Wadi Bani Khalid in northern Oman. Picture: Alamy Source: Supplied Nakhl Fort in Oman. Picture: Oman Tourism Source: Supplied A stunning view of Nizwa Fort in Oman. The Desert Nights Camp in the Wahiba Sands, southeast of Muscat in Oman desert. Picture: Susan Kurosawa Source: The Australian A green pool in Wadi Shab. WITHOUT warning, our trusty white Mitsubishi Pajero was careening off the paved road, in the middle of sand-coloured Omani emptiness, and jolting, bumping, swerving over miles of off-road path, high into the country's desolate mountains. As Hilal, my loyal guide and driver, pointed out 300m drops beside us, he accelerated the four-wheel-drive Pajero up steep, one-lane slopes, stones slipping under our wheels as the vehicle zigzagged now towards the drop, now towards the mountain again. We rounded a turn and I saw great crags and slate-coloured mountains across a landscape as barren and haunting as anywhere in the American west; road signs stood quixotically in the distance, pointing across the abyss to five or six towns I could no longer imagine, and goats occasionally bleated in the silence. Every now and then we came across an oasis - the ancient mud-brick towers of al-Hamra scattered across a sudden stretch of green - and then we were in nowhere again, climbing towards a breathtaking new expanse of receding peaks. It's not often in the modern world you can chance upon scenes as unvisited, almost biblical as these; I've found an equivalent only in Yemen and Ethiopia, both desperately poor and often turbulent. But Oman is the rare country that is at once safe and very much itself, exotic and almost embarrassingly user-friendly. I first stumbled on it after a harrowing trip across the mountains of Yemen five weeks before 9/11, and, fleeing a land of tribal kidnapping and boys with machine guns, came upon the pristine quiet of an ornate Arabian hotel on a beach and thought I'd arrived in paradise. Muscat, Oman's capital, seemed as picturesque and pristine a vision of fairytale white castles as any romantic could hope for. Around it, moreover, are the 3000m mountains I was visiting with Hilal (home to Oman's own Grand Canyon), with the cosy, British-run Jebel Shams Resort near the top; 2100km of stunning coastline, with green turtles to be seen at Ras al-Jinz and dolphins frisking 15 minutes outside of Muscat; and not a single car to be spied across miles of clean modern highway. One morning I found myself watching Bedouin women in hawk-faced black masks above their orange or turquoise dresses leading newly acquired goats across a crowded carpark while greybeards in white turbans limped down the street like nothing so much as retired mujaheddin. "See, they're shopping," said Hilal, as we passed a pick-up loaded with vegetables, sacks of dates and a goat just purchased for about the price of an iPhone. Pulling out of town, we drew up at a petrol station (complete with mosque) in the bone-white emptiness. A camel sat placidly in the back of a Toyota truck. In the station store there were DVDs (Memorising the Koran for Kids) next to six-packs of pomegranate juice, and when the man at the cash register lacked small change to give me, he handed over some peanut brittle instead. Like almost everything in Oman, it tasted of halwa or curry, or both at once. When the Sandhurst-educated Sultan Qaboos bin Said displaced his eccentric and reclusive father in a palace coup in 1970, he surveyed the countries around him, beginning to take off in an oil-mad frenzy, and realised what he didn't want to do. Oil would not last indefinitely, he knew, and if traditions were wiped out by new developments, his kingdom could find itself orphaned and bereft. He set up schools and hospitals in the most deserted areas, therefore, but demanded that no building be more than nine storeys high. He sent water and electricity free of charge to mountain villages, but mandated that houses be erected in traditional style, with pastel colours, creating a vision of white mini-castles shimmering over the vast sands. The result is a kind of understated, tasteful, bespoke Arabia that couldn't be less like its neighbours. There are tower houses here, as in Yemen to the south, and the men wear ceremonial swords now and then; but there are signs for McDonald's double cheeseburgers - "the promise of joy" - all across the 2000-year-old town of Muscat. Women can drive here, unlike in Saudi Arabia, yet Hilal assured me (as How Deep is Your Love played on our sound system from his flash drive) he could not even say hello to a woman until they were married. If Dubai to the north is a swaggering teenager gunning a Lamborghini around blind curves, Oman remains the wisp-bearded old man along the side of the road who invites you into his spotless, modern version of a Bedouin hut for traditional sweetmeats. At times, this careful sense of protectedness gives Oman something of the feel of a Middle Eastern Bhutan. "We enjoy a cut-and-paste system," a shy young Omani woman, covered from head to toe in black, told me during a return visit. We take the new things, like malls and fast food, like television, and we paste them on to our traditions. At other times the air of enlightened paternalism can make it feel a little like the Singapore of the Perfume Coast. "Roads monitored by radar" shout the signs above the empty highways, and Omanis can be fined if their cars are dirty. The first thing that struck me as I walked into my luxury three-room tent at the Desert Nights Camp in Wahiba Sands - nothing around but golden dunes, some as high as 135m, stretching for 80km in some directions - was the minibar, rainforest shower and airconditioning outlet. The second was a sign announcing "CCTV surveillance." In the leather-bound handbook detailing the facilities, the headlines moved in one smooth flow from "Satellite TV" to "Saw-Scaled Vipers" to "Scenery," "Scorpions" and "Scrabble." For the casual visitor, though, all this makes Oman one of the undiscovered treasures of the planet. The little souk in Muscat, next to its pretty harbour, is full of women in black abayas and men in immaculate white dishdashas whose tassles are smothered in incense every morning. Omanis are the most fragrant people in the world, an Australian resident assured me. In the middle of miles of soul-clearing silence, suddenly I was near the pools at Wadi Bani Khalid, where locals were swimming in clear emerald waters, the little girls decorously covered by veils. And when I drove up to the sumptuous Six Senses resort at Zighy Bay - not many miles across the water from Iran - I did not know whether to order saffron honey or Musandam fig ice cream, or sorbets in carrot and basil flavour, or apple and coriander. In the northern summer, Salalah, in the southern region of Dhofar, enjoys the only monsoon in Arabia, and one hot July I remember seeing families from across the peninsula delightedly picnicking in the mist and light drizzle, great swaths of luxuriance around the frankincense trees, and camels standing by the deserted road outside the Hilton hotel. Oman is not cheap, and its diet has not improved much since Ibn Battuta, travelling up the coast in the 14th century, dined on dates and fish and bread here. You may baulk when you hear that one of the country's most celebrated traditional dishes is called rabees and blanch when you find out that refers to boiled baby shark. But to stay at Shangri-La's six-star al-Husn Hotel, 15 minutes outside Muscat, or to dine in the minimalist splendour of the Chedi on the beach is to enjoy the pleasures of, say, Southeast Asia with none of the crowds. The hundreds of watchtowers and ancient forts that are among the country's most dramatic sites recall that Oman has long been home to tribal warfare; some of the most secret spots in these elegant jewels of carpeted chambers, with arched windows open to catch the breezes from among the mango and papaya trees, are murder holes designed for dropping hot date oil on invaders. In the quaint Bait al-Zubair museum in Muscat, the main items on display are shields made of rhinoceros hide, swords disguised as walking sticks, and double-edged swords. There is still a Ministry of Camel Affairs in Oman, but I was in no position to ascertain how it feels about camel burgers. And so many Indians do business here that, on opening the local paper, I was greeted by one ad from a woman seeking professional boys with good family, and another from a divorced man interested in alliances with nurses. Hilal took his holidays every year in Thailand, recognised every last make of car and often disappeared to check on the second house he'd bought with his military pension. Yet he kissed the Koran before he picked it up in the Grand Mosque, could spot an eagle from what seemed like miles away, and greeted everyone we passed with so rousing a Salaam alaikum! that I couldn't tell if they were friends or strangers. What happens when the unmarried sultan, now in his 70s, moves on is not something anyone is keen to think about, and I could not tell how durable Oman's delicate balance would remain. "There is a mosque over there," a local said as we listened to Friday prayers on the radio (and then a program in which citizens could call in with complaints), and next to it a shop selling alcohol. What you do, you do. And the government doesn't mind? Maybe they catch you, they put you in jail. For 24 hours. Then, when you are better, you go home. With that, When a Man Loves a Woman began to play from Hilal's flash drive - we were nearing another dazzling oasis -and we were back in either 1966 or the 14th century. Pico Iyer's latest book is The Man Within My Head: Graham Greene, My Father and Me (Bloomsbury). Checklist Award-winning Etihad Airways offers return connections to Muscat, Oman, via Abu Dhabi from Australian ports. The regional flight takes about one hour. More: etihadairways.com; tourismoman.com.au