Everyone's talking about...: Why Oman is a must-visit destination

I parked my car near a small mosque and clambered over hot, black slabs of rock to the edge of an 800-metre cliff.

A warm zephyr ruffled my hair and whispered through the branches of an old, wrinkled juniper bush. Apart from that, everything was still and quiet, and the view was breathtaking: under a deep-blue sky was a powerful landscape of rocky peaks and canyons flamboyantly buckled and twisted by time.

Over millennia, tectonic plate movements have sucked those rocks into the Earth's molten mantle and regurgitated them, producing giant geological zigzags and hairpin loops hundreds of metres high. Some layers were pressed together horizontally like an oversized mille-feuille; others were stacked vertically like paper files in a cluttered office.

Towering cliffs plunged into deep valleys whose floors ran with shoelaces of liquid silver. High mesas were fringed with near-vertical rock walls to which - incredibly - small stone villages clung. Their inhabitants have painstakingly scraped terraces from the cliffs which now grow fruit and vegetables, creating ziggurats of green steps amid the grey-brown barrenness.

I heard the distant bleating of goats but couldn't see them. They were perfectly camouflaged and I only spotted them when they scampered up the slope on the other side of the canyon, causing a small rockfall and puffs of dust.

I was 2000 metres up in the Jebel Akhdar region of the Hajar Mountains in the Sultanate of Oman. This was my first stop on an Arabian desert adventure from the capital Muscat to the former capital Nizwa, south to the Wahiba Sands and then to the coast.

Jebel Akhdar is a four-hour drive from Muscat, yet you feel like you have travelled back millions of years. The other jewels in the crown in this part of the Hajars are Jebel Shams (the Mountain of the Sun and the highest peak in Oman), Wadi Ghul (aka Oman's Grand Canyon) and Snake Gorge. Also worth seeing is the village of Bat, which boasts rare beehive tombs dating back to 3000BCE. It is one of the best-preserved necropolises from that era anywhere in the world, and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

But because this is Oman - one of the wealthy Gulf petrostates - expect a good amount of luxury in this rugged landscape, too, such as the Alila Jabal Akhdar hotel, perched dramatically at the tip of a mesa. I dropped in for lunch and an outdoor massage at the very edge of the cliff, with surely the most spectacular spa view in the world.

I was there in summer (August) when Oman can look very arid but it buckets down rain in those mountains in January. About 400 millimetres fall, making the seemingly inhabitable land habitable once more and a good place to farm pomegranates, apricots, olives, figs, walnuts and more.

The deluges also fill the wadis and cause seasonal waterfalls to burst from dusty fissures in canyon walls. Wadi bashing and canyon trekking are big deals here in winter, with groups abseiling down rock walls, cooling off in shady pools, wading through waist-deep waters and camping under the stars. But that's a story for another day ... my summer odyssey was a dry one.

From the balmy 30 degrees of the Hajar Mountains I descended to a burning 42 degrees on the plain below. En route I passed black, rocky outcrops that reared from the desert floor like the prows of ghost ships, and saw-tooth ridges that resembled the fossilised backbones of dinosaurs who lay down here to die hundreds of millions of years ago.

I was heading to one of Oman's heritage wonders, the Nizwa Fort. Oman has done a brilliant job of preserving its old buildings and, thus, its history. This is made more remarkable by the fact that some other Arab states have been equally as dedicated to knocking theirs down to build shopping malls.

There are hundreds of forts across Oman, many of which are remnants of wars fought here over the centuries. It's the oldest continuously independent state in the Arab world but it has had to fight for that independence.

Some of the forts are grand, imposing buildings defending cities and ports. Others are lone, single-tower outposts built to guard remote valleys. You see them flash by as you drive the highways and wish you had time to stop to photograph them and sit in their shade for half an hour.

Because of its importance in the country's history, the fort is an Omani icon and you see its crenelated motif used everywhere, from house extensions to incense burners and water butts.

The Nizwa Fort is a large, muscular building that was built back in 1668 to protect the town from raiders. I strolled through its hot courtyards and lingered in its mercifully cooler alleyways and shaded porticos. I was the only visitor at noon on that hot August day.

Apart from the chirruping of resilient sparrows it was quiet enough for me to hear the ghosts of long-dead Omani soldiers, their curved khanjars (daggers) clinking on their leather belts.

The khanjar is another national icon because Omanis are as proud of their traditional dress as they are of their monuments. When you meet them they will almost certainly be wearing white or lilac robes and some may have a ceremonial khanjar around their waist.

A stallholder in the Nizwa Souq told me that the city's silversmiths are renowned for making the best khanjars, a tradition that probably dates back many generations to when the city was a major trading centre.

Its strategic position on the main route between the coast and the interior saw it crowned as the capital of Oman in the 6th and 7th centuries and also as a revered centre of Islamic learning. It still boasts some of the country's most important mosques, including the modern Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque and (in the nearby abandoned village of Tanuf) the ruins of the Shuraij Mosque, which dates from 1000CE.

From the heat of the fort, I headed south into even hotter territory along the very eastern edge of the vast Rub' Al Khali desert (or Empty Quarter), which dominates western Oman, south-eastern Saudi Arabia and south-western UAE.

There's not much out there apart from a few heat-blasted towns and mosques, their minarets reaching skyward from the dusty desert. But once I was south of Al Mudhaireb (which also has a great fort and several watchtowers) I got the first glimpses of the reason I had come to this place. The ochre dunes of the great Wahiba Sand Sea started peeking out behind the date palm plantations as I drove the Al Sharqiya Expressway.

Satellite photos make the Wahiba look like an exposed bicep from an anatomical drawing, its sinews running north-south. On the ground it's a mix of flat, rocky gibber desert expanses and soaring dunes. To get to the latter you really need to join a tour, whose organisers do everything for you, from roasting a goat to lighting sisha pipes and hammering in tent pegs for your desert camping experience.

But those tours run in winter when the temperatures are far more humane and jackets are needed for midnight stargazing. In high summer - when I showed up - the nights are so hot that any time spent under canvas is pretty uncomfortable. So, after an hour sitting on warm sand watching an even warmer sunset somewhere near Bidiyah, I drove on through the night to the air-conditioned splendour of a basic beachside motel in Sur.

Just before sunrise the next morning, as the enchanting Fajr call to prayer was echoing over the rooftops, I headed north on the coast road. From Qalhat the asphalt is rarely more than a stone's throw from the shore, offering great views of the sand and pebble beaches, the sandstone headlands and the clean, turquoise waters of the Gulf of Oman.

I stopped for coffee just before Tiwi and my eyes were drawn to what I thought at first were bits of plastic debris in the surf but then realised were young turtles, their olive-green heads glinting in the sunrise.

I couldn't work out whether they were green turtles (which nest a bit further south at Ras al-Jinz) or hawksbills which favour the Daymaniyat Islands off Muscat, 100 kilometres to the north. All I knew was that there were scores of them; I had never seen so many together. This is one advantage of a summer visit because turtles are much more likely to come close to shore - or even on shore - from July to September.

As morning mist clung to the tops of the Hajar Mountains behind me, I sipped my rich, velvety coffee and munched on a well-travelled Carman's protein bar I had found squished at the bottom of my rucksack. I was in one of my favourite countries, watching young turtles playing in peppermint-blue surf. Everything seemed right with the world.

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Getting there: Emirates has direct flights from Australia to Dubai, from where it's less than an hour's hop to Muscat; you can even drive it if you want. emirates.com

Staying there: Oman boils during its summer (May to September) but starts to cool down in October, the month for which these hotel prices are quoted. W Muscat's Wonderful Room has two double beds, sea view and balcony for OMR110 ($430) a night. Crowne Plaza, near the OCEC convention, has great service and awesome breakfasts by the pool' King Standard City View room from OMR165 a night. Outside Muscat, the spectacular Alila Jabal Akhdar hotel is worth it even if just for one night. King room with Horizon View, which includes a terrace, from OMR280 a night. marriott.com; .ihg.com; alilahotels.com/jabalakhdar

Explore more: visitoman.om

The writer travelled at his own expense.

Pictures: Getty Images; Unsplash