The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Oman is a date you will never forget
Emma Thomson dances in the desert, swims by a waterfall and loses herself in ancient Arabia
If you can’t find a date in Oman, you’ll have no chance elsewhere. From May to October, the sweet fruit weighs down the boughs of every palm in every wadi. There are thousands of tons of dates. The fruit is fed to donkeys just to get rid of it. So when our (by coincidence) all-female group arrived on a new tour by Flash Pack – which runs adventures for solo travellers in their 30s and 40s – in November, having just missed date season, the irony wasn’t lost.
But it wasn’t romance we had come
for. While Europe is fending off frostbite, in Oman the mercury stays in the 80s all year, making it an adventurous winter-sun alternative.
Don’t assume it shares the strict Islamic code of neighbouring Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Oman is a safe sultanate that keeps to itself and has had strong links with Britain since the 19th century. Indeed, switch on the nationwide Merge FM and you’ll hear a Londoner counting down the top 10.
It turns out a good date is the key to getting to know “O-man” better. “Date palms were a source of life for Omanis, especially during the world wars, when no goods were imported,” said Hilal Alabri, patting the thick scales of a tree as if it were his brother’s back.
A resident of medieval Misfat al Abriyeen, he and his cousin Hamid Alabin can trace 25 generations of their family in this village, back to pre-Islamic times. Time-worn clay pots stand in the ruins of 800-year-old homes and donkeys shoulder grass bales through ancient alleyways where the steps are worn smooth by soles. We are standing in the shade of the cousins’ terraced garden. Crowded around us are banana and pomegranate trees, and we hear the distant rush of the falaj canal system that channels water to the plots.
“I’ve literally grown up with these palms. I really miss them if I don’t go to the fields for a few days,” said Hilal.
Every part of the tree is used. The fronds can be lashed together to make livestock pens, the fruit stalks used as brooms, the palm fibres as pan scourers and, if you find yourself under siege, boiling up date juice and pouring vats of it on the heads of your enemies, as they did at Nizwa Castle, tends to swing the battle in your favour. Most importantly, the fruit can be dried and stored for later.
“Male date palm trees are the biggest, of course,” said our wiry guide, Hanna Tanassy, flexing his bicep for effect. “Female palms have to be tickled by hand with the male pollen to produce good-quality dates,” he continued, with a naughty twinkle in his eye. “Puts a new spin on date-ing!” I said, smiling.
Come summer, they can harvest. “I was 10 years old the first time I climbed,” said Hilal, slinging a habl al tuluw (harness) around his back and heaving himself barefoot up the trunk to show us how they would collect the fruit in baskets. As he levered himself down, his breath was quick. “It makes you feel good – strong – because the young people can’t. They never learnt and they prefer iPads.”
Having demonstrated his might, he turned to me. “Are you married? Would you like to be my wife number two?” I waited for a teasing laugh, but it didn’t come. “I have 35 palms,” he added, to sweeten the deal. Day two: marriage proposal. Check.
We’d started among the glossy boulevards of Muscat and, crossing the Al-Hajar Mountains, veered on to an unmarked road. The 4x4s squealed like donkeys as they strained against the steep incline and clung to the blind bends of the one-wagon-wide rubble path, billed as Oman’s equivalent of Bolivia’s Death Road.
As the tyres teetered on the rim, I tugged my seat belt a little tighter.
Far below, sugar-cube homes shone between gullies of ragged limestone that rose in great heatsplintered spears.
In the bowels of a ravine, we pulled over, laced on some sturdy boots and hiked into the canyon. Goat droppings were strewn on the ground as if someone had spilt a box of Maltesers.
Wood smoke wafted down the valley as we scrambled up to the village of Balad Sayt – population
150 – bound for the remains of an old Persian watch tower. The alleys were
quiet. The only sign of life was a pile of sandals outside the mosque. From the tower, we looked into a copse of date palms sheltered by ochre hills.
On the way down, the mosque doors opened. Men and boys in embroidered
kummahs (cotton caps) shuffled their shoes on and left, but three invited us in for coffee. Mahmood, Jamal and Assa were on leave from the army and police. We sat cross-legged on the carpet and they pushed bronze platters laden with orange segments and perfumed pomelo toward us.
Coffee was drizzled into thimblesized cups from on high. “They’ve made it from the dried and ground stones of dates,” said Hanna, bantering with the men in Arabic as they made fun of his Lebanese accent.
We headed southeast for the Sharqiya Sands – formerly known as the Wahiba Desert. To up the adventure, Majeed, our driver, dropped us on the outskirts and handed us a GPS unit to find our camp. As we walked, camels were silhouetted on the horizon, crisp as cardboard cut-outs. I fell behind taking photographs and was struck by the special stillness a desert offers – a vacuum of quiet heat that strips life back to the basics of water and walking. The sand lay like wrinkled silk where our footsteps had fallen.
After admiring the sunset from a hill, we showered beneath a half moon and headed towards the campfire, where flames danced around a metal teapot. A local Bedouin started caressing bittersweet melodies from an oud (like a lute) and we lay back on the cushions, soaking up the stars, until another joined in with a darbuka (goblet drum) and the beat intensified.
I jumped up and joined the guides in a camel dance, the sand between our toes. I fell asleep with the smell of wood smoke in my hair, the honeyed lilt of distant Arabic voices and a single lantern illuminating star patterns on the tent.
After baking fresh breakfast chapatis over the remains of last night’s fire, we headed for Wadi
Shab – a valley known for wild swimming – to wash off the dust. We sloshed down a reed-rich wadi, and the canyon funnelled us deeper and deeper until we were swimming.
“Follow me. I know a secret cave,” said Hanna. Through a narrow gap, the rocks opened up into a high cavern where the roar of a waterfall drowned out our voices. Using an old tethered rope, I hauled myself up the torrent and squeezed through a nook to find a secluded pool. Dragonflies rested on the warm rocks and small fish nibbled at my toes. The water was clear as glass. I floated, looking up at the hot sky from between the high walls. It was time for some more relaxation.
Salalah – the capital of Oman’s southern Dhofar Province – is opening up as a fly ’n’ flop beach extension, thanks to the completion of a slick new airport in 2015, so I waved off the group and went there. “Capital” is a bit of an overstatement for a town of 300,000, largely known as the birthplace of the current Sultan and for the Al Hosn Palace, where he stays every few years. The town’s heyday was in the 13th century, when it sat at the centre of the trade route for frankincense. The Museum of the
Land of Frankincense has the history.
“Until four years ago, we only had guests during July and August, when Gulf visitors come for khareef (the monsoon) and the rains make it green like Africa. Now, we’re aiming to become the new Sharm El Sheikh, so we no longer rely on oil,” said my guide, Raya Al Alawi, as we drove past boulevards of big-brand hotels lined up between coconut plantations and a thick wedge of sparkling white sand.
We passed Taqah Beach, where weathered fishing boats clustered on the shore. “There are sardines everywhere!” laughed Raya. But I cut her off. “Look, dolphins!” I shouted, pointing to a row of fins arcing through the still Arabian Sea. Raya didn’t seem impressed. “Oh, you see them every day here,” she shrugged.
Foreigners aren’t allowed to sunbathe on Taqah – Salalah is more conservative than multicultural Muscat – so I asked Raya to take me to a beach where we could swim. We made a U-turn and headed west, past the Goliath shipping containers of Salalah Port – where scenes from Captain Phillips, starring Tom Hanks, were shot – and down an unpaved switchback to Fazayah Beach, a six-mile span of pristine sand presided over by the wreck of the Raysut II, which ran aground in May. Its sands will have Instagrammers salivating. “Two years ago no one came here, but that will change when they tarmac the road,” said Raya.
Others agree. On my way back to the airport, I met Daniela Million, a German who had spent three weeks driving herself around Oman. “I would say visit now,” she said. “It’s developing very quickly and the old spirit is changing.”
Oman is a Middle
Eastern lady you should date without delay.