make jewellery to sell. I’m in awe of this place.

Oman is only an hour’s flight from Dubai or Abu Dhabi so if you’re thinking of a stopover to Europe or making it your final destination, you’ll love it.

Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, Muscat

Through the wrought iron gates you will walk through incredibly photogenic archways to be met by the dazzling white marble courtyard which when completely full can hold 20,000 worshippers.

The main prayer hall (for men only) can hold 6000 who stand in rows on a handmade 4200 sq m Persian carpet that weighs 21 tonnes. They know this because it was woven by 600 Iranian women over 4 years and brought here in 85 pieces to be stitched together. A gold painted mihrab (niche) that faces Mecca is the focus of the hall.

Swarovski chandalier

A Swarovski crystal chandalier hangs in here that 8 people can walk in (!) Only not me. I guess that’s in case the 1100 bulbs blow at once. It has 600,000 crystals and hangs 14 metres. This pic doesn’t do it justice, but it’s 8 metres in diametre.

The stained glass windows come from France and the interior walls are panelled in grey and white marble with ceramic flowers adorning them. The ceilings are inspired by Omani forts (there are 500 in the country) and Quran scriptures are written on the walls.

The women’s prayer room is smaller, it holds 750 at a time. The reason is most women pray at home while it is necessary for men to pray at the mosque. Not that it matters which mosque (and you will hear the 5x daily calls to prayer starting from sunrise) as there are many of all sizes dotted throughout Oman.

Friday is holy day in Oman. In fact Thursday and Friday is their weekend, so keep that in mind if you’re wanting to visit places other than souks. On Friday there is a sermon preached by the Imam in every mosque in the country and each on the same topic. These are decided in advance by a council of leaders, and of course, some Imams are better speakers than others. The speech from the Grand Mosque is broadcast live on TV. I didn’t hear it so can’t give you a rating.

There is quite a cleansing ritual before prayer, so the Ablution room is where you wash your hands, face and feet first.

Dazzling marble courtyard

Opening hours for non-Muslims are 8am-11am excluding Fridays.

Men and women should cover arms and legs, women should also cover their heads. Shoes are removed before entering the prayer hall. There is a cafe on site and a walk in the landscaped gardens before you leave is recommended.

Dune bashing at Desert Nights Camp

We drove from Muscat, the capital city in the north, to Salalah the cooler city in the south, zooming across sand dunes and wadis, staying in posh 5-star hotels and tented resorts and even camping by the sea in igloo tents without toilets  (to test my character). We ate fancy pants food as well as cheap offerings from hole in the wall restaurants. And I now adore Arabian food – think Turkish with a twist of Indian. We visited mosques and forts, souks and Bedouin families and I couldn’t stop taking photos.

Oman is a gem just waiting to be discovered.

You might think Oman is off the beaten track but it’s only an hour’s flight from Dubai or Abu Dhabi and couldn’t be more different to its glitzy, high-rise sisters in the Persian Gulf. Oman sits to the east of the UAE on the Gulf of Oman but its main coastline is the Indian Ocean. It is nearly the size of New Zealand or the UK (212,000 sq km) and sprawls down the eastern border of Saudi Arabia until it bumps into Yemen in the south.

Here’s a little background on this quite stunning and unspoilt country…

Sultan Qaboos bin Said

The current Sultan, Qaboos bin Said, is 69 years old with a perfectly clipped white beard. I know this because his painting is everywhere. He was trained at Sandhurst in the UK and has been running the country for nigh on 40 years after running his father out of town in 1970 (to London actually). Under his leadership he has turned the country around, invested oil money into infrastructure and helping the poor (instead of it going into royal pockets), built schools and added the buses to pick up kids in the far flung corners of the desert and generally raised the living standards of his people. They love him and have every reason to.

I find their political history quite fascinating and with a little encouragement (read, comments from you) I could go on about all that he has done. Suffice to say, Oman is now very well positioned for tourists with new hotels, excellent roads and cool architecture, yet keeping the tradition and culture still amazingly intact. And there are sand dunes and camels. Ok, I added the latter because let’s face it, you can get good roads in a lot of countries, but good roads where camels have the right of way? Now that’s just quaint.

This blog series will uncover many of Oman’s hidden gems, so stay tuned in, bookmark this page, subscribe to Blogger at Large even (!) and plan to go. It might well be the holiday of a lifetime.

If you’re already convinced,  get your travel agent to book you a trip that starts in Muscat for a good look around (including the stunning mosque), take a couple of day trips to see traditional markets and ancient forts, overnight in the ancient fort town of Nizwa and in a desert camp in Wahiba Sands, visit wadis and castles, and end back in Muscat. Marvellous.