AMOUAGE VOYAGE

"All the mornings of the world are without return."
When confronted with the first dawn over the crest of the Jabal Akhdar, one imagines that Pascal Quignard could have been describing the Sultanate of Oman, where the days follow one another without ever being the same. Oman is not just a land – it is a spirit.

AMOUAGE VOYAGE

"All the mornings of the world are without return."
When confronted with the first dawn over the crest of the Jabal Akhdar, one imagines that Pascal Quignard could have been describing the Sultanate of Oman, where the days follow one another without ever being the same. Oman is not just a land – it is a spirit.

  • Al Hajar Mountains, Oman


    We set off from Muscat, a small pearlescent capital, clinging to the sides of rocky spurs. In the darkness, we head straight for the mountain range, a rampart that divides the country in two and blocks the horizon inland from wherever you look. Leaving the city, we soon find ourselves surrounded by stretches of red and gold sand, animated by the wind and the path of the sun. Like a river, the highway unravels its shimmering asphalt, taking us through ghost-like villages abandoned to the incessant heat of an eternal summer. We pass the remains of watchtowers, the silent testimonies to the glorious and war-torn past of a now pacifist country. Wherever we may look, we feel the power of this history, so ancient, and yet so close. Along the route, there is the constant reproachful glance of the Al Hajar Mountains to our right, looking down on us with their unmistakable scarlet faces, that even the clear blue sky cannot compete with.

  • This Is How Time Passes In Oman

    In a monochrome of supernatural golds that somehow make you feel like an outsider in a land of such raw natural beauty, untouched by humans. Even the houses, though whiter than the clouds, somehow blend into the shifting golden dunes and rocks to the point that they seem to be saying: “Don’t look at us, we matter not. Look at nature instead. Look at the mountains and the coasts and the peaks and the plateaus. We are but visitors here.” Our guide turns towards us, a smile lighting up his face: “You’ll like what follows,” he says. And suddenly the 4x4 rumbles and throws us back into our air-conditioned seats: we are climbing, and the mountain momentarily disappears to make way for an impeccably blue sky. The vehicle sways, we hear the gravel shift under the tyres, the music fades, swallowed up by the revving of the engine. Then there is silence. The mountains come back into place. Our guide turns off the ignition, opens the door and beckons us to follow him to the edge of a precipice, overlooking a hamlet of rusty metal and dishevelled shacks. “It’s on the other side,” he says. And I looked around and discovered one of the secrets that only Oman holds the key to. A glimpse of paradise. Sitting at the jagged foothills of the Al Hajar Mountains, an immense and fertile palm grove opened up wide before our eyes, a carpet of malachite, so thick and bushy that the mere sight of it made us feel the taste of water on our lips. Behind the line of perfect green, suspended from the severe outcrop, were the remains of a once flourishing city — so impeccably ruined, that it feels as though it had been placed there by a romantic painter. “There is a kind of unexplored beauty in Oman,” says Renaud Salmon, Chief Experience Officer of Amouage, the perfume house founded in 1983 at the behest of His late Majesty Sultan Qaboos. “In Oman, you feel like you have access to something that may not last, like you’re an early explorer. Like you’re touching a jewel that is still new and quite raw. I’m lucky to have access to that. Oman is the definition of authenticity.”

  • Al Hajar Mountains, Oman


    We set off from Muscat, a small pearlescent capital, clinging to the sides of rocky spurs. In the darkness, we head straight for the mountain range, a rampart that divides the country in two and blocks the horizon inland from wherever you look. Leaving the city, we soon find ourselves surrounded by stretches of red and gold sand, animated by the wind and the path of the sun. Like a river, the highway unravels its shimmering asphalt, taking us through ghost-like villages abandoned to the incessant heat of an eternal summer. We pass the remains of watchtowers, the silent testimonies to the glorious and war-torn past of a now pacifist country. Wherever we may look, we feel the power of this history, so ancient, and yet so close. Along the route, there is the constant reproachful glance of the Al Hajar Mountains to our right, looking down on us with their unmistakable scarlet faces, that even the clear blue sky cannot compete with.

  • This Is How Time Passes In Oman

    In a monochrome of supernatural golds that somehow make you feel like an outsider in a land of such raw natural beauty, untouched by humans. Even the houses, though whiter than the clouds, somehow blend into the shifting golden dunes and rocks to the point that they seem to be saying: “Don’t look at us, we matter not. Look at nature instead. Look at the mountains and the coasts and the peaks and the plateaus. We are but visitors here.” Our guide turns towards us, a smile lighting up his face: “You’ll like what follows,” he says. And suddenly the 4x4 rumbles and throws us back into our air-conditioned seats: we are climbing, and the mountain momentarily disappears to make way for an impeccably blue sky. The vehicle sways, we hear the gravel shift under the tyres, the music fades, swallowed up by the revving of the engine. Then there is silence. The mountains come back into place. Our guide turns off the ignition, opens the door and beckons us to follow him to the edge of a precipice, overlooking a hamlet of rusty metal and dishevelled shacks. “It’s on the other side,” he says. And I looked around and discovered one of the secrets that only Oman holds the key to. A glimpse of paradise. Sitting at the jagged foothills of the Al Hajar Mountains, an immense and fertile palm grove opened up wide before our eyes, a carpet of malachite, so thick and bushy that the mere sight of it made us feel the taste of water on our lips. Behind the line of perfect green, suspended from the severe outcrop, were the remains of a once flourishing city — so impeccably ruined, that it feels as though it had been placed there by a romantic painter. “There is a kind of unexplored beauty in Oman,” says Renaud Salmon, Chief Experience Officer of Amouage, the perfume house founded in 1983 at the behest of His late Majesty Sultan Qaboos. “In Oman, you feel like you have access to something that may not last, like you’re an early explorer. Like you’re touching a jewel that is still new and quite raw. I’m lucky to have access to that. Oman is the definition of authenticity.”

  • Story by Amouage

    The road winds its way through a rugged landscape, the air cools, the profile of the peaks contrasted against the vast blue of the sky. The next hour is long, the road winding, we concentrate to keep our lunch of figs and pomegranates - rinsed with the traditional qahwa, the local coffee flavoured with saffron and smoked rosewater - in our stomachs. Perched at an altitude of nearly 3000 metres, we discover Al Aqar, a suspended oasis overlooking the dry wadi. Renaud Salmon leads the way and guides us through deserted alleyways drenched with the aroma of parched wood, burnt mimosa and charred rose petals. Through silent arches and passages barely wider than ourselves, he leads us to a seemingly inaccessible roof from which the Akhdar reveals its splendour - emerald terraces carve through the gold of the Green Mountain, a winding swathe of indigo - the aflaj, gushing from a solitary spring. Here, for centuries, Omanis have cultivated the rarest rose in the world, whose mineral fragrance has made it infamous and which, in 2022, under the impetus of Renaud Salmon and the Amouage Jabal Rose Project, was transformed into an essence for the first time in its history. “I know very few countries where you can have fjords, mountains, deserts, turquoise coasts, lush forests” he confides as we look over the eerie panorama. “The richness of this country gives you a palette of colours, materials and emotions, offering an infinite source of inspiration, very intuitively, one can translate that into accords for perfumery”. It must be seen to be believed. One must sit on the rooftop of a decrepit house at dusk, legs dangling over a sheer drop, to feel, through vertigo and wonder, the insolent beauty of this country and its potential for inspiration. Each door corroded by the sand, each splinter of soft wood, each glance thrown at random is armed with a raw, unexpected beauty, one that is terrifying. It is only when seeing the coastlines of turmeric and pearl; the soothing faces of its people and the hanging, sleeping villages, do we begin to understand that art beats at the heart of Oman and that its nature holds the keys to marvels in the making. As the day wanes and as our path leads us to Alila, a luxury resort set on one of the peaks of the massif, we watch over the canyon and its scintillating rose bushes, kindled by the evening fire. The wilderness awakens, rid of the last bit of humanity, that had until now, disturbed its course. The eagle shears the purple sky, the air seethes with the scent of lavender and wild myrtle, and sleep calls us in with the wisps of frankincense that endlessly burn in the four corners of this remote sultanate, reminding us at last that we are above all, here, little humans, standing atop the Land of Incense.

  • Story by Amouage

    The road winds its way through a rugged landscape, the air cools, the profile of the peaks contrasted against the vast blue of the sky. The next hour is long, the road winding, we concentrate to keep our lunch of figs and pomegranates - rinsed with the traditional qahwa, the local coffee flavoured with saffron and smoked rosewater - in our stomachs. Perched at an altitude of nearly 3000 metres, we discover Al Aqar, a suspended oasis overlooking the dry wadi. Renaud Salmon leads the way and guides us through deserted alleyways drenched with the aroma of parched wood, burnt mimosa and charred rose petals. Through silent arches and passages barely wider than ourselves, he leads us to a seemingly inaccessible roof from which the Akhdar reveals its splendour - emerald terraces carve through the gold of the Green Mountain, a winding swathe of indigo - the aflaj, gushing from a solitary spring. Here, for centuries, Omanis have cultivated the rarest rose in the world, whose mineral fragrance has made it infamous and which, in 2022, under the impetus of Renaud Salmon and the Amouage Jabal Rose Project, was transformed into an essence for the first time in its history. “I know very few countries where you can have fjords, mountains, deserts, turquoise coasts, lush forests” he confides as we look over the eerie panorama. “The richness of this country gives you a palette of colours, materials and emotions, offering an infinite source of inspiration, very intuitively, one can translate that into accords for perfumery”. It must be seen to be believed. One must sit on the rooftop of a decrepit house at dusk, legs dangling over a sheer drop, to feel, through vertigo and wonder, the insolent beauty of this country and its potential for inspiration. Each door corroded by the sand, each splinter of soft wood, each glance thrown at random is armed with a raw, unexpected beauty, one that is terrifying. It is only when seeing the coastlines of turmeric and pearl; the soothing faces of its people and the hanging, sleeping villages, do we begin to understand that art beats at the heart of Oman and that its nature holds the keys to marvels in the making. As the day wanes and as our path leads us to Alila, a luxury resort set on one of the peaks of the massif, we watch over the canyon and its scintillating rose bushes, kindled by the evening fire. The wilderness awakens, rid of the last bit of humanity, that had until now, disturbed its course. The eagle shears the purple sky, the air seethes with the scent of lavender and wild myrtle, and sleep calls us in with the wisps of frankincense that endlessly burn in the four corners of this remote sultanate, reminding us at last that we are above all, here, little humans, standing atop the Land of Incense.