6 *** Sunday 1 September 2019 The Sunday Telegraph
FAMILY HOLIDAYS
Harry de Quetteville
and family enjoy some
desert thrills and
high-end hedonism
W
hen you’re
young you go
on holiday to
have fun and
explore. Then
you have
children and
go on holiday
to recover, only to realise that all the
baby stuff you need to relax is back
home. Staycations ensue. Then the
tots grow up a little bit and you
spread your wings a little bit –
maybe a city break here, an easyJet
week away there.
But if you are like us, with
children aged four and six, there
will come a moment when the urge
to explore returns, and you wonder
if the nippers are big enough for
something a bit different. A bit of
adventure, but nothing too fretful. A
cultural shift, but nothing too‘Faster, Salem,
faster,’ shouted
the boys...
overwhelming. A way of stretching,
but not tearing up, their horizons –
and yours.
And so you begin to think beyond
short haul.
The truth is, I worried about flying
to Oman more than what we would do
in Oman. I have been on hellish
two-hour flights with children. Seven
hours seemed like asking for trouble. I
needn’t have worried. Oman Air
operates extremely comfortable direct
flights with lots of legroom even for
someone 6ft 3in like me. Seat back
screens ensured a veritable cabin-wide
hush among the many families on
board. Soon enough we were
descending into Muscat and I was
forced to think about Oman itself –
about how the boys would respond to
a week in a conservative Islamic
country where women are veiled, on
ceremonial occasions the men carry a
curved dagger called a khanjar in their
belts and paved roads were until
recently something of a novelty.
But if the boys were shocked when
they skipped off the plane, it was only
because the airport was not the
crowded, dilapidated warren they are
used to in London. In keeping with
much of Oman’s infrastructure, it’s
sparkling and new: as with everythingfrom hospitals to roads, political
stability and oil money have dragged
the country through half a millennium
of development in half a century.
Not that it’s a gaudy transformation.
The Sultan – about whom you will
inevitably hear much, such is the
Omanis’ universal regard for their
benevolent, Sandhurst-educated ruler- disapproves of skyscrapers. Muscat’s
expansion from fishing village is low
rise, a gentle sprawl along the
coastline, reaching from ancient to
modern like an architectural
chronology: from the twin forts built
to consolidate Portuguese control in
the early 16th century to the Grand
Mosque completed in 2001.
It is the sea that most powerfully
characterises this arid land. The sea
companies, and helped extend his
power base inland, where the writ of
Imam Ghalib bin Ali, the religious
leader, had until then run strongest.
The echoes of that struggle still
resonate, and for good. Oman is stable
and culturally conservative without
any lurch to extremism. Unlike in
neighbouring Yemen, there is no hint
of sectarian dispute.
That does not mean it is
demographically homogeneous. Of its
four million people, almost half are
expatriates, the vast majority from the
Indian subcontinent, and so you
quickly realise that in visiting Oman
you get two cultures for the price of
one: Arab and Indian.
But that can be a shock for those
looking to revel in this country’sALAMYOMAN
made Oman a powerful trading nation,
with influence stretching from
Zanzibar to India and today boats are
still the lifeblood of the coastal
economy, though their cargo is more
likely to be fish – or tourists – than
spices. One day we zoomed out in a
fast boat to see dolphins spinning in
the bay, and then jumped off in one
cove to snorkel alongside turtles, theGREEN
OASIS
The Jebel
Akhdar, main;
Harry and
family in
Muscat, leftlife-jacketed boys
on our shoulders.
On the way back,
our captain
smiled and
pointed at a
picturesque few
houses nestled in
one golden-
sanded crescent:
“My village,” he said.
Of course, much vaster vessels –
supertankers – are the real key to
Oman’s success. The Fifties scrap to
control that oil, beautifully recounted
in Jan Morris’s Sultan in Oman,
provided the foundation for the
country you visit today. British
backing helped secure the Sultan of
the day against Saudi and American oilRELEASED BY "What's News" vk.com/wsnws TELEGRAM: t.me/whatsnws