Muscat

Muscat's geography is the practical fact that shapes every day here. The districts sit in separate bays and basins divided by rock ridges, and the distances between them are real — twenty minutes between the main ones, longer in the morning and evening. Nothing about this is difficult, but it does mean that the instinct to find the old town and wander is the wrong instinct: you pick two or three districts a day and move between them deliberately. Hotels cluster in the western beach areas, which are pleasant and a genuine distance from the historic quarters; staying closer to Mutrah puts you next to the best evening walk in the city and further from the sand. Neither is wrong, but choosing without knowing the layout is how people end up spending their trip in a car. The vehicle question is covered in full on the getting around Oman guide.

Mutrah is the old port quarter and the part of Muscat that feels most like a city. A long curving corniche runs along the harbour, backed by white merchant houses and a line of low mountains, and in the evening the whole neighbourhood walks it — families, joggers, men in dishdashas taking the air, dhows and a cruise ship or two out on the water. Set back from it is the souk, one of the oldest markets in the region and still a working one: covered lanes of frankincense and rosewater, silver, textiles, spices, and the curved silver khanjar daggers that are the national emblem. It is touristed without being a tourist product — the back lanes still sell hardware and household goods to people who live here. At the north end, the fish market is worth an early morning: a sweeping modern building over a genuinely unglamorous trade, with the day's kingfish and tuna laid out on ice and sold at volume before the heat arrives.

A few kilometres east, past a headland, the original walled town sits in a small natural harbour, and it is now largely ceremonial rather than residential. The palace at its head is a striking piece of modern design — flat-roofed, with flared columns in gold and blue that look like nothing else in the country — and it is closed to visitors, though the forecourt and the approach are open and are what people photograph. On the rocks either side of the harbour stand two stone forts, low and heavy and built onto the cliffs where the entrance narrows; they are closed to the public but they define the view, and the way they follow the shape of the rock is the whole point of looking at them. Around the quarter, the National Museum and a well-regarded private museum of Omani domestic life fill in what the buildings cannot, and the walled town is small enough that all of it is a comfortable morning on foot — the only part of Muscat where that is true.

The Grand Mosque is Muscat's single most impressive building and one of the few major mosques in the region that welcomes non-Muslim visitors as a matter of course. Visits run on set mornings outside prayer times — one day of the week is closed to visitors entirely — and the arrangement is best confirmed close to your visit rather than planned around a fixed hour. What you see is the main prayer hall, whose scale is the point: a vast hand-woven carpet made in one piece, a chandelier of crystal and light hanging through the centre of the dome, and an acreage of quiet marble that empties the noise out of you. Outside are colonnaded courtyards, gardens and the women's prayer hall. Dress is the thing to get right and it is not onerous: long trousers and sleeves for men, and for women hair covered along with ankles and wrists. Abayas and headscarves can be borrowed at the entrance for anyone who arrives without them, so turning up unprepared is inconvenient rather than fatal. Go early — the light in the hall is best before mid-morning, and so is the temperature in the courtyards.

The stretch of coast west of the historic quarters is where the city actually relaxes: a long run of sand backed by hotels, cafés and a corniche of its own, busy with local families at the end of the day and swimmable most of the year. Further out there are quieter beaches with almost nobody on them, and boat trips run from the harbours for snorkelling, dolphin watching and the Daymaniyat Islands — a protected group of low islands about an hour offshore, with the best reef and the main turtle-nesting ground in northern Oman, and the one day trip from the capital that most visitors never hear about. The food is better than the city's low-key reputation suggests — grilled kingfish and other Indian Ocean seafood are the thing to order, and the South Asian cafés scattered everywhere do excellent, cheap early breakfasts; what the dishes are and how they are eaten is set out on the Oman food guide. Muscat is also the starting point for the best drive in the country: the coast road south-east toward the wadis and the turtle beach, which the coast road guide follows in full.