Since a lot of people are asking how to follow in Kate’s footsteps, here is some information to help travellers. I’m not connected with Kate or the BBC – just an enthusiastic travel journalist.

Dhofar, Oman

Oman

Kate started her journey in Dhofar, the southernmost region of Oman. Salalah, the Dhofari capital, is roughly 1000km south of Muscat. Several airlines fly there: from the UK, the easiest will be Oman Air from Heathrow via Muscat, or you could get a cheap flight to either Istanbul or Hurghada (Egypt) from where Jazeera Airways flies to Salalah via Kuwait. There’s a great museum of frankincense in Salalah (which also has a fantastic souk where you can buy your own), and you could follow cultural itineraries – designated World Heritage by UNESCO – to the frankincense groves in Wadi Dawkah near Salalah, as well as the ancient trading cities of Sumharam (aka Khor Rori) and Ubar. Read this superb article in Saudi Aramco World by Tim Mackintosh-Smith. The Oman tourist board is here.

Yemen

Yemen is not an easy country to visit as an independent Western traveller. Its politics are unstable, its infrastructure is very poor and safety is sometimes uncertain, especially when travelling outside the centre of the capital, Sanaa. Lots of tourists visit, travel and have a great time without any problems; others run into serious difficulties. Kate went to Shibam, in the hard-to-access Hadhramaut region of eastern Yemen, then detoured to Aden, once a British crown colony (where she was taken to see a statue of Queen Victoria), and on to Sanaa. Travelling overland from Oman is difficult: regulations surrounding the land crossing change frequently. The Yemen tourist board is here, and this is a good article from The Independent by travel journalist Ginny Hill.

Saudi Arabia

The difficulty with visiting Saudi Arabia is getting a visa to enter; once you’re in, travelling around is straightforward for men (women must be accompanied by a man, either a close relative or a licensed guide). Muslims qualify for pilgrimage visas. If you’re not Muslim, but you have business contacts inside Saudi, they could sponsor a visa for you. 3- or 5-day transit visas are sometimes issued, under certain conditions. Otherwise, tourist visas are restricted in number, difficult to get and very expensive.

Kingdom Centre, Riyadh

Two UK tour companies offer Saudi Arabia. The Traveller operates cultural tours which visit key destinations such as Riyadh (where Kate discussed capital punishment with a chief of the religious police), Jeddah (where Kate was moved to tears by the call to prayer) and Madain Saleh, an ancient Nabatean trading city in the northern deserts. Regaldive operates trips to the Farasan Islands in the Red Sea hosted by Eric Mason of DreamDiver.net: Eric led Kate on a wreck dive somewhere in the area around the Farasan (and has featured in travel articles such as this one by James Montague in The Observer). You could also talk directly to Sadd Al-Samallaghi Tours of Jeddah, one of Saudi’s leading ‘inbound’ tour operators: they handle regular tour groups from lots of European countries and were credited as ‘fixers’ for Kate Humble’s trip.

The Saudi capital Riyadh’s commercial area Olaya is dominated by two skyscrapers – the Faisaliah Centre and the Kingdom Centre (also known as the Potato Peeler, or the Vest – see pic – which was where Kate met Prince Alwaleed). Kate also met and flew with ex-fighter pilot Prince Sultan (who happens to be director of the Saudi tourism authority) and Prince Bandar bin Saud, head of the wildlife commission: she was flown in a light aircraft over the desert to the Uruq Bani Maarid nature reserve and on to the ancient frankincense trading centre of Al-Ukhdood near the modern Saudi city of Najran, site of a 6th-century massacre of Christians. She went to Jeddah, exploring the Old City, and the beautiful ancient city of Madain Saleh (built by the Nabateans, who also built Petra, nearby in Jordan) and dived in the Farasan Islands.

Click here and scroll down to post no.36 for a detailed account of how an ordinary traveller secured a transit visa to Saudi in 2006 and spent four days touring independently. Here is a travel article about visiting Saudi by Mark Stratton in CNN Traveller – and here is another, by Cath Urquhart in Wanderlust.

But the best way to get into the frankincense mood is to read Petra and the Lost Kingdom of the Nabataeans by historian Jane Taylor. I’m reliably informed Jane pops up in Episode Four, to guide Kate around Petra in Jordan (along with Marguerite van Geldermalsen, author of the highly recommended Married To A Bedouin). Jane’s book is full of stunning photos and intimate historical detail about the ancient frankincense trade. (Disclosure: Jane is a friend of mine, and has collaborated on my Rough Guide to Jordan.)

I had high hopes: it’s a nice idea, and Humble is a good choice. There were some great sequences – camel-jumping in Yemen (where young bloods try to leap over a row of dromedaries, Evel Knievel-style: see pic), a bit of imperial nostalgia in Aden, discussing capital punishment with the chief of the religious police in Riyadh’s “Chop-Chop Square”, and so on.

But what a wasted opportunity in Oman! As the source of frankincense, and the anchor of the whole trip, Oman was treated surprisingly shoddily – a scant five or ten minutes, focused entirely around Kate Humble fooling around on camelback like a package tourist at the Pyramids. Nothing of Dhofari culture, nothing of the amazing frankincense souk in Salalah, nothing of the extraordinarily evocative ruins of Sumharam at Khor Rori, nothing of Salalah’s state-of-the-art Museum of the Frankincense Lands… Oman was reduced to swarthy tribesmen dancing and shouting at camels a lot while blonde foreigner looks on in bemused hilarity. If I was part of the Omani team who fixed that particular shoot, or in the promotions unit of the Omani Ministry of Tourism, I would not be very happy today…

Then we got perhaps the most positive half-hour of prime-time TV coverage Yemen has had in years – genuinely interesting sequences of travel, well described, well shot and with good Q&A cultural insight between Humble and her Yemeni fixer – including a baby-blessing ceremony in a tower-house in Shibam, a wadi walk approaching Shabwa on the ancient frankincense route, some nice sequences in Sanaa, and more.

Because the Yemeni-Saudi border is closed, Kate then diverted onto a three-hour flight to Riyadh to continue the story. But why Riyadh? It has nothing to do with frankincense, and is miles off the route. Why not Jeddah – which is at least in the right direction – or, better still, a connecting flight back to Najran or Jizan, on the Saudi side of the border, to pick up the proper trail again?

My guess – and forgive my cynicism here (I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist) –is because this series came about not because of a desire to enlighten the world about frankincense – but, rather, because someone, somewhere, gained permission to film a travel documentary inside Saudi Arabia, perhaps after years of asking. Lots is changing inside KSA, and there is a strong desire there to gain screentime in the West that is both positive and focused well away from news. From the trailers, it looks like episode two sees Kate hosted by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for a high-life tour of Saudi in limos, supercars, private jets etc etc. So much for frankincense. I suspect that, having secured permission to film, the successful negotiator went away and developed a pitch which justified screening an hour of amazing scenery and memorable adventures inside KSA without it looking like a PR whitewash. Weaving KSA into a story about ancient trade routes is a brainwave. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Saudi promoted onscreen as a viable tourism destination.

It might work well: we’ve only had the first 15 minutes so far, at the end of episode one (of four) – though arrival in Riyadh was tragically, and brainlessly, heralded with the immortal voiceover from Kate Humble: “Saudi Arabia is a kingdom of contrasts”. Doh! Fire the scriptwriter!

And then, after dwelling on just how scarily different Kate thinks Saudi will be, with her tears flowing after trying on niqab in Sanaa (yes, it made her cry) and her nervousness about doing something wrong in Riyadh, when she finally arrived and was taken to a mall, all she could say – while looking around at Dunkin Donuts and shops selling, yes, skirts and T-shirts – was “It’s all so depressingly familiar”. Doh again! That felt like a microcosm of how Europeans have approached Arabia for generations: first it’s all thrillingly exotic, then the exoticism starts to feel threatening, then finally it’s not exotic enough. It’s the same mindset which results in Dubai tour operators laying on Ukrainian hoofers to stage a pastiche of Egyptian bellydance for groups on desert safaris – the reality is simply not enough to meet expectations.

But praise to the BBC for commissioning a four-part series about travelling across the Arabian Peninsula – that must be a first. Interesting that it was scheduled in the middle of Ramadan, as well.

However, this is the map the BBC have drawn to illustrate the route. That diamond at the top is the ancient port of Gaza – but, as I’m sure must be known to BBC TV executives, Gaza is not an Israeli city. A simple question: where on this map is Palestine?

UPDATE: Seems I might be wrong about that Saudi prince – possibly not Prince Alwaleed, but rather Prince Bandar. And the Daily Telegraph have pulled no punches in their review of this programme today…

UPDATE 2: For detailed travel notes about following in Kate’s footsteps, click here.

I must admit that my mind isn’t fully on the guidebook job in hand: I’m returning to Oman next month, for my first visit to Salalah, in the southern Dhofar region. Ranulph Fiennes’ book Atlantis of the Sands about the discovery of Ubar, a ‘lost city’ in the Dhofari desert, is getting me in the mood. The tales of military derring-do are less than gripping (Fiennes was a mercenary, seconded to Dhofar in 1968-69 to protect the then Sultan of Oman against Marxist insurgents) but Fiennes knows his Arabian history, clearly understands and respects Dhofari culture, and can call on a nice turn of phrase. Six bald words he gives to a remote desert settlement named Fasad, describing it as “a place of wind and spiders”. It’s one of the most exciting, evocative lines of travel writing I think I’ve ever read. I now have to see Fasad.

So that’s my problem. I love Switzerland, honestly I do. And I’m trying to focus on updating my Swiss guidebook. It’s just that, even with an electric storm as a garnish, Baroque Solothurn can’t quite match up to the allure of “a place of wind and spiders”. I’m already half in Dhofar.

Sorry, Switzerland.