Dawn in the Harasis desert in central Oman was a cool, silent affair. A light wind made dew drops dance on the spiky thorns of acacia trees. The last remaining stars were quickly snuffed out by the rising sun, and the first rays of warmth raced across the flat, rocky ground, prompting gazelles to stir.
In the middle of it all sat a small clutch of tents, a long-dead campfire and six sleeping people. Our Bedouin guide was the first to rise, magicking a new fire from sticks and matches, and resting a kettle of coffee over the flames.

The night may have been still and quiet for us snuggled inside our tents but clearly it had been a riot outside because the ground was scratched with scores of tracks. Some Arabian hares had been having a boxing match, tiny rodents had fled past chased by nocturnal birds with large claws, and there had been visits from a number of scorpions.
As the sun rose and the temperature finally got above shivering, the wind picked up and began to sweep away the night’s signatures. By the time we had finished our scrambled eggs, juicy dates and coffee, the Harasis desert floor was a blank canvas once more.

By 8am we were juddering along in our 4WDs, our guide navigating between oases and ancient ruins using only acacia trees and empty painted oil drums.
“Third drum – yellow and red, turn left,” he laughed as he swung the vehicle to port and we headed into the sun. Who needs a GPS system when you’ve got oil drums and acacia trees?
My partner and I were on the first stage of a romantic Arabian adventure which would take us from the wilds of the Harasis through magnificent fjords to meet rare dolphins, and to two of the most exciting and rapidly developing cities in the world, where unbridled luxury awaited us.
But for now the luxury could wait. We were willing to camp out in the middle of nowhere among the scorpions and the boxing hares in order to get a glimpse of the animal we had come here to see: the beautiful and rare oryx.

The oryx is a magnificent beast that appears to have stepped from the pages of a fairytale. It has two spiralling horns, making it the better endowed sister of the mythical unicorn. Its unique white hide makes it appear ghostly in the desert moonlight but its beauty has been its downfall too.
Oryx once roamed right across the Arabian peninsula but thousands were slaughtered for hide and horns or captured alive for rulers’ personal mini-zoos as signs of ultimate wealth and power. The oryx spiralled towards extinction and after 1972 none were left alive in the wild.
A reserve was established with individuals from captive breeding stocks in the United States, and now the Arabian Oryx Project uses tourist dollars to continue to protect these animals. Such strict control means tourists cannot just drift in here – they must come with a conservation operator certified by the project. If you have more time, some operators can sort out camel treks too.

An hour into our oryx safari we spotted a group of four trotting about 200 metres away. Their white skins were brilliant in the sharp sunlight. They slowed to a walk, heads nodding under the weight of their horns. We breathed slowly and silently, our mouths open in awe and our binoculars glued to our eyes. A group of wild camels nearby also stopped and stared at the oryx, no doubt thinking to themselves: “crikey, haven’t seen one of those for a while”.
The oryx were bigger than we expected and stood tall and proud and sturdy as only truly noble animals can. We tracked them for an hour or more before they stopped to rest under a clump of acacia at a small oasis. We followed suit a suitable distance away, laying out our blankets, munching on dates and hummus, sipping camel’s milk flavoured with rosewater - which is like drinking liquid Turkish Delight - and basking in the romance of the wild, mysterious Harasis.

Sadly our time was short and the next day we raced back through the Akhdar mountains to Oman’s coastal capital, Muscat, arriving just in time for a leg of spiced lamb, some mint tea and an evening of haggling in the Mutrah Souk.
Omani men dressed in their unique mauve all-in-one dress shirts (or ‘dishdashers’) shook our hands and ushered us into shops. We examined elaborately patterned silver coffee jugs and razor-sharp ceremonial daggers (or ‘khanjars’), stared at glass cabinets crammed with gold, filled our sinuses with cinnamon, frankincense and myrrh … and left with nothing more than two postcards and a bag of dates; we were the worst customers the Mutrah Souk had ever known, so it was probably wise we skipped town early the next morning.

We drove north to the small seaside town of Dibba where, moored to a jetty, sat a traditional Omani sailing dhow. Traditional Omani sailing dhows have been sitting alongside jetties at Dibba for centuries but only very recently has their cargo been tourists. Before that they were the workhorses of Oman’s prodigious traders, the people who made Muscat and this eastern coastline into one of the most successful trading regions in the area.
There is a sense of trepidation as you climb aboard this 12 metre long wooden vessel knowing that it is about to guide you through the Straits of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes littered with giant oil tankers. But luckily our dhow hugged the coastline rather than venturing into the main channel, so the only other traffic we saw was the occasional water-taxi speedboat carrying Muslim women whose black hijabs billowed behind them as they raced past.

A half-day’s sail north of Dibba lies the Musandam Peninsula which juts into the southern end of the Persian Gulf and qualifies as one of the most secret and least visited parts of the world.
It is geographically challenging – imagine Norway after several hundred years of drought and searing heat has stripped away all the greenery and left menacing bare-rock fjords with 400m cliff faces plummeting into the sea. Such impenetrable scenery has put off all but the hardiest of nomads, the odd mad European explorer, and the military: the Musandam was of key strategic importance during the Gulf War when NATO hid supplies in concrete bunkers deep at the end of its fjords. Radar tracking systems mounted near the peak of Jebel Harim (Mountain of Women) monitored every craft moving through the Straits.

Today the trackers have gone and there was no-one to watch as our little dhow slinked in and out of the fjords. No-one heard us gasp in awe at the precipitous cliffs, or shout to see how many echoes we could count as our cries broke the silence and ricocheted around the rock walls. No military equipment monitored us as we stopped off at the white-washed village of Kumzar to meet the locals.
No-one saw us strip down to our togs and dive into the cool, dark water, snorkelling down to examine clownfish and lazy jellies taking an afternoon nap on the reefs. Nor did anyone watch us devouring plates of kingfish, caught that morning by the skipper, or washing them down with gallons of mint tea.

In the late afternoon, as we sat on deck speechless at the beauty of a reddening sunset, a pod of rare spinner (or long-snouted) dolphins was suddenly alongside, giving us an escort. The crimson sky reflected off their wet backs as they broke the surface. They stayed with us until the confluence of two fjords and then were gone as mysteriously and suddenly as they had appeared.
The dolphins were the talk of the campfire that evening as we relaxed on the beach of a quiet bay, and they were in our thoughts as we wriggled under our blankets on the deck of the dhow and lay there looking up at the myriad stars in the inky, moonless night. My partner told me she could see Orion but I swear I had found a brand new dolphin-shaped constellation.
A few days on the dhow seemed like weeks and it was a shock to arrive back in a land of cars and dogs and goats and chickens, at the port of Khasab. But a bigger shock was to come. From Khasab the highway speeds over the border into the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and makes a beeline for the fastest-developing city in the world, Dubai. Yesterday we had eaten fish with our fingers on a traditional dhow surrounded by scenery unchanged for millennia. 24 hours later we were ensconced in the unparalleled modern splendour of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dubai, just in time for champagne cocktails in the club lounge.

Dubai seems to open a new luxury hotel each week but the city is going all out for the ‘wow’ factor rather than the ‘woo’ factor. The Ritz-Carlton is the only truly romantic luxury hotel in town. It is small, sophisticated, understated and right on the beach. The lobby has Moroccan glass lanterns, dark-wood lattice screens and Islamic geometric designs on the ceilings and floors. You walk past Moorish fountains en route to the two swimming pools and the beautiful green lawns.
Another boon is that the Ritz-Carlton’s Chef de Cuisine is Damien Chorley from Melbourne who can whip up a mean wallaby loin while you and your partner sip a fruity cab-sav by candlelight on the balcony of La Baie restaurant.

If you want ‘wow’ as well as ‘woo’ then book into the Emirates Palace Hotel down the coast in Abu Dhabi, the capital of UAE. Lottery winners can splash out and order one of the hotel’s white Rolls Royce Phantoms to race you down the highway; if you only won a scratchy then book one of their white 7-Series BMWs instead.
The Emirates Palace dominates Abu Dhabi’s Corniche, boasting some of the most mighty luxury hotel statistics anywhere in the world. The building covers 300,000 sqm (more than 40 rugby league pitches) and is split into two main wings and a central suite area, where the handful of highest-priced suites go for roughly AUD$17,000 a night (don’t worry - the normal rooms are considerably less).
The public areas are lined with 10 metre high palm trees, and the ceilings graced with more than 1,000 Swarovski crystal chandeliers.

There are seven restaurants, one of which has its own olive oil trolley with 40 brands on offer. And there are 1,300 metres of private beachfront and two gigantic pool complexes: one is for families and has slides and flowing rivers, while the other is for couples and has big pools and hot tubs.
The perfect end to a romantic Arabian adventure is dining alfresco on the terrace at the hotel’s magnificent Lebanese restaurant, Diwan L’Auberge, and gazing out over the moonlit Arabian Gulf.

Text: Matthew Brace
from issue: Autumn/Winter 2007