The Frankincense Fortress of Arabia

Oman

Oman feels like the Gulf’s quietest secret, a country that chose mountains, wadis, and old forts over glass towers. Frankincense trees still grow wild here the way they have for thousands of years, and the coastline shifts from desert to fjord within a single day’s drive. It is the only country I have visited where I was genuinely humbled not by its scale, but by how deliberately it protected its own identity while every neighbour around it modernized in a hurry.