Travelling in Oman

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I just thought I'd start an ask-me-anything thread regarding a holiday I recently went on, to Oman. I figured that this might help dispel some preconceptions about traveling to certain parts of the Middle East. Plus - from a forum-relevant perspective, the roads are AWESOME & they love their F-Trucks and Mustangs over there.

Firstly, here's where Oman is:



It's perhaps 25% larger than Victoria. We did a road trip from the capital (Muscat) to a city in the south called Salalah, which was dead-on 1000kms, most of which was through the desert. We also did a bunch of road trips throughout the northern coast & its mountain backdrop.

Geographically, there's a strip of coast along the north-east of the country, with the Hajar mountains running parallel to this coast. The guts of the country is proper desert, and the southern portion ("Dhofar" province, close to Yemen) also consists of a coastal plain surrounded by a mountain range. During their monsoon Khareef season, Dhofar is green, wet, & misty.

THE PEOPLE

Culturally, they're very welcoming and easygoing people; a blend of africans, arabs, and indians/pakistanis. Muscat & the northern coast has a multicultural metropolitan population. Nizwa, a traditional area inland & perhaps Oman's most conservative area, is less multicultural but women are still fine to walk around uncovered. My wife felt safer throughout Oman than she does when we're in Melbourne, although the roadside coffee houses tend to be a sausage-fest (think mini versions of Aussie pubs 50 years ago, minus the rowdy factor). Salalah down south has a bit of a "Darwin" factor to it with the way of life down there.

We met all kinds of people while we were traveling through Oman. Most - particularly inland & in Dhofar - were happy/excited to see white tourists. One random guy at a desert road stop shouted us our lunch just because he was happy that we were visiting his country. Nobody ever gave us (in particular my wife) the stink-eye for dressing in western clothes. The women there wear all kinds of clothing from the full-on Burqa to western clothes. The men tend to wear traditional plain arab clothing but there were some in western clothes.

Although it's best to be covered from shoulders-to-knees at the beach, there were many tourists ignoring these guidelines & the locals didn't seem to mind. French girls in bikinis I understand the locals not minding, but rotund middle-aged men in speedos should be banned anywhere :P

RELIGION

I will leave this brief and will not encourage any ongoing discussion regarding religion (readers feel free to PM me if you have questions), I don't want to see this thread closed.

You're free to practice any (or no) religion in Oman and the muslims there are open/welcoming to any non-muslim.

There are mosques *everywhere*, ranging from an outline made from discarded bricks & desert rocks at a roadside, to the most opulent building (Muscat's Grand Mosque) that I have ever been in. Most mosques however are small modest buildings with a brightly-coloured dome & minaret, usually with a side-building added (takeaway food, clothing, etc).

The Grand Mosque is open to public every day, except Fridays (Islam's "Sunday"). My wife & I had an enlightening discussion with a mosque employee regarding Islam, Sharia Law, etc. His role is to engage with visitors from all religious backgrounds (or in our case - atheists).

GETTING AROUND

There's next to no public transport in Oman, and the private taxis are unmetered - we avoided them & used hire cars (or our mate's Ranger for the cross country roadtrip we did).

Hire car costs were on-par with Aussie prices, but the fuel here is 60c/L! The locals are outraged as fuel costs are at an all time high.

The roads. Wow. AFF readers, Oman has an AWESOME road network, if you came here & hired a muscle car (or motorbike) you could get around most of the country & have a blast. Most major roads are multi-lane divided highways, or in the middle of the desert it's a widened two-way highway (currently being duplicated). Speed "limit" is 120kph, but the speed cameras (& cops) are cool with 140kph. In the more remote parts we were belting along at 160+, which was unnerving at times when a truck was coming the other way, or when you'd pass a group of camels at the roadside.

The cities weren't too difficult to navigate, they're not quite grid-style (& the older suburbs have a lot of little rabbit-warren laneways) but the main roads are quite easy to get from A-to-B.

4WDs are needed for desert (off-road) driving, and for a particular mountain area where the roads were sealed but steep. Turns out I'm not a great fan of dune-bashing, but my wife loves it.

FOOD

Omani food is more of a blend of other cultural foods, rather than being distinctly Omani. They have Shawarma which is their take on a kebab/souva. You can get Shawarma anywhere and it's condsidered fast food. 300 Baisa (about $1) gets you a Shawarma wrap that's about 2/3 the size of a kebab.

Shuwa is spiced/marinated lamb (mutton? goat?) that's slow-cooked in an earth oven for up to 3 days. Very tasty, but expensive!

Karak Chai is a blend between full-on Indian chai and British tea. Available everywhere, and the best stuff comes from roadside food stalls next to servos. A small cup (2/3 the size of a small tea here) costs 100 Baisa, or ~30c.

Omani coffee is like a much milder version of Turkish coffee, laced with cardamom. You have little cups of it along with dates.

There's curry outlets everywhere & having curried swordfish for breakfast with a side of garlic naan is a great start to the day.

Alcohol is hard to come across, unless you're at a hotel or resort, but for the most part I didn't really feel like sinking tins.

All the meat - with the exception of specific non-Halal areas in some supermarkets - is Halal. Having said that I had the 2nd best burger I've ever had and it was a Halal burger from a hotel in Muscat. (The best burger I've had was an actual US one)

1000 Baisa = 1 Rial = $3.40.

TECH/COMMS

My wife used an Omantel SIM (their Telstra) in her iphone & we went everywhere using that. Wifi is everywhere, & if we didn't have our Omani friend travelling with us down south we would have relied on Google Translate instead, an app that translates (voice or text, and in some cases images). Having said that, hotel/servo staff were good with English and we could get by on our own using a mix of English, basic Arabic and hand gestures.

Pics aren't loading for some reason, but I'll get around to that later

Thanks for reading!