Culture club: Bahrain offers a more stately side of the Middle East - as the Al Fateh Grand Mosque showsBahrain is like Dubai without the WAGs, as one expat put it. But I'm not sure that description does the country justice. Certainly, it's cosmopolitan, liberal, allows drinking, has more glitzy shopping malls and five-star hotels than you can shake a stick at, but also prides itself on its cultural heritage, dating back to prehistoric times.
We checked into the Gulf Hotel, 15 minutes from Bahrain International Airport. It was huge. We didn't get around to eating in even half its 14 restaurants, but I can recommend the Lebanese one, which features an exciting belly-dancer.
The Sherlock Holmes pub on the ground floor is as cheesy as it sounds, and popular with visitors from Saudi Arabia, only 16 miles away via a causeway, where alcohol is forbidden.
Hadija, one of a handful of women taxi drivers in Bahrain, told me that once cars from Saudi Arabia get to the Bahraini side of the causeway, the women, who aren't allowed to drive in their own country, get out and swap places with their male drivers.
The pearl in the oyster of this small country can, literally, be a pearl. Forget buying jewellery; sign up to one of the most romantic excursions a tourist can enjoy, a pearl-diving outing. You're allowed to keep any pearls you find.
With visions of finding pearls the size of peas, we booked the snorkelling pearl-diving with Mohamed Slaise, manager of the Al Dar Islands resort. He explained how male divers used to spend three months in the summer in the oyster fields. Their equipment consisted only of a bone nose-clip, hand guards and a stone tied as a weight to one leg. For centuries, Bahraini pearls have been considered the finest in the world.
The launch left from Sitra harbour, which was full of gently bobbing, timeless-looking dhows, traditionally used by pearl-divers. At the oyster beds, the water is only chest high, perfect for snorkelling, though so saline at first it's hard to dive under.
Mohamed showed us what to look for; the more gnarled an oyster is, the more likely it is to hold a pearl. This is not so much about the age of the oyster as that it might be weak and allow in the foreign body that ultimately becomes the pearl.
After an hour, and a haul of around 30 oysters, I handed the rope bag to my snorkelling companion to take over. Alas, darting off towards a particularly fine specimen, he left the bag full of oysters on the seabed and then couldn't find it. Tragic. We had to start again.
Unless you are an expert, opening the little beggars is a tricky business. We all poked about frantically in the flesh. This just perforates the oyster's stomach, making it much harder to see anything pearl-like.
The pearls we found were tiny, the size of grains of sugar, not the pea-sized orbs of my imagination. Yet I was proud of these babies. They were the real thing, unlike their large, but cultured, cousins. These are banned from Bahraini markets to preserve the kingdom's heritage and shopkeepers won't risk their licence to sell artificial, imported ones.
If you prefer gold, the Gold Souk in the Manama Souk, the old bazaar, will more than satisfy. In terms of the hassle, Bahraini souks are rather more civilised than their counterparts in Morocco or Egypt.
Having a bellyful: Bahrain is more liberal than some Middle Eastern statesMost gold here is 18 or 21-carat and it is all hallmarked and pure. It pays to know the current price of gold; prices here are based mostly on the weight of the item. Go in the early evening when it's cooler and before the late night crowds. Be prepared to haggle.
For a quicker pace, the Bahrain International Circuit, which stages the Formula One Grand Prix, is also home to a Hummer Driving Academy, one of only two in existence. Trained instructors will guide you through the circuit's on-site obstacle course, then take you around Bahrain's desert trails.
Although there are no official campsites in Bahrain, camping during the cooler months of January and February in the desert around Sakhir has become something of an institution. Tents range from basic to elaborate constructions with their own loos, showers, generators and satellite dishes.
Back in town, in Muharraq, Bahrain's former capital, the atmosphere couldn't be more different from the current capital, Manama. The latter is all shiny skyscrapers; the former has an old-world charm and feel.
There are winding lanes with wooden-shuttered houses, sculpted doors and ancient wind towers, which provided cooling in the days before air conditioning.
There is a fabulous coffee shop/museum here, the Bu Khalaf Coffee Shop, where you can sip light-brown cardamom-flavoured coffee. It's one of the newest additions to the Sheik Ebrahim Centre, which consists of several restored houses showcasing aspects of Muharraq's rich heritage.
Bahrain is an interesting combination. It's ultra-modern on the one hand, with tens of thousands of visitors coming every year for the Grand Prix. On the other, it cherishes its heritage and has just applied to Unesco to have a project preserving its pearl-diving tradition listed as a world heritage site.
It's a winning combination - cars for the boys; pearls for the girls.
Travel Facts
The Gulf Hotel, Manama, Bahrain has rooms from £126 (00 973 1771 3000, www.gulfhotelbahrain.com). BA flies to Bahrain from Heathrow from £459 (0844 493 0787, www.ba.com).
source: dailymail
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