Chronoqie Oman: the sultanate of the seaThe Great Mosque, the largest carpet in the world

Muscat, between white villages and motorway loops

At times, Muscat looks like a village. A delightful white village wedged between the sea and the mountains, a siesta town on a summer's afternoon, a succession of high immaculate walls overflowing with bougainvillea. Only the two desert-coloured fortresses overlooking the old port, the Mirani and Jilali forts, built by the Portuguese in the 16th century, are a reminder that life was not always easy within these walls and that, as was the custom in other times, the city gates were closed every night until... 1970. Then there's the Sultan's Palace, an orientalist building with curious blue and gold colonnades in the shape of lotus flowers, built in 1972 to replace the old palace. So much for old Muscat.

Today, the urban area, divided into eight distinct districts, stretches from east to west along the sea for some twenty kilometres.

Some, like the Mouttrah district, still tell stories of bygone days; most of the other districts are plunging with a certain rigour into the great comfort of modernity. With all that this represents in terms of shopping centres, grand hotels, opulent villas, upmarket residences, restaurants, pubs and wine bars where expats enjoy an aperitif; but also, as elsewhere in the world, overloaded motorways, even at a standstill when leaving the office. The only difference is the manic cleanliness of the city and the generosity of the flowerbeds. A thousand and one light years away from the scorching heat of the surrounding desert.

Mouttrah a souk on the corniche

Three kilometres to the west of Muscat, an arched ledge plunging down to a busy commercial and fishing port runs alongside Mouttrah, the capital's other most visited oasis district. But why? Because it has remained in its original state, with its white Indian houses with sculpted balconies, its fish market where traders close up shop in the morning, and above all its souk, which opens onto the corniche and which, even though it was rebuilt in the 1970s, distils all the charm of the Orient into a profusion of two-metre wide alleyways. With a real sense of authenticity, given the rarity of the stalls traditionally reserved for tourists in such places. There are a few interesting antique shops, though... For the rest, it's a popular Middle East, with a host of bazaar shops, each with its own stall of colourful fabrics sold by the metre, household goods, shoes, sweets, spices, perfumes, which Omani women consume extensively, and jewellery...

The crowd is dense, especially after dark, but curiously reserved, almost silent. The men are dressed all in white, the women all in black. There are bright lights under the palm roofs and the scent of sandalwood and incense wafts through the air, as if to remind us that this is where Oman's fortune once came from.

What a carpet! Apart from the delicacy of its design and its high artistic quality, it is its size that first amazes visitors. At 60 metres wide and 70 metres long, with a total surface area of 4,263 m2, it is said to be the largest carpet in the world.

At 21 tonnes of wool, it's probably the heaviest, too. And yet, in Iran, it took 600 weavers four years to make... Today, it fits perfectly into the prayer hall of the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, which also has very imposing dimensions: 74.4 m x 74.4 m. In total, the men's hall, the women's hall, the inner courtyards and the adjoining halls can accommodate almost 20,000 worshippers on the busiest days of the year. This mosque, the brainchild of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos Bin Said, was inaugurated in the spring of 2001 and is the pride of the entire Sultanate. And with good reason. The monument with its five minarets, just like the pillars of Islam, is enormous, imposing, crenellated like the traditional Omani forts, made of grey "arabescato" sandstone and lilac "taj" in the prayer areas, gilded with gold leaf, paved with marble, topped with domes, the largest of which houses an 8-tonne chandelier lighting 1,122 lamps... There is nothing missing from this remarkable piece of religious architecture. Except perhaps the patina of time. But it will come, it will come...

On the great blue waves

With its 1,700 km of coastline, Oman is nicknamed the Sultanate of the Sea... It's not so long ago that Omani teak dhows, known as dhows, plied the waters of the Indian Ocean laden with incense, copper, pearls and dates. Today, these dhows are still being built, mainly in the port of Sour. Some are fitted out exclusively for tourist use. They can therefore be privatised.

For the time being, it's on small boats that can carry a dozen people that the participants set sail for Fin's beach, a dream beach among many others. Engines running at full throttle, the boats bounce around, almost taking off, their jumps raising sprays of foam that immaculate the round sea. The coast is not far away, steep, jagged, bereft of vegetation, revealing the stones and sands of the Arabian desert beneath its pale ochre hues. Suddenly, we change course and slow down... In the distance, the sea stirs, bubbles and teems, as if inhabited by a multitude of wriggling fish. And to be inhabited, the sea is, and in beauty. This becomes clear when, in front of the boat, a huge dolphin leaps out of the water, spins, no doubt to make itself more visible, and falls back into the deep blue in a perfect dive. Then another, and another, and a tiny one... In all, nearly 200 of them put on a show for almost an hour. After two hours in the sea, it's the white expanse of Fin's beach. It smells like the end of the world, where tents have been pitched and carpets thrown in on the sand. A sort of chic desert by the tropical sea.

The mountains in 4×4

Up early, like everyone else in Oman... and off we go for a fantastic walk in the heart of 'Happy Arabia'. The walk begins with a stop at Seeb, just north of Muscat. In thigh-deep water, the men unload their catch, which they trade on the sand of the beach. On the seafront, there is a small, charming souk for the locals... And then the 4×4s plunge into the coastal plain towards Jebel Akhdar, which dominates in the distance, before reaching its foothills guarded by the Nakhl fort, a mud castle built in the 9th century overlooking a sea of palm trees. The place is perfectly restored, the visit superb, imbued with a curious imagination, something contradictory located between fierce battles and a true sweetness of life.

Beyond this fort, there's no more asphalt. The road twinkles in steep gorges, follows the bed of a dried-up wadi, climbs the vertiginous slopes of black mountains and discovers, at the bottom of a valley, a white village, lost and peaceful, surrounded by espalier crops lined with date palms. Happiness on earth. The road continues over a pass, plunges back down to tarmac, bypasses more historic forts and finally reaches Nizwa, nestling in the middle of a palm grove.

Nizwa, the market beneath the ramparts

There is the oasis of Nizwa, there is the city of Nizwa and there is the fort of Nizwa... In fact, an enormous 24 metre high tower, built at the end of the 17th century by Imam Sultan Bin Saïf, the same man who chased the Portuguese out of the country. Hardly anyone escapes it, as the city of poets and clerics is the second most visited site by foreigners, after Muscat. The monument, like many others in Oman, has been perfectly restored and features a succession of halls that were once very busy: student halls, men's halls, prayer halls, palaver halls, etc.

From the top of its battlements, you can see Jebel Shams in the distance, at an altitude of 3,000 metres and the highest peak on the Arabian Peninsula, then the immense palm grove surrounding the outskirts of the town, and above all, at the foot of the fortress, the souk that is the delight of the region's farmers... Very lively and colourful, people come from far and wide to do their shopping. Everything is traded here: the famous Omani dates, vegetables and spices grown in the shade of palm trees, goats and sheep, traded especially at the Friday market. Foreigners are no strangers to the market, either trading a khanjar, a cutlass traditionally worn by men, or hesitating between two beautiful pieces of pottery made in the region.