SIGHT SEEING IN THE SULTANATE OF OMAN

SIGHT SEEING IN THE  SULTANATE OF OMAN By Sultan Chris Bin Ellis

Right next door to where we are living here in the United Arab Emirates is the Sultanate of Oman.  Many of us travel across the border to visit the coast for weekends or holidays.  Oman has a long coast line with white sandy beaches that stretch right down the Arabian sea to the Yemen border.

It is a quiet, relatively unknown, part of the world and the access to the country from Dubai is through the Hajar mountains.  We traveled in our car from the border post through the desert and up into the silent mountain passes.  The roads are superb and with very little traffic on them.  The journey is broken up by small oasis villages with hill forts.  The striated rocks of the mountains reminded me of the Richtersveld and every now and then a rather battered acacia tree hung onto the sandy ground of a crevice.

We arrived for lunch in the coastal town of Sohar, which was the home of the legendary Sinbad the Sailor, although he was out of town on the day we visited.   You will remember that the Sultan of Oman was also, at one time, the Sultan of Zanzibar and the Omanis have a long seafaring history down the coast of Africa.  There is still this hint of the past with large Arab dhows moored in the harbour and souqs and markets on the wharf sides.   We had lunch at the Sohar Beach Hotel, which was a peaceful interlude overlooking tropical gardens and then set off down the coastal road to the capital city of Muscat.  We had not booked accommodation as it was out of season and still in the winter, which is the best time to visit anywhere here in the Middle East before the very hot summer. 

We are fans of the Lonely Planet guides and usually try and find the Middle Range of accommodation.  Our criteria are an en suite bathroom and a comfortable mattress.  The Lonely Planet also gives a Budget option (mostly hostels) and a Top End of selected five star hotels.  We travel with paper bowls, muesli and long life milk, as we are not really into the full breakfast routine, and tea bags, tin mugs and a heating element to put in the mugs.  Having learnt from experience we carry three adaptor plugs (one with small round pins, one with large round pins and one with square pins).

So we found the Beach Hotel in Qurm, which is a suburb of Muscat and settled in for the night eager to explore the city the next day. 

Muscat must be one of the cleanest and best laid out cities in the world, with an immaculate walled city of old Arabic fort-like buildings built in sand coloured local stone.  The palace of Sultan Qaboos, the leader of the country since 1970, is situated in the middle of the city and looks like a scene from 1001 Arabian Nights.  Muscat is wedged in a narrow plain between sandy bays and the mountains that tower in the background.  Amongst all the buildings are the most exquisite mosques with pointed domes and towers, which are covered in typically turquoise and blue coloured tiles.

We pottered around until we found the souq in Muttrah, which is set around a small idyllic bay complete with a corniche (promenade) and a fish market.  The Muttrah souq is , indeed, like Aladdin’s cave, with little alleyways full of stalls selling silver daggers (khanjars), Omani silver jewelry and frankincense.  The frankincense is an aromatic sap that comes out of the bark of an unprepossessing tree called boswellia sacra (I thought you would like to know this).  Omani silver, on the other hand, is very prepossessing and the artistry of the silversmiths is from a very old tradition.  The silver is not as shiny or reflective as Western silver and sometimes has some copper mixed in with it.

For our last evening in the city we decided to go to a restaurant called the Khargeen Café, at the Madinat Al Sultan Qaboos, which had been recommended to us.  We usually allow ourselves three chances to get lost for each destination when we are on holiday. This evening we used up our allocated three chances fairly quickly but managed to find it on the fourth try, so perhaps go there in a taxi on your next visit to Muscat (when you come over for the yearly camel sales).   It is one of those rare places where Western tourists mix with the traditional local people.  Most of the restaurant is outside under large fig and acacia trees and the furniture is made of local wood and wrought iron with bright rugs and carpets on the ground.  Khargeen means “a little wooden cottage” in Omani and the atmosphere was intimate despite the fact that most of the inhabitants of Muscat seemed to be eating there on the night we visited.  There was a warm breeze coming off the Gulf of Oman and a light smell of mint and apple from the smoke of the Sheesha pipes.  In fact one of the waiter’s sole duty was to go round the tables with a cradle of hot coals to keep the pipes alight.

On the ancient maps  the Middle East was called Arabia Felix, meaning Happy Land.  On nights like these, feasting under a clear star-filled sky, one can see why.