Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine June 2018 | Page 140

Travel | Oman
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Nizwa Fort rises from the sand like an Arabian Nights palace.
Turrets soar skyward into the searing blue. Grand gates are able
to welcome convoys of camels five abreast. But the 24 slits around
the towers hide a sinister purpose. Each once held a cannon
that could blast desert raiders intent on capturing this dusty
crossroads. And as Nizwa commands the trade route between
Dubai and the Omani capital of Muscat, many have tried.
Nizwa’s souk contains all you need
for a modern-day conquest of Oman:
handmade copper cups, coffee pots, spices
and leather goods. Plus curved daggers
should you meet a masked assassin on the
road to Abu Dhabi. Dates are sold by the
bucketload, and date syrup is also on sale,
although centuries ago it was boiled and
thrown at attackers of Nizwa Fort.
On Friday mornings, regional tribesmen
descend upon this medieval market as cows
and goats are sold for wedding feasts and
desert barbecues. Sometimes camels are
still peddled as ‘ships of the desert’:
millennia-old means of transportation
across the Arabian Peninsula.
Indeed, the car only replaced the camel
as Oman’s vehicle of choice in the 1960s.
As petrol is cheaper than mineral water,
I’ve chosen a Toyota jeep as my means
of transport. With a population of just four
million scattered across an area the size
of Germany, the country’s tarmac
highways are blissfully clear.
Visitor numbers are also tiny: four million
per year compared with over 15 million
apiece in neighbouring Saudi Arabia and the
UAE. This has allowed Oman to pioneer
low-impact tourism, where the finest sights
are preserved for culturally minded visitors.
Nowhere is this more apparent than the
UNESCO-protected oasis of Falaj Daris.
Falaj are ancient irrigation systems built
by hand 1,500 years ago. Each canal courses
through orchards alive with date palms and
pepper trees, colouring the sandy scrub deep
green. As the water is now used for irrigation,
not drinking, it’s permissible to swim in the
snaking canals. Local children dive in, then
pluck dates for a lunchtime snack. Falaj Daris
also runs underneath Nizwa Fort, 10km
south of this oasis. Instead I’m driving 30
minutes north to the water’s lofty source.
Jebel Akhdar is the highest point in Eastern
Arabia. Its name translates as ‘Green Mountain’.
Here, rainfall waters terraces of peaches,
walnuts, apricots and grapes. At 3,000m in
altitude, it’s spellbinding by car – but must