Oman 7 Day Itinerary: Muscat, Nizwa, Wahiba Sands and Wadi Shab

Free from outside, 45 minutes, in Old Muscat, right after check-in. The sultan ceremonial palace cannot be visited inside, but the palm avenue leading to its blue and gold columns is the postcard of the country.

On either side of the inlet stand the Portuguese forts of Al Jalali and Al Mirani, from 1587, also closed. Old Muscat is a small district with no traffic: give the car two hours.

About 2 rials, 1 hour, 600 metres from the palace. It is a private museum in a family house, opened in 1998, and the best place in the country to understand Omani life before oil.

The khanjar collection, the curved dagger that appears on the national flag, explains how the models differ by region. Look too at the carved doors and the wedding dress of each province.

Free, 1h30, 4 kilometres from the museum, on the Mutrah waterfront. It is one of the oldest markets in the Arab world and it runs in the morning and again after 4pm, with a long break in the afternoon heat.

The smell is frankincense, the Dhofar incense Oman has exported for three thousand years. Bargain slowly, taste halwa at the counter and buy a kumma, the hand embroidered cap every Omani wears. Skip the souvenir strip at the entrance and go deep to the silver lanes.

Free, 1h30, open to non Muslims Saturday to Thursday from 8am to 11am, and only then. Closed on Fridays. Women must cover hair, arms and legs; shawls are sold in the car park.

The main prayer hall holds a single Persian carpet of 4,300 square metres, hand woven by 600 women over four years, and a 14 metre crystal chandelier. It opened in 2001 and holds 20,000 people.

About 3 rials for the guided tour, 1 hour, 8 kilometres east of the mosque. It opens for tours in the morning, outside dress rehearsal days, and the season runs October to May.

It opened in 2011 by decision of Sultan Qaboos, who loved music, and mixes beige Omani stone with teak and mosaic. If your dates catch a performance, tickets usually cost less than an opera in Europe.

About 1 rial, 1 hour, 10 kilometres east of the opera. Five minutes of stairs lead to the 1580 Portuguese fort on the rock above the corniche. Climb late in the day, when the whole bay and the anchored dhows catch the low light.

5 rials for the combined ticket with the souq, 1h30, 1h45 from Muscat on highway 15. Nizwa was the capital of Oman in the 6th century and is the conservative heart of the interior.

The round tower from 1650 is 40 metres across and 30 tall, built solid and packed with earth and stone to absorb cannon fire. At the top are the honey holes: shafts through which boiling date syrup was poured on anyone trying to get in.

Free, 1h15, next to the fort. It is the reference market of the interior, restored but still used by locals, with separate sections for silver, pottery, dates and fish.

If you are in Nizwa on a Friday morning, be at the goat market by 7am: sellers walk their animals around a ring of buyers, and it is the liveliest scene in the interior. On other days the souq opens early and empties by mid morning.

Free, 1h30, 45 minutes west of Nizwa. It is a village of stone and mud houses wedged into the slope, with terraces of date palm, banana and mango watered by a falaj, the channel system Oman has used for 2,500 years and Unesco protects.

Leave the car in the upper car park and walk down: the lanes are half a metre wide. Respect the private signs, because the houses are lived in.

Free, 3 hours with the climb, plus 1 hour of road from Misfat. The last 12 kilometres are graded dirt and need a real 4x4: an ordinary car will not make it and the rental will not cover the recovery.

From the viewpoint at 2,000 metres the Wadi Ghul gorge drops almost a thousand metres, which earned the place the nickname Grand Canyon of Arabia. The W6 trail, the Balcony Walk, runs along the wall to the abandoned village of As Sab in about 2 hours there and back, with no railing and no shade. Up there it is 15 degrees cooler than Muscat.

3 rials, 1h15, an hour downhill near Bahla. It was built in 1670 as a residence rather than a fortress, which makes it the most comfortable of the Omani castles.

The imam who raised it kept schools of astronomy, medicine and law inside. Look for the painted wooden ceilings of the sun and moon room, and his tomb within the building. It is a good last fort of the trip: Bahla, next door, is huge and nearly empty inside.

Free, 40 minutes, 20 minutes east of Nizwa at the foot of Jebel Akhdar. The ruined mud houses stand above a palm grove cut by the Al Khatmeen falaj, one of five Omani channels Unesco listed in 2006. Walk the channel rather than the ruins: the water runs all year.

2h30 of road from Birkat al Mawz to Al Wasil, the village where the tarmac ends. From there the camp sends a guide, or you carry on yourself, dropping the tyres to about 15 psi, which only works with a genuine 4x4.

The desert covers 12,500 square kilometres of dunes that shift from orange to red as the sun falls. A camp with a private bathroom runs 60 to 120 rials for two, with dinner and breakfast, and usually includes the sunset dune drive. If you do not drive on sand, book a transfer: getting stuck out here alone is expensive and slow.

Free, 2h30, 1h30 from the camp. It is the easiest wadi in Oman: a concrete path links the car park to the first pools in ten minutes, which makes it the alternative for anyone who does not want the Wadi Shab walk.

The water is turquoise and cold all year. Swim in a t-shirt and shorts rather than a bikini: this is an Omani family spot and the local rule is quiet but real. Anyone who wants to walk carries on upstream for about 40 minutes to the Muqal cave.

Free, 1 hour, 1h30 east of the wadi. Sur was the port that linked Oman to Zanzibar and India, and the yard still builds wooden dhows by hand, with no plans, by the master eye. You can walk in and talk; ask before photographing anyone close up.

Free, 45 minutes, 40 minutes west of Sur. It is the less visited neighbour of Wadi Shab, and the difference is that here the concrete road runs into the valley, between palm groves and villages wedged in the rock. Drive as far as the car fits, carefully on the 2 metre bends, and come back.

Free to enter, about 1 rial for the ferry across, 4 hours in total, 3 kilometres from Wadi Tiwi. Start at 8am: after 11am the car park fills and the sun hits the canyon straight on.

From the far bank it is a 45 minute walk over loose rock, in closed shoes, to the pools. The first three are for swimming; from the third on you swim about 50 metres through a 60 centimetre crack into the cave with the waterfall inside. Bring a dry bag, because your backpack stays on the bank. Wadi Shab to Muscat is 1h45 on the coast road.