The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
‘It was so peaceful and I was hooked’
Magical, serene and surprisingly green, Oman is the antithesis of its glitzy Gulf State neighbours, says comedian Rob Brydon
Of all the places I have been, Oman has blown me away like nowhere else. As a destination, it’s just magical. My wife and I have been there several times, and I know plenty of other dedicated returners – and yet the appeal of the country is still surprisingly unknown.
When I mention it to people, they’re often perplexed – as if you’ve just told them you’re going on holiday to Iraq. Most picture a combination of flashy skyscraper cities and flat, unrelenting desert, but this corner of the Arabian Peninsula doesn’t do skyscrapers, and it’s also astonishingly green – the antithesis of some of its more glitzy neighbours. It has wonderful rock formations, and wadis where you can swim in the middle of the desert, and the people are so welcoming. The first time we went, we stayed in a hotel called the Alila Jabal Akhdar – high, high on a hill, up a gorge. It was one of the most peaceful places I’ve ever been, and from then on I was hooked. It’s utterly unique, and there are so many reasons to go – here are just a few.
IT’S NOT JUST DESERT
Oman is blessed with the most dramatic of mountains, and while it certainly has its fair share of desert, it is also surprisingly green. Dates, bananas, pomegranates and all manner of other fruits grow. As do roses – the region is famous for them and also for its highquality rose water, used as both a beauty product and in food (such as the super-sweet halwa, which is a perfect foil for the bitterness of cardamomflavoured Arabic coffee).
ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE
ABOUND
Dunes by Al Nahda (dunesbyalnahda. com) – a luxurious tented encampment in the South Batinah region – is the place to go if you want to experience the romance of the desert: starry skies, camel rides into the sunset and, less romantically, dune-bashing. The locals are all out at weekends in their 4x4s (de rigueur in Oman), sliding over the sand (it’s a bit like driving on ice) and wellying down ever-higher dunes in an Arabic game of chicken.
THERE’S A RICH CULTURE
The Omanis were famous seafarers, and it was here that archaeologists found the remains of the Arabian Peninsula’s most ancient boat. In 1980, a replica was created by British explorer Timothy Severin and named Sohar, after the town where folk character Sindbad was said to have been born. With a crew of 25, the boat sailed from Oman to China over the course of eight months, using the stars for navigation. A replica of the Sohar now sits on the roundabout in front of the Al Bustan Palace hotel in Muscat.
As if that wasn’t enough, the ruins of the ancient fortified port at Sumhuram are said to be the remains of the biblical Queen of Sheba’s summer palace.
THERE’S WATER, WATER
EVERYWHERE
Salalah is the greenest place in Oman. Its proximity to India means that this southern corner of the country catches the tail end of the monsoons, known here as al khareef, which fall as a constant mist in July and August, when gardens burst into flower, and papayas, mangoes and coconuts ripen – not to mention bananas, for which the region is particularly well known. For these months, the mountains turn green and wadis become fast-flowing rivers and stark cliff-face waterfalls.
IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT OIL
Frankincense trees grow in Dhofar, 100 miles north of Salalah, and were the reason for Oman’s immense wealth in the ancient world, funding cities and palaces of dazzling splendour.
Legend has it that Omanum Emporium – which featured on Ptolemy’s map of AD 150 and is sometimes known as the Atlantis of the Sands – was a city built to rival paradise, set with precious stones and topped with golden roofs. But its paganism and debauchery was said to have provoked the wrath of
Allah, who buried it under the desert (an alternative explanation says it was the casualty of a natural disaster). It is often linked with the city of Irem in the Koran, and Ubar in Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, and was claimed to have been rediscovered by satellite in 1992, near modern Shisr.
There are scant remains to be seen at the excavations, but the drive from the empty beaches – populated only by fishing boats and flocks of flamingos – through fertile river valleys and back up into the southern jabal is truly breathtaking.
NATURE IS LEFT TO BLOOM
This is a country full of natural wonders. At Hawiyat Najm (Arabic for “the deep well of the falling star”), the story is that a huge sinkhole, now filled with deep, green water, was created by a meteor impact.
Schools of dolphins – hundreds at a time – frolic off the coast. Beneath the water, vivid corals bloom. Every year, 20,000 turtles come to lay their eggs, leaving them to hatch in the warm Omani sands. The country has some of the world’s largest underground caverns, too, such as the majestic Majlis alJinn, discovered in 1983.
YOU’LL RETURN WITH
UNUSUAL SOUVENIRS
You will find frankincense in the souks alongside exquisite perfumes, leather, pottery, gold, silver and the silversheathed knife, the khanjar, which is a national symbol of Oman. All the treasures of the Orient, in fact.