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Coverage / Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia

Western Asia

The largest country of the Arabian Peninsula, opened to leisure tourism in 2019, spanning the Nabataean tombs and sandstone canyons of AlUla, the Red Sea reefs and coral old town of Jeddah, the mud-brick heritage capital of Diriyah beside modern Riyadh, the highland rose farms of Taif and the vast dunes of the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter.

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What you can do in Saudi Arabia

Flight Experiences

AlUlaJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecAlUla is one of the few places on earth where you can float in a balloon over a UNESCO World Heritage Site at first light. Hero Balloon Flights runs sunrise ascents that lift you to around 4,000 feet above the valley, where the Nabataean tombs of Hegra, the sandstone canyons and the green ribbon of the oasis all resolve into a single view that is impossible to grasp from the ground. The flight lasts about an hour and the light does the work, moving from grey to gold across the rock as the sun clears the escarpment. Baskets are capped at roughly two dozen passengers, and there is an afternoon option when winter conditions allow, so this suits anyone who wants the aerial perspective without any flying experience of their own.

Museums & Galleries

Riyadhyear-roundThe National Museum of Saudi Arabia is the single best place to make sense of the country before you travel it. Opened in 1999 inside the King Abdulaziz Historical Center in the Al-Murabba district, it lays out eight galleries and more than four thousand artefacts in a clear chronological arc, from the geological formation of the Arabian Peninsula and its fossil record, through the pre-Islamic Dadanite, Lihyanite and Nabataean kingdoms whose ruins you can later visit at AlUla, to the rise of Islam and the unification of the modern state. The building itself, faced in warm stone, is part of the experience, and admission is free. An hour here gives context to Hegra, Diriyah and the desert that no guidebook quite matches.

Music & Culture Festivals

MDLBEAST SoundstormRiyadhDecMDLBEAST Soundstorm is the largest music festival in the Gulf and the loudest signal of how fast Riyadh has changed. Launched by the Saudi entertainment company MDLBEAST in December 2019, it takes over the Banban site north of the city for three days each December, with multiple stages of electronic, hip-hop and Arab and international headliners running deep into the desert night. Crowds have been reported above 400,000 across the weekend, which puts it among the biggest festivals anywhere. Around it MDLBEAST also runs the XP music conference, so the weekend is as much an industry gathering as a party. For a traveller it is a way to see contemporary Saudi youth culture at full volume, in a setting that did not exist a decade ago.

Overlanding / Expedition Driving

Empty QuarterJan Feb Mar Nov DecThe Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter, is the largest continuous body of sand on the planet, a sea of dunes the size of France stretching across the south of the Peninsula, and Saudi Arabia holds most of it. A multi-day expedition here is proper deep-desert travel, not a dune-bashing afternoon. Convoys of four-wheel-drives push a hundred kilometres and more from the last town, climbing dunes that top 200 metres and crossing the pale dry lakebeds between them, then make camp where there is no light but the stars and no sound at all. This is the desert of Wilfred Thesiger's crossings and the Bedouin caravans before him, and it is still empty. Because there is no infrastructure and real risk in getting lost, it is travelled only with a licensed operator running a convoy, satellite communications and the wildlife-reserve permits the interior requires.

Scuba Diving

JeddahJan Feb Mar Apr May Oct Nov DecJeddah sits on one of the least-dived stretches of the Red Sea, and that is exactly the draw. Just off the Obhur creek north of the city lie more than thirty sites, a mix of fringing reef, steep walls and wrecks, most of them reached on a short boat hop rather than a long crossing. Beginners start on the Cable Wreck, a hull that went down in 1978 and now rests upright at around 24 metres, while the larger Ann Ann drops toward 32 metres for more experienced divers. The corals are dense and the fish life is intact in a way that heavily trafficked Egyptian sites no longer are, because Saudi tourism only opened in 2019. From here liveaboards also run south to the remote Farasan Banks, some of the least-explored reefs in the sea.

Trekking / Hiking

Edge of the WorldJan Feb Mar Apr Oct Nov DecThe Edge of the World, properly Jebel Fihrayn, is the best day hike within reach of Riyadh. A wall of the Tuwaiq escarpment ends abruptly here, dropping some 300 metres to a plain that runs flat to the horizon, which is where the nickname comes from. The walk up to the rim is short and manageable, but the reward is outsized, a sheer cliff edge with nothing beyond it and, below, the traces of an old caravan route that carried trade toward the Gulf. Most people come for sunset, when the low light turns the limestone orange and the plain goes to shadow, or for sunrise and a quieter rim. Reaching the trailhead means an hour and a half of desert track, so it is a place you visit with a guide who knows the route and the rock rather than alone.

Witness / Attend

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Flight Experiences
Museums
Music Festivals
Overlanding
Scuba Diving
Trekking
Witness / Attend

Upcoming events in Saudi Arabia