Things to do in Oman

How the country is laid out

Oman covers 309,500 square kilometres, most of it gravel plain and sand. Nearly all the touring sits in the north. There the Hajar mountains run parallel to the coast and cut the interior off from the sea.

• The coast. Muscat and the strip of towns either side of it, with the mountains standing directly behind.
• The Hajar range. Jebel Akhdar's terraced villages near two thousand metres, and Jebel Shams, the country's high point at just over three thousand, with a canyon under its rim.
• The interior. Nizwa, the old capital, with a fort finished in the 1660s; Bahla's mud-brick fortress, a World Heritage Site since 1987; Jabrin's painted ceilings.
• The wadis and the sands. Wadi Shab and Wadi Bani Khalid's pools, the Bimmah sinkhole beside the coast road, and the dunes of the Sharqiya Sands behind them.
• Dhofar. Eight hundred kilometres south and on a different calendar: the khareef monsoon turns it green from June to September.

Crossing between them

There is no useful public transport for any of this, and no railway at all. Muscat is the single base. Everything sold from it is a long day out — Nizwa an hour and a half, Wadi Shab two.

• Car with driver. The default, and what almost every tour here means in practice.
• Four-wheel drive. Required for the mountain road up Jebel Akhdar and for the dunes; two-wheel-drive cars are turned back at the checkpoint.
• Overnight trips. Turtles at Ras Al Jinz and the desert camps work only as two-day tours, because both happen after dark.

What the country puts on sale

Wadis, forts and dunes, in that order of frequency. The water off Muscat adds diving, dolphins and fishing. The Nizwa and Jebel Akhdar loop is the most repeated day here; the wadi trio is the second.

Practical

• Season. October to April in the north. Summer inland is severe, and the pools are the only comfortable place to be.
• Wadis. Swimming is normal and modesty is expected — shorts and a t-shirt rather than swimwear.
• Flash floods. Wadis fill fast after rain, and the roads through them close without warning.
• Money. The rial is pegged at about 2.6 dollars, so small numbers are larger than they look.
• Dress. More conservative than the Gulf's resort states: shoulders and knees covered away from hotel beaches.
• Friday. Nizwa's livestock market runs on Friday morning and is over by about nine.