The Middle East's hidden oasis

Welcome to Oman

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, Oman.

Each week, we spotlight a dream vacation recommended by some of the industry's top travel writers. This week's pick is Oman.

(Image credit: Courtesy image)

Muscat, the capital, is not much to look at, beyond its main attraction, the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque. Built in honor of Oman's 75-year-old ruler, the building houses the world's second-largest carpet, as well as a 46-foot-tall chandelier, and the mood among the many visitors is "festive, even joyful." It was only a two-hour drive to my luxury hotel in Jabal Akhdar, a beautiful mountain region where a vista here and there "looks as if the Grand Canyon and the Rockies have been photoshopped into one extravagant image." I was too early for the region's rose harvest, but apricot trees were budding, and "sun-drunk bees" wobbled from blossom to blossom. As I breathed in the smell of hot, dry earth, the world of skyscrapers felt very far away.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

I needed to see the desert, so I arranged to spend a night in a tent on the Wahiba Sands. Standing in that majestic landscape, amid its "swooping parabolas of apricot-colored sand," I found the silence almost overwhelming. A ferocious dust storm forced us into our tents that night, but when the storm died, the air was cool, and I could see camels in the far distance. Even I can't believe that I was swimming alone two days later just off a white-sand beach on the Persian Gulf. At the Musandam Peninsula resort I'd chosen, the sea was "the kind of blue you find only in children's drawings." Sometimes, "I wonder if I dreamed the whole episode."

Read more at Condé Nast Traveler, or book a villa at Alila Jabal Akhdar. Villas start at $415.