Saudi Arabia

Visited: January 2022

Duration of visit: 8 days

Capital city: Riyadh

Population: 34.8 million (2022); approximately 21 million Saudis and 13.8 million foreigners

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

• Riyadh – enormous capital city, where future is wrestling the past and changing old traditions at enormous speed, without public transport and majority of foreign workers.
• Riding ATV at Red Sand Dunes on the outskirts of Riyadh.
• Al Ula and Hegra – a fantastic combination of desert, rock structures, wall caved tombs, plantations of citruses and palm trees.
• Medina – the second holiest city for Muslims and recently accessible for non-Muslims. Impressed by enormous dimensions and flawless organization.
• Jeddah – historical trading city and main port has been transforming to Saudi Arabian’s Dubai on the Read Sea.

These were the main requirements when I was looking for a travelling destination in the winter of 2021: open to visit due to Covid-19 situation, decent weather in January, visa on arrival or no visa policy. South Africa was a “no go” due to Covid-19, Algeria was closed, West Africa airplane tickets were too expensive, Asia was still in lockdown. Saudi Arabia, in a combination with Iraq, showed up as a perfect choice.

Only two years ago, just before Covid-19 changed the tourism industry, Saudi Arabia introduced e-visa that is easily obtained after uploading some basic documents. The price is high, but I was happy to get an opportunity to visit this exotic country.

Historically closed for non-Muslim tourists and visitors, roughly about the size of Western Europe, Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and home to the holiest shrines of Mecca and Medina. One of the curious facts about Saudi Arabia is that it does not have any rivers. There are a few lakes, underwater sources and oasis in the desert – wadis (valley), which are riverbeds that are either permanently or intermittently dry.

The economy completely depends on oil and foreign workers, while most of Saudi women stay at home after finishing their studies. Men have had no need to perform professionally or make effort for good jobs in private sector, since the government guarantees them incredibly well-paid positions in governmental sector.

Saudi Arabia has changed in the last five years, more than before in one hundred years.

Low oil prices, alter of Saudi Royal family’s position and social media have been pushing the most conservative country in the Arabic world to move forward to 21^st century.

Enormous investments to diversify the economy and attract foreign tourists, on one side, and, on the other side, giving more freedom to women and young generations, who represent the majority of Saudi population, will turn around Saudi Arabia by 2030 (Saudi Vision 2030).

The main agenda is reinforcing economic and investment activities, increasing non-oil international trade and promoting a softer and more secular image of the Kingdom.

My first stop was the capital city of Riyadh, which struck me with the scale and commuting system, reminding a lot on US cities, where no public transport is developed. To be more precise, there is zero public transport in this city of 7.7 million people.  No buses, no trains, no metro; only cars and taxis.

Since space is not an issue, the city is stretched enormously over 2,000 square kilometers on a desert plateau in the country’s center. Riyadh is the administrative center of the kingdom and its main financial hub, but not necessarily the first stop for foreign visitors, since Jeddah, on the Red Sea, receives more tourists.

The most important landmark of the new city along King Fahd Road is 99 stories skyscraper, the Kingdom Centre, rising up to 302 meters.

It is not the tallest any more, nor the newest (built in 2002), but quite remarkable due to its architectural features: hole on the upper part with a skybridge from where a fantastic view over the city opens.

The Kingdom Centre was supposed to open at midday, but half an hour later I was still waiting to be lifted by an elevator, because the staff was praying. I expected groups of people and queues, but there were only three of us at the top.

Walking around the modern area is not a comfortable activity to due to the fact that walkways are extremely narrow and it is almost impossible to cross the main King Fahd Road. Long distance between crossover bridges and none existence of sitting or resting public areas is another issue that make life to pedestrians impossible.

While exploring the city at night, I ended at the Masmak Fortress, a clay and mudbrick fort in the old city of Riyadh, situated in the modern-day Deira district. Built in 1865, the fortress played an integral role in the Unification of Saudi Arabia, with the Battle of Riyadh, one of the most important conflicts of the Saudi unification, taking place in the fort.

Tremendous 3D light show, music presentations and dancing group performance were on the program that night. There were more voluntaries controlling the distance between men and women, than visitors.

It was the second time that I got a feeling that people in charge are giving orders in a non-polite way to regular citizens or visitors. The first time was at the airport, when an immigration officer was yelling in a terribly aggressive tone at poor Indian workers, orientating them where to wait in the line.

I got in contact with Tito, an Egyptian expat, through Couchsurfing. He promised to show me the city, drive me around and explain about life in Saudi Arabia. We met at his office and I was invited for dinner. A little bit confused after finding out that I don’t eat meat, we drove for more than half an hour to end up in a food court of a shopping center.

Regular Chinese veggies with rice were nothing special, but chatting with well-educated investment consultant, Tito, brought me closer to understanding Saudi culture and lifestyle. There are basically three groups of people, if you exclude the Royal family:

• Saudis, who are in average one of the youngest people in the world, where 45% of population is under 25 years old. The abundance of oil created a system where they don’t need to strive for anything material in their lives. The government simply takes care of them providing jobs, money and security. They don’t mix with foreigners, mainly live according to strict Islamic laws and are superior to expats in rights and privileges.
• Well educated foreigners, mainly from Arabic countries (Egypt in majority), work hard and come to Saudi Arabia to make and save money. Many of them left families in their home countries. These are people who manage all private companies, investments in non-governmental sectors and execute the orders of Saudi high leaders. They are not allowed to buy properties. If they want to open a company, they need a Saudi partner as a majority shareholder.
• Low educated foreigners, mainly from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Philippines. Usually without education and from poor background. They clean all the garbage, work in construction, take care of rich household (cooking, cleaning, gardening) and run regular small businesses such as restaurants, shops, laundries, etc. They can work for as little as 200.00US$ per month and live in very tough conditions. In my opinion they are a kind of slaves, being payed miserably, only enough to survive and send back home a few dollars every month.

While my communication and interaction with Saudis was limited due to cultural differences and especially lack of English, I kept regular conversations with others.

Women in Saudi Arabia are expected to wear (in public) the traditional black, long gown, called abaya. Officially, hijab and niqab are optional for both Saudi and tourist women. However, in practice, a big majority has been using niqab – a black garment that covers the face and expose only eyes.

I would say that actually most of women use burqa, which covers the entire body from the top of the head to the ground (in black color), with only a mesh screen allowing the women to see in front of them. Women are completely inaccessible; in random conversation if they attended me as part of their job, they were strictly formal and not interested in any other topics. While walking on the street, eye contacts were limited.

I landed at Al-Ula airport with two hours delay at 11:00pm. The car rental office, where I had booked a car, was closed, and to my misfortune the next day was Friday – a day off, when all businesses were closed.

There was no accommodation in Al-Ula that I could book for less than 100.00US$ per night through traditional accommodation suppliers. Luckily, I found a Saudi app that permitted me to book a room for only 57.00US$. It looked pretty run down and basic, but I was so tired that I only had hot shower as a necessity in my mind. Two toilets (traditional Arab toilet called Shatafa and an ordinary European toilet) were a luxury, but no towel was available.

“Sorry, no towel, but you have paper tissues!” was the explanation by young Indian boy, who was showing me around the apartment house. It was not for the first time that it happened to me, but I have never paid that much for a room without towels.

The next morning, the challenge was to find transportation from my hotel to the starting point for Hegra tour. Standing in front of my hotel and looking around, there were no other buildings, at least one kilometer away in any direction. It would have been to have a breakfast in a nearby restaurant and then catch a local transport to my destination. Well, that will not happen in Saudi Arabia.

I started to hitchhike and after three minutes the second passing car stopped and offered me transport. The driver was Saudi, no English spoken, beside the word taxi.

Yes sure, “I will pay you!” Somehow, I managed to explain him that I was hungry and he stopped in an Indian restaurant, where I took two falafel wraps that turned out to be delicious. In the last minute I realized that there is no need to drive 30 kilometers to Hegra town, because the meeting point for the tour was actually just outside of Al Ula.

The driver was pissed off, since the route and his income were changed, but at the end he had to accept my offer, because I showed him through Careem app, that the official price for taxi was lower to what I offered him.

If Jordan is famous for the ancient city of Petra, Saudi Arabia has Al Ula and 2,000 years old city of Hegra, also raised by the same tribe. These two cities were ruled by the same lords of the region in the past; The Nabataeans made Hegra their second capital.

The vertical sandstone cliffs surrounding the valley provide ample surfaces for rock art, making this governorate one of the richer petroglyph regions in the Kingdom. Monumental rock-cut tombs, with elaborately ornamented façades in Hegra are smaller than in Petra. But together with fairytale landscape intertwined with colorful stone structures, precipices, gorges and desert, the area was chosen as the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Saudi Kingdom.

No individual tours to the area are allowed. I booked an organized tour, where I joined mostly Arabic speakers on a bus that transferred us from one attraction to the other. We had a guide and a guard, who was most of the time restricting and forbidding us to move outside the limited areas.

As Saudis don’t give freedom to their people, they also want to control tourist at every step and activity they do.

Al Ula is the traditional Arabian village to which people of the oasis moved some eight centuries ago and inhabited it on a higher part of the valley in order to be clear of the floods that can occur during the rainy season.

Palm and citrus trees around the oasis are surrounded with beautiful, colorful rock formations, extensive new town and old town full of mud buildings, mosques and markets that have been rebuilt and protected as an open-air museum.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, home to Medina and Mecca, two of the most sacred places in the world for Muslims. Medina is the second holiest city for Islam and Muslim pilgrims and it has been opened to non-Muslim visitors since 2021.

Medina is celebrated as the place from which Muhammad established the Muslim community after his flight from Mecca in year 622. He lived here and preached Islam. The day Prophet Muhammad entered the premises of Medina is the day that marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar.

Upon arrival to Medina, he was welcomed with open hearts and was granted the seat of power of the now sacred city. It was actually from Medina that Prophet Muhammad sowed the seeds of a thriving Muslim community. These days, pilgrimage is made to the city’s chief mosque, where his body is entombed.

I had already seen many pilgrimage sites, but I was absolutely amazed at Medina in all respects.

The central mosque, Masjid an-Nabawi, is the second mosque that Prophet Muhammad constructed after arriving in Medina; today it is the second largest mosque in the world.

Originally an open-air building, the mosque served as a community center, a court of law and a religious school. In 1909, under the reign of Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, it became the first place in the Arabian Peninsula to be provided with electrical lights.

The mosque itself, which can accept approximately a million pilgrims at once in the time of Hajj, is not only functionally and esthetically reasonably well designed, but it is really enormous (approximately 600m x 600m) and equipped with modern technology. Giant umbrellas stand out in particular; opening when the sun is at its hottest.

The mosque complex is surrounded by hundreds of luxury hotels; I don’t remember ever seeing so many of them at once. I was lucky again that there were very few foreign pilgrims, because of Covid-19 after pandemic time. I haven’t seen a single tourist or traveler in two days.

From Medina to Jeddah, I travelled by a high-speed train at maximum speed almost 300 kilometers per hour. The bullet train is one of the best investments in Saudi Arabia, especially worthwhile during Islamic pilgrimage (Hajj), when millions of people from all over the world visit the area of Medina and Mecca, where another railway branch leads to. European technology, combined with Arabic design and perfect functionality are a luxury, with the stations located close to the city centers, conveniently accessible by public transport.

Throughout the history, the city of Jeddah acted as a main gate to the Holy cities, but according to the Saudi Vision 2030, the new goal is to become one of the top 100 cities in the world.

The change has already started in the second biggest city in Saudi Arabia; therefore, megalomaniac projects are in full swing.

Due to Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, it has been a bit stuck recently, but the list of latest developments is still quite impressive: construction of the tallest building in the world (over one kilometer high), premiere Formula One race on 1^st December 2021, festivals, skyscrapers, Corniche extension and general liberalization, has put Jeddah on the tourist map.

Jeddah is home to a variety of interesting museums and historical landmarks in old downtown, but it is targeting much more on   modern and future attractions. It will be interesting to observe the development that will transform Jeddah in the next decade.

Saudi Arabia has never been high on my bucket list, nor it will leave any special feelings of excitements in me.

Admittedly, there are quite a few attractions worth seeing, but I personally strongly oppose the inappropriate waste of money that is present in the country at every turn.

Not to mention the position of women, foreign workers, police control and constant surveillance (visible and non-visible).

Up to now, the country has been a real hell for travelers: expensive accommodations, no public transport in cities, no backpacker’s infrastructure (hostels, bars, night clubs, mixing with locals), long distances. Despite having had considerable contact with immigrants who drove me around, honored me and provided insight into local customs, I missed contacts with Saudis, who are either inaccessible or do not speak good English.

A special chapter are women, completely covered and dressed in black on most occasions. Glances from under black burqas usually stare at the ground, into the distance or to smart phones. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to feel humbled and inferior in such a manner. Just the obligatory mask because of the Covid-19 pandemic that covers my face is extremely uncomfortable, let alone covered and limited to a view through small opening on black burqa.

It will be interesting to observe the development of Saudi Arabia in the next decades, while the world’s mobility source will be switched from petrol to electrical energy and the faucet with money will slowly start to close.

There are so many young people in Saudi Arabia for whom it will be extremely difficult to guarantee enough jobs in public sector and keep them away from free development that is going on around the world. The whole society and lifestyle will change. Let’s see if the country is ready.