Skift Take
Oman represents one of the most fascinating opportunities in modern tourism. And thankfully, the country seems to be taking the right steps to realize the vast potential.
One of the purest hospitality experiences I had last year didn’t come at a brand name luxury resort. It happened in the middle of the Empty Quarter, a vast, open stretch of desert that encompasses 250,000 square miles of southern Arabia. T.E. Lawrence notably referred to it as “the great unsolved question of geography."
I was traveling in the Middle East, and on a whim returned to Oman. I had been before, but merely scratched the surface and made it a point to get outside of the predictable hits that you do the first few times you visit a country. This time, I flew into Salalah, a region of the country known for its whimsical and uncharacteristic green season in the midst of a very scorching summer for the region. I hired a guide that was recommended and set of on a four hour trip into the desert. We stopped, picked up some provisions, gassed up the white Land Cruiser, and drove far and far into the desert, outside of cellular coverage.
A friend told me about the idea of "thin spaces" where you feel closer to the heavens. The desert fits that experience. The acoustics were
