Sacred Trails 
Before silk, before spice, there was frankincense — and the road that carried it out of southern Arabia was worth more than gold. Through the deserts of Dhofar in Oman, the old caravan routes still trace a landscape almost nobody visits.
The journey begins at Wadi Dawkah, a scrubby valley where the Boswellia sacra tree still grows wild — the source of frankincense resin, harvested by hand exactly as it was three thousand years ago. From there the route follows the ghost of the old trade road toward Shisr, ruins some identify with the legendary lost city of Ubar, swallowed by the desert and rediscovered only decades ago.
Further south, Khor Rori's weathered walls sit above a lagoon that was once a working port, loading incense onto ships bound for Persia, India and Rome. The trail ends at Al-Baleed, another ruined port city on the Arabian Sea, its foundations barely rising from the sand.
This isn't a well-worn pilgrim road — it's something quieter and stranger: a trade route turned to ruin, still carrying the scent of the resin that built it. Frankincense trees, empty caravanserai, ports with no ships. Walk it and you're tracing the path of a commodity that once moved empires, through a corner of Arabia most travellers never see.
Follow the scent to where it began.