Tuesday 11th April 2006

Today was our “Frankincense Day”. We were all full of anticipation. At last, the objective of our entire visit was upon us. At breakfast, Musallam, our guide was already at one of the tables with several of our group listening, enthralled.

Sima and I sat at one of the other tables, and we were soon joined by two Omani men, in dishdashahs, who turned out to be our two other drivers. Breakfast at the Beach Villas consisted of tiny bananas (you needed about four to get the equivalent of one normal-sized one), papaya, yogurt, toast and butter and jam, and instant coffee and tea.

Then we again got into three 4x4’s. This was necessary today because I had heard Rhona say the areas where the frankincense grows are “off-road”. Should be interesting! We drove out of the city and there began to be much excitement in the group because we saw camels by the side of the road! There were also a few donkeys. Eventually the drivers pulled over where they saw a whole herd of camels being moved and we took photographs. Two of the camels had young baby camels only a couple of days old! They were so sweet. We also saw some unattended cows making their way nonchalantly down the dual carriageway! There was no traffic, only one truck going down that side, and he had to slow right down and negotiate a path through the wandering cows!

Eventually we turned off the main road and onto the dirt track across the desert. It was a very bumpy ride, off-road! Good job we were in those 4x4’s! We came to a stop and all got out. The driver pulled away, waving at us, and we wondered, what now, but he went down a steep bit while we went down on foot. At the bottom of the hill were the frankincense trees, which were said to be a forest, but they were not actually very close together! We took photos of the trees and all grouped around one tree where the waiting guide had assembled with some older men. Musallam, our guide said one of them was his father, who is over 90 years old, and the other was his father’s brother, Musallam's uncle. Both of them had been in the frankincense business. After a short description of the frankincense trade and history of the area, Musallam’s uncle prepared to show us how the frankincense is obtained. He took out his dagger, or khanjar, and danced and chanted while making incisions in the bark of the tree. He made about ten or fifteen incisions, where he actually removed the top layer of the tree’s bark. Then he walked away. Musallam explained that we now had to wait for the sap of the tree to begin oozing out, and what they do when harvesting the frankincense is they would now go away for three weeks, come back and make a second and a third cut, and the best quality frankincense is actually obtained on the fourth cut. So what Musallam’s uncle had done here was actually a sort of priming the tree to harvest the frankincense later. However we waited a few minutes while the white sap began to ooze out, enough for us to see and take photographs. Meanwhile Musallam’s uncle took a drink of water from a goat skin container of water he had left hanging on the tree. We were told this keeps the water cool, by evaporation, as there is some evaporation through the skin itself. The funny thing was, also hanging from the tree was his uncle’s mobile ‘phone, which was an interesting juxtaposition of the ancient and the modern!**

Musallam explained that actually, his family no longer harvests frankincense for a business, as they can more profitably make money doing other things, but they still own a fair sized area of frankincense trees. He told us that little or no frankincense is actually now obtained on a commercial scale in Oman, and Rhona certainly had given us articles which said a similar thing, that it is sadly, a dying industry. However, we said what about all the frankincense on sale in the souqs? Musallam said that is not Omani frankincense, he said the frankincense in the souqs all comes from Ethiopia, but it is still generally acknowledged that Omani frankincense is actually the best quality. We said what if Amouage said we want so many kilos of genuine Omani frankincense, would Musallam’s family obtain it? He said maybe. Rhona was saying later, he had said it is a question of paying someone enough to do the work, and apparently, no Omanis want to do that work. But he said if he could hire some Somalians, that would be better because they know how to do the harvesting and they will work for less money. We decided we will probably not get to the bottom of this, any more than we did the roses, because certainly when we went to the Frankincense Souq back in Salalah later that day, at least some of the available frankincense said it was of local origin. And Rhona said she could not imagine the sense in importing Ethiopian frankincense to feed the demand when it grows here! It was also intriguing to find that the frankincense tree actually has flowers and seeds as the one we looked at was in flower.

We got back in the 4x4’s and went next to a viewpoint of a distant canyon and more desert. Musallam was saying that this is the second longest “rocky” desert in the world. Someone asked is the Sahara the biggest desert in the world and Musallam clarified this saying well the Sahara is a sandy desert, and he is talking about rocky deserts, so there is a difference! Well they do say you learn something every day! Musallam also said, in regard to camels, there are different coloured camels, brown, yellow, white, even green (?!) but Musallam is not an expert in camels and to him they all look the same, brown! Next we went to a small village where Musallam’s family live. Some of our group had a quick look in a bird sanctuary, while the rest of us went inside a coffee shop to rest and have a drink. This was very interesting – the restaurant (like some of the others we saw) had a main area with a number of “family rooms” – we found out later this is so that the women who wear the black veils on their faces can remove them and eat their meal with their family in privacy. We had tea to drink, and Peter prepared to do his demonstration of his extraction method again, this time with some frankincense he had collected from the base of the tree. We were joined soon after by the rest of the group, and Peter proceeded to do the extraction. He said he had not tried this with frankincense, so he had no idea if this would work, but a residue was produced and the aroma was wonderful, a little different to the frankincense we are used to, and presumably the difference in the solvent Peter uses actually extracts some different aromatic principles. The aroma was certainly of frankincense, very rich and balsamic, but slightly different than we are used to, but extremely interesting.*

We left the coffee shop and went next to Khor Rouri, the ancient port where the frankincense ships came and went. There is a beautiful blue lagoon there, and we walked around the ancient ruins of the town, but by this time the temperature reading on the car was 33 C, and there was no shade in these ruins, so we did not stay too long in that heat! Musallam came with us and told us more about the history of the town, but the other two drivers had more sense, and stayed in a “cool room”!

Next we drove a little further, and then went off road again, but actually along the beach! Past some old buildings, but clearly where we were going, there was no actual road access! We arrived at the restaurant where we were to have lunch. We went inside but we were directed up some steps and I wondered where we were going to eat. One of the owners of the restaurant gestured to me to go to a room up the stairs, and I thought on a day like this it will be very hot up there, but at the top of the stairs was actually a large room, but the walls were actually more like screens with lots of little holes in, and there was a very refreshing sea breeze blowing all the way through. The room was obviously designed to make the most of the breezes and be cool! The whole side of the room where our tables were was totally open from waist-height upwards, and so we could sit and enjoy the views across the bay. We could see fishing boats, and a few people swimming from the beach.

After a short while, lunch was served, yet another buffet meal, this could have been authentic Omani fayre, there was rice, noodles/spaghetti and there was a lentil dahl, but only one chicken dish so I had that to eat, it was not very spicy and it was like fried chicken but very tasty. There were two or three other dishes but they all were fish, and one was even whole grilled fish, complete with heads, tails and fins, so no way was I even going to try that! However, everyone who did eat it said how beautifully done it was.

After the meal, we went back to the cars, and we were taken to a place where they brought some unpainted, terracotta frankincense burners out to the cars to show us, and we could buy them for two or three rials. Musallam explained that the women who make the burners work from their homes, so there is no factory where we can actually go and see them being made, unfortunately.

Then we were driven back to Salalah, and taken back to the Beach Villas, much to the surprise of some of us, at least. Rhona explained that we now had a couple of hours to ourselves, where we could go swimming, walking or rest in our rooms, because later on we were going to go to the Frankincense Souq, before going on to the restaurant for our dinner. Well, some of us decided to go for a swim in the Indian Ocean…or is it the Arabian Sea? The waters were lovely and warm, really comfortably warm, but the waves were too choppy to actually swim very easily – quite big waves kept going right over my head, and after the third attempt and getting another mouthful of salt-water, I gave up trying to swim and just stayed where it was shallow, standing sideways on to the waves, which while the water was about knee-height, some of the waves that came crashing in were easily getting me wet-through up to my shoulders! The sound of the waves crashing onto the beach was memorable, especially later on at night when there was little other noise. There were still a few little crabs to be seen, running about and digging themselves into the sand before the waves came up. After an hour or so we went back to our rooms and got showered and changed ready for dinner.

At seven o’ clock the drivers picked us up again, and took us to the Frankincense Souq in Salalah. There were many, many shops selling frankincense, burners and other associated items, and many of the shop-keepers were actually women, but most of them wore the black veils with only their eyes visible. Some of them were clearly very beautiful. At the first shop we went to, a lady was selling kohl, in a small metal bottle with a rather dangerous looking pointed metal applicator. Nevertheless, some of our group decided to buy these as gifts to take back. I think I will stick to an eyeliner pencil, it’s safer! Our guide, one of the other drivers this time, took us around, saying he would haggle and get us a good deal on our frankincense. He took us to another store, and at first we were just looking, and he was asking for us about the special green frankincense that is the only one acceptable for chewing, and so a couple of our group bought very small amounts of this as it was quite expensive. Meanwhile Peter and then John were outside looking at the mountains of frankincense available for sale by the kilo, just on display in big plastic bowls. Peter declared he was buying a kilo from here, because he wanted these particular shaped pieces that were there. The guide kept saying he would take us somewhere else to buy the frankincense and get us a good deal, but then John and three others decided they would buy half a kilo of the same one Peter had bought, and then Sima and I said we would have that one as well, and so for 5 rials for each half a kilo, John said afterwards that we had probably paid over the odds for it, but never mind. I was also looking for a frankincense burner, but they were quite expensive in that shop, and the guide was saying we would do burners later.

Sima wanted to buy some bukhur, which is a solid substance available in different scents for sprinkling over the top of the burning frankincense to make a different effect. We found a shop which had a big selection of these, and we had a good look and smell of a few of them. We concluded they were straight out of a chemistry lab, or even more likely, the residues of perfumery manufacture – residues of a nitro-musk production for example. The nearest I could liken them to was the amber solid stuff which we had seen for sale in Morocco, however that had been light brown and this was very dark brown, but you could clearly see crystals on its surface. Some of them were mixtures of solid and liquid. The ladies of the shop sprinkled some onto some burning frankincense to show us the aroma. However, what happened next? Shock, horror, Stan discovered, under a stool, a small cardboard keg of Musk Ambrette!! The perfumers among us were doing the equivalent of a builder’s sharp intake of breath and we all took photos of this illegal substance, after all, Musk Ambrette has been banned in Europe at least for use in perfumes since the 1980’s. We figured that is probably a major ingredient of the bukhur.

Having completed our shopping we were taken to the restaurant, an Arabian/Chinese/Indian restaurant. It was again a buffet, with very similar fayre to that we had been having everywhere else, houmous, tabbouleh, salads, soup, rice, chicken tikka and curry, vegetables and for dessert, a crème caramel with a strange flavour which it suddenly dawned on me had probably been made with evaporated milk, which would explain its unusual flavour. There was also fruit salad, and a strange looking milk pudding that I didn’t try (vermicelli?). We returned to the Beach Villas.
 

**To read the full transcription of our guide's description of the harvesting of frankincense, click here.

*For further information on Peter Wilde's extraction process, his website is www.wildeandcompany.co.uk

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