Oman

• The Pleasure Domes - Abu Dhabi
• The butler did it - Bahrain
• Dazzled by Dubai - Dubai
• Dubai’s must-do half dozen - Dubai
• The Day Chris tried to swap me for a camel - Egypt
• Ten great wonders - Egypt
• Keeping up with the Joneses - Jordan
• You CAN afford star treatment… - Middle East
• The hippy haunts of Hendrix - Morocco
• Souks you, sir! - Morocco
• Travelling in the sands of time - Oman
• OMAN! What a desert oasis - Oman

AFTER SO MANY VISITS, I was a bit Dubai-ed out! Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoy the place but I have been there at least once every winter for the past four or five years. When England starts to get chilly and you have to scrape the ice off your windscreen in the mornings, it’s time to think seriously about Dubai and that fascinating part of the world. For a winter break, compared with Australia, the Caribbean, Thailand or Southern Africa, it’s just up the road. A flight of seven hours or so – with lunch, a few drinks and a kip – and you step out into a different world.

My criticism is that it’s simply not different enough. Dubai has become so deliberately Westernised that there’s hardly a hint of old Araby about it. I shall return, of course I will. I love the place and I’ve made many friends out there. Indeed at one point I nearly bought a house there, but it’s all a bit in-your-face, which is why in January after a frantic round of charity cricket, black-tie dinners and celebrity auctions, I needed some peace and solitude. I needed the desert skies at night. I needed mountains that swept down to the Gulf.

Just an hour’s flight away I found every single thing I needed and much, much more – I found Oman. If Dubai is becoming increasingly like Vegas, Oman is Montana or Wyoming. It is absolutely stunning-a breathtaking piece of history that has barely changed for centuries and proudly refuses to do so. Signs of the Omanis’ proud history are everywhere, stretching back thousands of years. There are ancient fortresses scattered all over the place. Sometimes a lonely tower standing in a remote sandy desert is all that is left, but the remains are everywhere across the Sultanate. The desert areas of Oman are truly vast. I have always found relentless sand, for mile after parched mile, the most formidable, frightening kind of terrain.

It would be very easy to get disorientated. The sand burns underfoot and is constantly shifting and swirling at the whim of the winds blowing in from the Arabian Sea. Some of the dunes are more than 650ft high. We linked up with a mad expat called Rob Gardiner, formerly from Blackpool, who now runs an outfit in Oman called MDAC which organises every conceivable kind of expedition that the visitor might fancy – fishing, diving, rock-climbing, whale-watching or racing along dry riverbeds. You name it, he organises it, and in a week we did just about the lot. We spent many happy hours in hired Landcruisers roaring up to the top of some of the biggest dunes, then almost falling out of the sky as we dropped down the precipice on the other side back down to the flat sand.

Sunrise and sunset

We also had one exhilarating morning roaring flat-out down the dunes, facedown on tin trays borrowed from our hotel – and that was pretty hairy. The boring bit was the long walk back up the dune, tin tray under the arm after each mad screaming charge downhill. At night the desert becomes a very different place. There are plenty of organised trips for the visitor to stay out overnight under the stars in desert camps and I can’t recommend these highly enough as one of those things you should do at least once in your life.

The sunsets and sunrises are unforgettable. The giant orange sun appears and disappears over the desert skyline as if someone is turning it on and off by throwing a switch Be warned, though, the baking hot temperatures of daytime in the desert can plunge to bitter cold at night. It seems madness at noon when you pack it but you will be so grateful for that jumper around midnight. My completely barking-mad wife Ingrid and her girlfriend Jean spent what they described as an utterly memorable night camping out in the desert as guests of a Bedouin family. The food and hospitality were fantastic and Ingrid says just to be out there at night was something she will never forget.

We husbands had a good time as well, propping up the bar in our hotel – an altogether different but equally spiritual experience. The girls’ night out underlined, above all, how amazingly safe the place is and how friendly the Omanis are. They are particularly well disposed towards the British and how rare and refreshing is that these days? We have a long history together but essentially they are just an incredibly open, warm people. In spite of the world’s understandable fears about some areas of the Middle East, Oman is simply no part of that equation. We felt totally safe everywhere. Walking through the markets after dark or stopping among complete strangers in remote desert areas, we encountered only goodwill.

Even in the crowded souks there was none of that accosting from stallholders that you get in so many markets the world over. My abiding memory of the locals is of them smiling at us everywhere we went. Nor will you see any skyscrapers here. Unlike many of the bigger cities of modern Arabia, the Omani capital Muscat has no massive multi-storey insurance offices or international hotels reaching up to the sky as your plane comes in to land. The international hotels are here – we stayed at the Hyatt – but they are built very deliberately in traditional style.

All of the housing for Muscat – and in fact the whole country – is flat-roofed and of white stone in a style that can barely have changed since pre-Biblical times. At dusk, as the stone houses are lit up by the last rays of the bright red sun and the locals sit on their doorsteps smoking, chatting and feeding their babies, Muscat is a beautiful place to stroll through. And, of course, while you are in Muscat, you must visit the Grand Mosque. This stunning building was completed two years ago by Sultan Qaboos Bin Said Al Said as his gift and his masterpiece. Most impressive of all, as you look up in awe at the ornate ceilings, are the gold chandeliers. They are absolutely huge and the central one is the biggest in the world. To give you an idea of its massive fragile dimensions, if a bulb blows, a man is lowered down from the roof inside the chandelier to change it.

An abundance of fish

The desert in Oman is just one fascinating but daunting part of the landscape. Bordering the desert areas – and very popular with rock climbers all year round – are the mountains. In many areas they cascade all the way down to the sea. We explored many caves among them during our trip and swam in several spots where the ocean actually flowed through the rock, giving whole areas an almost Scandinavian feel to them. The beaches themselves are worth the journey alone.

You will never have to fight over a little square of sand for you and your deckchair. In fact, I’m not sure Oman actually ‘does’ deckchairs. Instead you will find mile after mile of more or less deserted beach. The coastline of Oman stretches for more than 1,200 miles from Dubai in the north all the way down to Yemen and apart from the fishermen mending their nets, you will often go for miles without seeing another human being. The sea provides the staple diet and income for a large percentage of Oman’s population. The fish market at mid-morning in Muscat is a hive of activity as the fishermen come in to sell their catch. When we were there just after Christmas the nets were heaving with big tuna and barracuda.

I can vouch for the abundance of fish here. We had a short morning angling just offshore with Rob and the sea seemed to be teeming with them. Time and again small fish that we caught were ripped off the hooks and the line cut through on the way up, presumably by barracuda or giant grouper. After our fishing expedition we swam and sat by the gulf, watching dolphins no more than a couple of hundred yards offshore. The same beach is a favourite with whale-watchers too, and not far along the shoreline, is a protected breeding ground for several species of marine turtle that come ashore to lay their eggs. It was a moment to be savoured as we sipped beers from our freezer box and enjoyed the heat of the lunchtime sun. The air temperature was close to 30 degrees Celsius and the sea was so warm it was like stepping into a bath. Not bad for January.