Why Oman
Oman is a happy anomaly in the Middle Eastern tourism landscape. No glass and steel skyline, no excessive ambition: the Arabian Peninsula as it existed before oil, preserved almost intact in its dirt forts, oases irrigated by thousand-year-old falaj and villages perched on granite ridges. Sultan Qaboos, who reigned from 1970 to 2020, made heritage preservation and hospitality a state policy. The result is a country where you can drink a spiced coffee with a camel herder in the morning, dive into a turquoise wadi in the afternoon and dine on fresh lobster facing the Gulf of Oman in the evening.
The diversity of the landscapes is surprising. In one week, you go from the dunes of Wahiba Sands (12,500 km² of golden sand, 100-metre ridges) to the fjords of Musandam, as spectacular as the Norwegian fiords but bathed in translucent turquoise water. Between the two, the mountains of the Western Hajar exceed 3,000 metres and hide villages of Damask rose and pomegranate fields. In the south, Salalah experiences a botanical paradox unique to the peninsula every summer: the Dhofar monsoon grows lush vegetation on cliffs overlooking Saudi Arabia.
Oman is also a country that has not yet given in to the masses. The circuits remain intimate, the sites not very saturated, the inhabitants of an authentic kindness that has nothing to do with tourist performance. This is precisely what many are looking for without finding it in more covered destinations.
