Oman 2024, Part Two: Muscat – Nizwa – Jebel Akhdar

A kindly welcome

We begin with what else but the ubiquitous white Land Cruiser to ferry us from the airport to our base in the city. We are welcomed with the famous DoubleTree chocolate-chip cookie before being ushered into a suite that dwarfs the combined floor area of our island accommodations back on the Indian Ocean atoll where we work.

We turn the TV on to MBC, plop down on the sofa, and gleefully order dinner on Talabat. Noodles and dumplings, hawawshi, pasterma and Egyptian flatbread — if I can’t be in Cairo this time, I can at least eat like a Cairene — sugary luqaimat and sorely missed karak chai.

Another quotidian convenience we are woefully short of is airconditioned shopping malls. Should you ever find yourself increasingly aggravated while navigating the sweltering cacophony of congested Malé streets, you will appreciate why inhaling the scented hush of mercantile Muscat was so deeply satisfying.

We dip into Carrefour at City Centre out of nostalgia and buy armfuls of the snacks we’ve missed. At Avenues Mall, we mosey around Ikea, emerging with several parcels and no thought as to how to pack them for the return flight, and end up at the food court’s Iraqi grill. At the Mall of Oman, I stock up on perfumes with all my favorite notes: rose, citrus, vanilla, sandalwood, amber. We buy a large box, velvety green, of frankincense.

We drink endless cups of tea throughout.

So this is one of the first kindnesses Oman does for us: an easing back into anodyne civilization.

Muscat

is a pearl-white city dreaming below the dark peaks of the Hajar mountains. Its people, we have heard, are among the most peaceful of folk, and it is an assertion that is proved true again and again with every Omani we meet.

We dutifully go out for an evening promenade along the Muttrah corniche that sweeps along the deep cobalt harbor. The brightly painted souq lures me away, and I end up buying a black abaya embroidered with rhinestones, as well as an aquamarine silk shawl.

Another stop we’ve been told not to miss is the Royal Opera House, with its surfeit of Burmese teak, Italian marble and Swarovski chandeliers. We visit the House of Musical Arts across the street, and cap our cultural expedition with a pleasant lunch underneath mild skies.

And we make sure we enjoy heaping plates of shuwa, Omani spiced lamb served with rice. Dinner at Bait al Luban is a ceremonial affair that begins with a basket of warm bread, quickly devoured, and ends with a silver platter of dates. The final step in the hospitality ritual is the pouring of rosewater, scented with frankincense, over our hands.

The swords and silversmiths of Nizwa

We glide out of the capital in a black Nissan Armada with the genial Mr. Salim, and make the requisite stop for karak chai on the city outskirts.

As the road opens up to sun-streaked vistas and sharp-edged peaks beginning to bronze, Mr. Salim regales us with history and tales of the dishdasha tassel; not merely decorative, it was also soaked in perfume and could be an improvised fix for minor clothing emergencies out in the desert.

We pull into the city of Nizwa, and allow ourselves to be guided through the souqs. There are piles of pottery, stained-glass and filigreed lanterns, a profusion of dates, packets of rose tea and jars of infused honey. We miss the livestock souq, which is only open on Fridays; a most fortunate thing, for I am the type of person to fall in love with a sheep and seriously consider buying one.

We wander into a shop that looks more like a djinn armory, with a panoply of blades glinting against garnet-red walls. There are tourist-friendly decorative khanjars — the curved dagger that appears on the Omani coat of arms — as well as costlier antiques, finely worked with horn and bone handles.

Taking pride of place is a long, straight-bladed sword clad entirely in pure silver.

I am handed another sword to admire, and gingerly slip it out of its heavily ornamented scabbard. This is much harder to do than it looks in the movies.

Having valiantly restrained myself from purchasing any weaponry to brandish in the boardroom, I nevertheless make off with an ornately engraved cuff — perfectly beautiful, perfectly safe to wear while seated next to the security manager at the next morning meeting — from Nizwa’s famed silversmiths.

Next to the souq is the Nizwa Fort with its massive circular tower. It was built over an underground stream and was designed to be an impregnable defense against a protracted siege.

We walk past cannons, murder holes, gun ports and heavy spiked doors, and into a courtyard where a woman is peacefully making khubz rakhal. She pours the dough over a round cast-iron griddle and spreads it paper-thin by hand, finishing with a light filling of cheese and a splatter of honey. I gratefully take one.

A camel unexpectedly trots past, like a mirage. A few feet away, there is a pair of placidly grazing Arabian oryx. I want to pat their noses, but those long horns give me pause.

The idyllic reverie vanishes with the sharp staccato of the Al Razha, a dance of flashing swords and singsong poetry, performed by a troop of men in olive dishdashas.

We climb to the crenellated parapet, with the echoes of the martial melody still in our ears. From our lofty perch, we survey the date palms that stretch to the horizon, and marvel at the indomitable fortress that still stands underneath the blazing sun.

Our 17th-century military planners, however, could not have accounted for airborne ordnance. The British RAF assaulted the fort during the Jebel Akhdar War in the late ’50s.

It is to ‘the green mountain’ that we head next.

Jebel Akhdar

The Nissan Armada is not for show; the Royal Oman Police enforce the 4×4 requirement at the checkpoint.

Jebel Akhdar’s dramatic limestone massifs and plunging valleys weren’t yet a UNESCO biosphere reserve on this visit, but they were recognized a year later. It is also neither the season for the pomegranate harvest, nor for the blush-pink damask roses to be in full bloom, but we clamber up to a rocky plateau and peer at the terraced orchards and stone villages below anyway.

Somewhere along this ridge is Diana’s Viewpoint, the exact spot where the late Princess of Wales once took in the same cinematic panoramas. (It is enclosed by a nearby resort now.)

After all that traipsing around in the heat and rock climbing, we stop for a well-deserved lunch of Omani shuwa and an Iranian mixed grill with a side of warak enab (stuffed grape leaves, another favorite gleaned from my Doha life) on a canopied rooftop beneath masses of bougainvillea. We end, as we always do, with cups of tea.

On the way back to Muscat, we stop by the UNESCO-listed aflaj, an active system of channels that collect water for domestic and agricultural use. Mr. Salim provides an etymology lesson: the singular form is falaj, which means to divide into shares, and this refers to the equitable distribution of water among neighbors. Omani communities have been sharing the responsibility for this irrigation system since AD 500, but according to archaeological evidence, the aflaj may even predate the more celebrated Roman aqueducts by two millennia.

I climb the steps, hewn into stone, and walk along the palm-lined canal. For a while there is no sound but the serene rustle of the water, cold and clear and ancient, flowing through sunshine and shadow.

The sun is dipping below coppery mountains as we return to the capital, souls quiet and still. Another kindness from the land itself.