Firstly, this is what 50 degress C looks like.

Muscat, is somewhere I’ve always dreamt of going. I have strange dreams. It’s the capital city of Oman – a sea port, on the old spice route, where dhows sailed back and forth to south east Asia and China for thousands of years. Very exotic and romantic and fairy tale. Ali Baba, Sinbad, Scheherazade. Above it is Iran, and below is Yemen. Behind it is Saudi Arabia. Facing into the beautiful Arabian Sea.
In reality of Oman is like Sim City. About 40 years ago they discovered oil and gas reserves and the Sultan (and the country) became mega-rich. So everything in Muscat is new and shiny and bold and 40 years old. There wasn’t much there to start with other than some mud brick building and old forts around the harbour. The city’s new infrastructure – like roads and street lights is huge and perfect; there’s a drive through (halal) McDonalds’s every 50 mtrs; hospitals, free university education; new mosques; expensive SUV’s and 4 wheel drives; but no sky scrapers or western architecture, not culture-less and generic …like Dubai-alike places. Everything is Arabian, so it’s very tasteful and beautiful and elegant. Pale pastel and white low rise buildings set against the palest pink and salmon coloured barren hills.
But what Oman doesn’t have is any people or water. All the menial work is done by Indian, Sri Lankan and Filipinos. All administration and business is done by expats. The Sultan is quickly trying to build an Omani workforce from the tiny population – but it takes time and more than 1 generation to stop being illiterate tent people and start running a country.
Once you leave Muscat (which is pretty tiny) the countryside is ancient and original and bare of ANY vegetation – like 2 thousand years ago, but with an expensive road running through it. The population is very sparse. The once nomadic people and their camels live in villages now, but there’s still camels wandering everywhere. Major traffic hazard.
It’s austere and dramatic and stunning. The people are reserved and handsome. Not unfriendly, more uninterested in Grey Lynn housewives and their offspring. It’s so intensely hot and dry that you don’t really see anyone. The country is vast and there’s hardly any people in it anyway.
You quickly get excited to see trees – which are always/only date palms. Or any agriculture around the oasis’s, because it’s brutally dry and crisp everywhere. 50 degrees. Easily the hottest place we’ve ever been.
If you got out of your air conditioned jeep and walked around in the sun with no water I think you would die in about 2 hours.
The other thing about the new, amazing road is that there aren’t any roads off it. There’s only ‘no road’. A dry river bed in a wadi or camel tracks. We nearly rolled the car in some sand dunes. It sucked. There were tears. And no alcohol to make it better.
Jack and Mol were pretty gob smacked by some Bedouin people we visited in their (fancy, big) traditional tent.They couldn’t handle that anyone could choose to live with the heat, and flies and camel stink. That the kids there could play or read or relax when outside there were one million camels and death-in-2-hours.
The food was fantastic. Hummus, flat bread, cucumber salads. Lamb (goat?), Nile perch, lots of eggplant and dates, dates, dates. We didn’t try camel. We’ve ate in very safe places again – but there’s no ‘eating on the streets’ anyway, because people don’t hang outside when its 50 degrees. They sit in cafes smoking and drink thick gritty cardamon coffee, or milky sweet saffron tea. No alcohol – poor things. Public places are shady and smell of frankincense or rose oil (with a hint of camel dung). There’s a lot of beautiful carpets and floor cushions. It’s very elegant and charming and serene. The opposite of noisy, stinky wet India.
We visited a couple of towns – Nizwa, the old capital which has a famous castle, and Sur, on the coast which has forts and old mosques. The most amazing thing to see is the landscape. Huge and scary and dramatic.
I think it matched the fairy tale picture I had. I’d like to go back at a cooler time of year and visit Salalah in the south, where there are plantations and cool breezes … but it’s too close to Yemen to go this time.