Scents Of Place

From high desert passes to the lush Arabian coast, TONI MASON follows her nose along the frankincense trails of Oman.

- Toni Mason

It’s twilight in Seeb, an old fishing town on the outskirts of Muscat, and the souk is back in business. Evening prayer has ended, and men in dishdashas and kuma caps gather and stroll among the stalls. Pyramids of dried anchovies and prawns and trays of glistening cuttlefish vie for attention with bags of dried limes and fragrant cardamom, jars of golden ghee and masses of local dates. We’re offered a cluster of pale fresh dates still on the stem. They’re crunchy, astringent, with no more than a hint of sweetness.

There’ll be plenty more to try during our adventure in the Sultanate of Oman, from the capital hugging the serene shores of the Arabian Sea to the jagged peaks of the Al Hajar mountains, and then south, following bone-dry frankincense trade routes, to the incongruously lush and tropical coast of Dhofar. Dates are not just a staple in Oman, used in cooking and turned into vinegar and syrup for marinades and curries; they’re the flavour of Omani hospitality, offered as an essential accompaniment to conversation and spiced tea or coffee during almost every encounter, no matter how casual.

Oman is an exceedingly hospitable place, but it wasn’t always so. The fabled home of the Queen of Sheba existed in isolation until relatively recently, largely undeveloped. Until 1970, the city gates of Muscat were closed at dusk and a curfew imposed. That was before the palace coup, when Sultan Qaboos bin Said, the current monarch, overthrew his father and ushered in a new era, spending the spoils of oil discovered in the mid-1960s on infrastructure and opening the nation to the world.