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You will find many tribes in Dhofar, inheritors of the original inhabitants of a very ancient land. A lot of family names belong to parent tribes, and most will lead you to two: the Shahra and the Mahra. But there are some who say these are really both the same, like two children from a common parent. And it has been put forward that the word 'Shahra' comes from the term for an ancient land that might have stretched from the shores of the Red Sea to the hump of land that we now know as Ras al Hadd, and north to somewhere around present day Qatar or Bahrain. In time, as with all kingdoms that rise, Bilad al Shahr fell into decline, and shrunk to the area that was most precious to it. That land is what we now call Dhofar, which has everything its ancient people needed: the monsoon, fertile land for cultivation and grazing and, that most valuable ancient asset of the ancient world, frankincense.

There is no doubting Dhofar's natural wealth, and of course such riches always throw up many contenders, all of whom say they were there first. The exact lineage and history of each parent and sub-tribe might be argued over for centuries, but this might be missing the point. And that is that there is something very special about this region, and you will still find those ingredients that make it so in its land and the lives that it hosts.

Perfumes of the desert

As we push forward into the Empty Quarter, the temperature shoots into the mid-forties and the landscape unfolds into an unending flatness, from one horizon to the other. We switch off the air-conditioning to save fuel, turn northeast and rumble towards the point where three countries meet. Over the next few days and nights, as we move from one bedu settlement to the other, our hair becomes matted with sand, our clothes tend to stick to our backs and we generally lose any form of grooming we left the city with.
But through it all, there is one thing that the bedu have that will lift you above the heat and dust and sweat, and whisk you away from the stark harshness all around. And you will find that ingredient tucked away in a pocket of a shirt, one little vial of Arabic perfume, or attar. The cap is also the dipstick, and, after we had just driven through a dust storm, we flicked it open, dabbed the end on the massars wrapped around our faces, and soaked in its sheer luxury. This one was attar of oudh, a heady, exotic scent that added glamour to the long journey ahead. All it takes is a bit of machismo and one tolla a vial's worth from a famous shop in Salalah called Ajmal.

Some have progressed to the ways of the city, even if they still live in the remotest of desert enclaves. And so it was as we sat down with Mubarak and Salim Hussein al Rashidi al Kathiri, at their little government -allocated house at Hashman. Sitting down to refreshments and climate control, we are sprayed with a blue bottle of potent cologne called Rally with two white racehorses as its logo to get rid of the last traces of our journey. It works, and you know that somehow, the enchanting whiff of the desert is never going to be quite the same again.