Guaranteed departure - Incense Routes of Oman - 6 nights / 7 days

Day 1: Ahlan Wa Sahlan, Welcome To Oman

Arrival at Muscat International Airport and transfer to your hotel in a private air-conditioned vehicle. The short drive gives you a first impression of a green, well-kept capital, and your English-speaking driver will introduce you to Muscat and to Oman along the way. Check-in on arrival; rooms are available from 14:00. Dinner and overnight at the hotel. Early check-in is only guaranteed if the room is booked from the previous night, at a supplement.

Day 2: A Full Day In The City Of Muscat

After breakfast, meet your English-speaking guide at the hotel and set out to discover the capital. Muscat is an orderly, spotless city, an easy meeting of tradition and modernity, held between a maze of rolling mountains on one side and the blue water of the Arabian Sea on the other. It has grown enormously over the past two or three decades and has kept its pride in its own culture and traditions entirely intact. The day opens at the Grand Mosque, an architectural work of great value and now the symbol of the city. The programme continues through the ministries district, where a run of modern buildings carries touches of Islamic architecture, and on to the Royal Opera House, the leading arts and cultural institution of the Sultanate. The Opera Galleria inside it holds some fifty shops of art, jewellery, fashion and perfume. The day carries on to the fishing village of Sidab, in the old part of town, where we meet the Sidab Women’s Sewing Group, a non-profit community organisation inspired and run by local women that helps the women of the village build sewing skills and earn an income. Their work is colourful and original and tells you a good deal about Omani culture; the visit is part of our commitment to responsible tourism. Then into Muttrah Souq, through narrow lanes and colourful stalls where you will find spices, coffee, traditional medicines and perfumed essences. We finish in the old city with the Bait Al Zubair Museum, a real window on Oman’s cultural heritage, and a photo stop at Al Alam Palace, flanked and protected by the two Portuguese forts of Mirani and Jalali. Dinner and overnight at the hotel. Grand Mosque: visitors are admitted Saturday to Thursday, 08:00 to 11:00. Women are asked to cover shoulders, knees and hair, men to wear long trousers. The Sidab Women’s Sewing Group is closed on Friday and Saturday.

Day 3: Majestic Forts And Mountain Villages

After breakfast, meet your guide at the hotel at 08:30 and head inland. Oman’s forts and castles are the proudest expression of a long cultural tradition. Together with the watchtowers and city walls they served for centuries as defensive strongholds and lookout points, and more than five hundred of them still stand across the country. We begin at Jabreen Castle, built as a defensive stronghold and considered today the most elegant of them all: a surprising run of corridors, secret passages, prisons and rooms with decorated ceilings, Islamic inscriptions, frescoes and finely carved doors. The drive continues with a photo stop at Bahla Fort, a UNESCO World Heritage site: an oasis ringed by mud walls whose prosperity came from the Banu Nebhan tribe, who made Bahla their capital from the twelfth to the late fifteenth century. We then board a 4x4 and climb towards Jebel Shams, the Mountain of the Sun, at 3,010 metres the highest peak in Oman. The off-road route crosses the western Hajar mountains and passes the terraced farming village of Wadi Ghul, where weavers still make heavy wool rugs in black, red and brown geometric patterns. We come down to Al Hamra, at the foot of the mountains, where people still live in mud houses built four hundred years ago, and reach Misfat Al Abriyeen for a walk through the lanes of a village whose rich agriculture is fed by the falaj irrigation system. Change from the 4x4 back to a standard vehicle for the road to Nizwa. Dinner and overnight at the hotel.

Day 4: Nizwa And The Wahiba Dunes

After breakfast we go straight to the heart of the tradition with Nizwa Fort and its Souq. The seventeenth-century round tower, built on solid rock and designed to absorb the shock of twenty-four cannon, and the souq with its fine silver jewellery are the town’s great draws. Today’s route crosses the contrasting geography of the Sultanate, from desert to oasis to wadi. We pass through Ibra and the first of the extraordinary dunes begin to rise out of the plain: here the sand reaches the gates of the farms, and a narrow belt marks the boundary between nomadic and settled life. We board 4x4 vehicles for the drive in to the tented camp. Around three thousand Bedouin herders live in the Omani desert today, raising mainly goats and camels. The Wahiba Sands, the Sea of Sand, run roughly 200 km from the Hajar mountains south to the Arabian Sea and about 100 km across, with dunes between 100 and 150 metres high that change shape and colour through the day. A drive up and over them is exhilarating, and sunset from the ridge is the moment of the day, when the sand turns through every shade of gold. Back to camp, dinner under the stars and overnight.

Day 5: The Desert, A Wadi And The City Of Dhows

For anyone who wants it, there is something worth getting up for: waking at first light, walking barefoot up a dune and waiting for the sun to come over the rim, in colours and silence that stay with you. There is time for a camel ride inside the camp too, before saying goodbye to the sand. Along the way you will see Bedouin homes and come close to a nomadic people who are genuinely hospitable and still largely untouched by tourism. We drive on to Wadi Bani Khalid, one of the most beautiful in the country. Walking between its pools takes you into wide mango plantations kept green by the falaj, the channels that let farmers work the land at the foot of the mountains. After the desert, the cool of the water is very welcome. We continue towards Sur through the Al Kamil area where, with a little luck, a camel will cross the road in front of you. Sur matters historically to the Sultanate: this is where the dhows were built, the wooden boats that carried Omani trade to India and the lands beyond, and they are still made here by hand using techniques passed down through generations. Beyond Sur lies the village of Ayja, settled quietly along the coast, its houses of curious architecture set along narrow lanes with goats and sheep grazing freely between them. Dinner and overnight. Wadi Bani Khalid is a public place. Women are asked to swim wearing a T-shirt and shorts over their swimsuit, in keeping with local custom. Men may swim in swimwear. Turtle watching at Ras Al Jinz is available tonight as an optional tour; see the optional tours page.

Day 6: Wadis And The Coast Road

Today we drive the coast road from Sur to Muscat, the Arabian Sea on one side and the mountain rock on the other. The first stop, a few kilometres out of Sur, is the ruins of Qalhat, one of the oldest port cities in Oman, where the historic walls still stand; a little way off, the shrine of Bibi Miriam rises straight out of the rock. We carry on to Wadi Tiwi, where an easy walk leads between thick palms and steep mountains, along narrow paths to the plantations and pools of clear water. Then Wadi Shab, one of the most scenic wadis in Oman: a freshwater canyon running down from the mountains to meet the sea. Its walls lead to a chain of streams and pools and, swimming through them, you reach a hidden cave with a waterfall and a turquoise pool. The day closes at the Bimah Sinkhole, a spectacular natural crater with blue-green water at the bottom that invites a swim: a place of real character, counted among the most surprising natural sights in Oman. Back to Muscat and transfer to the hotel. Dinner and overnight. Wadi Shab is a moderate walk of about an hour each way over pebbles and boulders, with narrow slippery walls and a swim through two or three pools to reach the end. Wear comfortable shoes and bring a swimsuit. The guide cannot accompany guests along the route.

Day 7: Safe Travels

After breakfast, time at leisure until your transfer to the airport with an English-speaking driver. Rooms must be vacated by 12:00. On request we can arrange an extension at a beach resort of your choice, or a flight to Salalah to carry on discovering the Sultanate, at additional cost.