Libya is a country that offers tourists an unusual holiday: a police escort, for one thing. It also offers a time capsule back to the 1950s and to a perpetual Sunday afternoon, to a world where sheep graze by the water's edge and where green grass still runs down to blue sea.

Libya is about camel for lunch and complete peace under the unyielding sun; mobile and e-mail cannot get through unless you are on Vodafone. It is unique on the Mediterranean. Where else three hours from London is like it?

This desert paradise is ruled by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, eventually to be followed by his son Hannibal Gaddafi if the bookmakers have called it right. The murderous instincts we once ascribed to the Colonel have muted. His face, seen on posters on every lamppost in Libya, is the face of a later Roman Emperor, rotting with pleasure.

When Rome was sacked in 410AD the Emperor Honorius was in Ravenna, hundreds of miles away, playing with his chickens. His mind was far from his duties. Far away seems also to be where Gaddafi now is, aged 67 and, say the lampposts, in his 40th Glorious Year of Revolution.

Despite this immense reign, the face on his posters has grown remarkably younger in the last two years. Not least among his feats is to sustain a personal bodyguard of 40 Amazonian ladies. They accompany him everywhere, as they surrounded the Emperor Claudius. I asked my guide in Libya if these Pussy Galores held a Changing of the Guard, like Buckingham Palace. Changing? 'There are never any vacancies,' was the solemn reply.

I arrived in Tripoli by ship. It took time to disembark as the police spent three hours over our 93 passports, making detailed written notes on the stamps. It all added to the excitement. On the dock there waited patiently three coaches and 12 policemen in three cars, prominently marked 'Tourist Police'.

An officer took the front seat in each coach. I asked our man if his job was to protect us from the Libyans or the Libyans from us but he seemed unsure of his remit. Never mind; within minutes we realised that a holiday with police is the only way to travel.

Traffic in Tripoli was swept out of our path by outriders. We cut through the rush hour to the Commonwealth War Graves to the Arch of Marcus Aurelius and to the bazaar as oil flows downhill, as it does plentifully in Libya. What privilege! It was a wrench to say goodbye to these chaps after six days.

You go to northern Libya to see the world's most awesome Roman ruin, Leptis Magna and its superb statuary, now transferred-in part to the Tripoli Museum. You go the length of the coast to see Libya's other seafront temples, Sabratha, with its fantastically beautiful theatre, and Apollonia in green Cyrenaica, where Saint Mark lived in a cave. You go to Ghat in the south to ride camels and sleep in the desert.

What is unmissable is Leptis, a city the size of Stratford-upon-Avon, built by Africa's only Emperor of Rome, Septimius Severus, using tax revenue collected from Scotland to the Caspian Sea. It survives because the sands have saved it and because the tremendous earthquake of 365AD did only selective damage.

Libya's downside is the complex relationship between it and alcohol. The Colonel's Jamahiriya [a title invented by Gaddafi, meaning 'state of the masses'] is militantly dry, drier than the desert sands, dry not just on land but also at sea. As we sailed into Libyan waters, the captain sounded the alarm, the bars closed and wine sales ceased.

(Left) Ghat

As we moored, a charmingman named Abdul, Libya's chief temperance inspector, came aboard, leading a team armed with black felt pens to mark the bottles and Elastoplast to bind the corks. As we were British, they also locked the ship's cellars. And because Libyans know that we are a people of deep ingenuity with a qualified respect for authority, they decreed that a temperance inspector should remain on board while we sailed under Libyan legal jurisdiction.

We were kind to Abdul and friends when they eventually appeared on the Sky Deck, which puzzled them, but our kindness was easy; the fiendish British had a plot. After dinner on the first night, we didn't see much of them. It turned out, poor darlings, to be the first time they had been to sea. As a swell built up on the Gulf of Sirte between Tripoli, Al Khums, Benghazi and Derna, the lurgy sent them to their cabins for four days, where, on medical reports, they turned green.

While they lay helpless, the British turned the tables. Lawyers had noticed that though Gaddafi had banned booze sales in Libya, he had blanched at a law to ban drinking. Our ship thus cleverly sold us wine while in Tunisia to fortify us through the drought in Libya.

We carried our bottles from our cabins into lunch and dinner with dignity and legality. Abdul was not there to see it. His party bade us a tearful farewell at Derna before their 1,200 mile drive back to Tripoli (non-stop: no hotels on expenses).

We never met Colonel Gaddafi, but we felt we did. His face was everywhere. So too was his Green Book, his answer to Chairman Mao and to everyone else. I opened it on page five: 'Representation is fraud,' I read. It did not seem worth £5. This now seems a misjudgment.

Libya was such a happy place to be, full of happy smiling children, to boot, that Colonel Gaddafi must know something that the rest of us don't.

(Right) Giant portrait of Colonel Gaddafi in Tripoli

CHECK IN: Libya
What to take and where to go

GETTING THERE Noble Caledonia offers two cruises to Libya later in 2009 on the small ship MS Island Sky (120 passengers): Lost Cities of Libya, 24 October-4 November 2009, calling at Tobruk, Derna, Apollonia, Benghazi, Ptolemais, Leptis Magna, Tripoli and Sabratha (also visiting Lesbos, Crete, Egypt and Malta), from £3,295; North African Odyssey, 4-24 November 2009, calling at all the above in Libya plus Misratah, and also visiting Malta, Egypt and Jordan, from £4,295 (noble-caledonia.co.uk).

DON'T MISS The most magnificent Roman ruins in the world at Leptis Magna. The Roman theatre at Sabratha is utterly wonderful. The Tripoli Museum is equal to the British Museum in its collection of Roman statuary. See Saint Mark's cave near Derna, Cyrenaica. And the Temple of Zeus near Apollonia, which stands in a field of poppies. Ghat, in the south, is the thinking man's oasis.

(Right) The Tripoli Museum

LAST MINUTE Visa required: Visit the Libyan People's Bureau in Kensington to provide fingerprints for your visa. You need to have an Arabic transcript of your passport. For more information, go to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website fco.gov.uk. Time difference: +2 hours Flight time: 3 hr 30 mins. Exchange rate: £1 = 2 LYD

WHAT TO TAKE A satellite telephone. Antibiotics and pills to fortify the stomach. The desert is cold at night so take something warm to wrap up in. Loo paper isn't always abundant so perhaps take your own supply. Water is more expensive and less plentiful than petrol so if you can, take an antibacterial hand spray.

TASTE OF LIBYA Camel: a soft and strongly flavoured meat, though the streaks of gristle that can appear are unspeakably horrid. Nonetheless, an experience.

JOIN UP Travelling in a modestly sized group to Libya solves many problems in moving around which pain the independent traveller. English is non-existent and Italian a rarity outside Tripoli. Phones go dead and food is a challenge. Honey, however, is available everywhere.

WHAT TO AVOID Upsetting the cops by asking for a wine list, or passing through doors marked 'closed', for example.

WHAT TO BUY Gold and silver jewellery is sold by the gram in the bazaars. Ladies' clothing is mainly black from head to toe with matching masks but colourful sheer silk wraps are also on sale and inexpensive. Shoes: plentiful and not cheap, in all sorts of animal skins not available in London. It is important to check the merchant does not put two lefts or two different shoes in the box. Luggage - I bought a very smart baby camel weekend bag for about £50. Spices. Most bazaar transactions take ten to 20 minutes to complete.

Bargaining is refused. Mysteriously, there is no urgency whatsoever to sell among shopkeepers, some of whom have to be woken from a sleep in the corner to serve you.

MONEY Credit cards are barely known outside Tripoli. Euros are accepted with suspicion. Take lots of Libyan dinar.