I am living in Muscat for the past 6 months. It feels like living in our own country surrounded by mallus,marathis,gujarathis,punjabis...all at the same time.
But, I also feel that we expats fail to interact with locals as we are satisfied with our own circle of people. This is a bad side-effect of having our people all around. Sometimes, it feels like we are walking on the road of chennai (of course, with less traffic!!!)
U can manage with English as most of the locals speak English or Hindi. Even one taxi driver put on Hindi songs for us as soon as we get into his cab.
In addition to seashore,mountains we can also see desert sand everywhere. It's really wonderful to see sea and desert in a single country.