"Oman" a Oman Travel Page by sachara

In 1994 we visited Oman during ten days and stayed in Muscat, Nizwa and Salalah. We travelled in a small group of 3 persons. It was a kind of try-out trip.
The people of the just started local travel agency visited us several times in our hotel in Muscat and made many pictures of themselves together with us, being their first customers.
For our driver it was his first job to drive tourists around an he didn't always understand, that we liked to discover some parts of the area by feet, like the suq and driving in the countryside he was very afraid for camels.

The sultanate Oman, the land of the frankincense, has a large diversity in landscapes with mountains, sanddunes and a long coastline with a lot of beaches.
Oman has an old 1.200 years old civilisation and history.
There are about 500 impressive forts, lovely small villages and old trading towns with traditonal suqs.
In the larger towns of Oman you will find a mixture of the traditional and modern life with colorful suqs and modern shopping malls.
The men still wear their dishdashes, the long collarless shirt dresses. The women wear very colorfull dresses.
Everywhere in Oman we met very friendly people, who have still their traditional hospitability.
In 1994 Oman looked like an very unspoilt tourist destination. So it was also hard to find any information or a good guidebook about Oman.

West of Muscat inland we visited several forts like those of Barka, Rustaq, Nakhl, Nizwa and Bahla.
Some were allready restored, but a lot of reconstruction work was still going on in 1994.

We went to the south of Oman by plane. In Dhofar, the area around Salalah we found lovely fishing villages with traditonal houses, desolated beaches, the famous frankincense trees, the grave of Job and the spectacular blowholes at the coast near Mughsayl.