Muscat
After a few sea days, we reached Muscat, Oman – our first port in the Middle East, and a new country for Kathy. Oman is below the radar for most people – which is a pity because it is a lovely, interesting country. Up until the early 1950s, it was basically a nomadic tribal society – read the excellent book “Arabian Sands” by Thiesinger for an account of how unchanged it was before then. It’s been run by a benevolent, competent leader for the last 30+ years, Sultan Qaboos, (pronounced like the last car in a train). It is Islamic, and rather conservative. They have enough oil money to build up public infrastructure like roads and schools, but not enough to become profligate. They have a long history of working with the British, which has probably rubbed off in how well things are run.
The country has an odd geography. It is all sheer mountains and arid deserts except for a few small sections of flat land next to the sea. Most of the population lives in these little pockets . Just a couple of miles inland the mountains rise, and the deserts start. It is almost uninhabitable, populated only by small Bedouin encampments.
Our first port, Muscat, is the capital and largest city. After the dirt and chaos of India, Muscat was a like a quiet, soothing salve. Neat and orderly, everything painted white, flowers blooming everywhere, nobody honking. We visited a massive mosque with what had to be the largest chandelier in the world, a small but excellent museum that described the various tribal customs and clothing, and my favorite, the main souq (market). Here's a 
photo album.
Salalah, Oman
It was a full day’s sail to the other end of the country, to the second largest city of Salalah. Basically, there is nothing in-between – just mountains and desert. We didn’t visit Salalah at all save driving through it – instead we went on a four-wheel-drive trip through the mountains and deserts to the edge of the famous Empty Quarter, the immense trackless desert that makes up most of Saudia Arabia and some of Oman.
Like all the countries in this region, Oman has been inhabited for thousands of years, with layer after layer after layer of civilizations come and gone. Oman was an important and rich player back in these good old days, with frankincense being its main trade item. Anybody know what frankincense actually is? It is burned to provide aromatic smoke (used today mainly in tradition eastern churches), and is made out of the sap of the frankincense tree, which grows only a few places in the world. Our first stop was at a frankincense reserve, where there were a few dozen of these gnarly trees (more like bushes actually). There's a photo of some of the sap, in the photo gallery above.
Next stop was the exotically name “Lost City of Ubar”, a famous city on the ancient trade routes – located at that rare desert commodity, a constant source of water from an underground spring. The city was well documented in ancient history, but its exact location was a mystery until some scientists looked at satellite maps and were able to detect its outline. There’s been some excavation, but there’s not a lot to see. The town was only a couple hundred people – it was more famous for who passed through than for who lived there. The town disappeared from history in the middle ages – the excavation showed that a major portion of the town collapsed into a sinkhole/cave that the water had flowed through.
We drove 100+ miles inland – just desert and mountains. Almost totally barren. We saw some traditional Bedouin camps, but most Bedu are now housed in cement-block houses provided by the government. Because school is compulsory, the Bedus have become much less nomadic (though they still often roam part of the year). Still plenty of camels and goats and sheep around each camp/home – as well as a white Toyota pickup and a satellite dish.
All through this area, the roads were in excellent shape, and supplied with electricity. Eventually we got an area where the road turned to dirt. A while further on, and the electrical poles stopped. Further still, and we reached the sands of the Empty Quarter – hundreds of miles of tall, trackless, ever-shifting dunes. We had some fun riding over the dunes in a our 4WDs, got out and climbed a few of them, then had a boxed lunch under an acacia tree – quite lovely, until hundreds of camel ticks came running towards us from all directions, desperate for *their* lunch. They really prefer camels, but some grudgingly lowered themselves to humans – Scott brought a couple back to the ship with him.
We sailed away, entranced by Oman and hope to go back there and spend more time. There are lovely resorts, good diving, and an ancient civilization to explore when you get tired of beach & water.
Next: Return to Sharm-el-Sheik; visit to Petra
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