Thanksgiving Day at Mada'in Salih and Beyond

Before I get to Thanksgiving Day, here is the tent that we watched Lawrence of Arabia in. It was quite nice. Pretty nice for a tent huh?

I need to get me one of these.

When we awoke on Thanksgiving morning we had a quick breakfast and headed back to Mada'in Salih to see some of the tombs we missed the day before.

This one was filled with a lot of sand.

We were checking out one of the tombs when suddenly a group of young Saudi men drove up. They saw us and instantly walked up to us, shook our hands, and had us take a picture with them. They seemed very excited to see us. As they were leaving they told us that one of the guys was a farmer and grew oranges.

So he got into his vehicle and started giving everyone oranges. It was pretty funny and we all thought it was very nice. He originally just gave us one each, but then just gave us an entire box.

We drove to the next group of tombs and then a completely different group of people drove up, instantly walked up to us with a bunch of smiles on their faces, shook our hands, and then had us take yet another group picture! This time there was no oranges, but again, it was really funny. I guess it is stadard procedure to take pictures with Americans at Mada'in Salih.

One of the best parts of being at Mada'in Salih was there was only a handful of people there the entire time. We practically had the whole place to ourselves. Mostly because many Saudis won't go there and its such a difficult place to make arrangements to get to. It will probably be the only time I go to such a significant world site with only a few people there. Here we are again at one of the Nabatean holy places. We're just messing around.While visiting one of the tombs our guide found an ancient coin, probably Nabatean or Roman. He won't be able to tell until he takes it back to be examined. Had I known ancient coins were that easy to find I would have been looking more carefully.

The whole trip was definitely the experience of a lifetime.

We left Mada'in Salih and headed back to Al Ula. There was a mountain there with an old temple place on top. We weren't able to get there because to do so, you had to climb some ropes up the cliff to reach it, and also we were on limited time. Here we are climbing the stairway up the mountain. Though we didn't make it to the temple area, we did get to a place with a ton of very old petroglyphs.

This is so much like Utah it is unbelievable. It was just like looking at a panel of petroglyphs back home.

Except instead of seeing big horn sheep, you see tons of pictures of camels.

Here is a guy riding a camel.

This one actually did surprise me because these look very close to the big horn sheep that we have back home. I asked the guide what these were and he said they might be some kind of sheep with horns, but these animals don't live in the area as far as I know. We also saw petroglyphs of lions and baboons as well.

There was also a ton of grafiti on this panel of petroglyphs, which is very annoying.

Here is the view from the canyon near the temple and petroglyphs.

We headed back to the hotel and packed our bags. We then began our drive back to Medina to catch a flight. I thought we were going to die. Our driver was probably going 100mph trying to get us to an ancient Jewish town here in Saudi. He wanted us to get there before sunset. It gets dark at 5:00 now. The dam below is the site of the ancient Jewish town. Its all we got to see of the site. Apparently people here don't like others to see it and just pretent like it never existed.

Both our driver and our police escort were driving like crazy. Our escort had his lights going the entire ride. We were swerving in and out through cars, slamming on breaks constantly. Incidentally, Saudi Arabia has one of the highest numbers of car wrecks in the world. I've witnessed more than a few since I've been here. One of the guys in our group asked our guide "what happens if you hit a camel?" I thought to myself that it was a silly question. We'd be dead at the speed we were going. If we were survived the van would likely be beyond repair. Our guide told us that if you hit a camel during the day, you have to pay the owner the price of the camel. If you hit a camel at night the owner of the camel has to pay your car damages. We actually stopped for a moment while we were switching escorts and the policeman had to turn on his sirens and herd a bunch of camels into the desert with his car so nobody hit them. He actually drove them pretty far into the desert too.

We arrived at the Medina airport. It was packed. We supposed it was due to all the pilgrims leaving Medina after the Hajj. We finally found the place we were to be at and had ourselves a nice "Thanksgiving dinner". Mine consisted of pizza, pepsi, and a slice of dry chocolate cake.

While we were eating, a security guard came up and told us that some official looking guy in an office wanted to talk to us. We weren't sure what to make of that. We sent Sam to go talk to him. The man told Sam that one of the princes of Saudi Arabia saw us walking around the airport and he wanted to know what we were doing there. Sam told the guy we were just coming back from Mada'in Salih and we were flying back to Riyadh. We were relieved. We thought maybe we were in trouble or something.

We got on the plane for a short trip back to Riyadh. Here is a view of Riyadh from our plane. It was nice to be back. It was a little less nice that we only had one day left of our vacation. But I was grateful we were able to travel as much as we were. And now it will be a lot simpler to write blog posts because I probably won't have nearly as many pics to put up!

Mada'in Salih, the Cursed City

I suspect that Mada'in Salih will possibly be the greatest thing I will see in this country. I loved everything about it. It is funny because when we were putting this whole trip together in Riyadh, our travel agent said "why do you want to go to Mada'in Salih? Its just an ugly desert" I thought to myself, you've got to be kidding right!? This is one of the top archeological sites in the world! Interestingly enough, the area of Mada'in Salih and the city of Al Ula (which is about 20 minutes away) were, in my opinion, the most beautiful parts of Saudi Arabia that I have yet seen.

Mada'in Salih (or "Cities of Salih") are significant for many reasons. It was created by the Nabateans about 2,000 years ago. These are the same people who built the famous site Petra, in Jordan. But the history of the city goes back many thousands of years before that. In the Qu'ran you can read about a prophet named Salih. He was sent by Allah to this city to call them to repent of their idol worship. These people (named the Thamud) said they would not believe unless Allah would call to them (or maybe create out of a mountain?) a she camel. The prophet Salih did call this great pregnant she camel to the people. But the people rejected the sign and killed the camel, and sent the camel's child screaming back to the mountain. So the story goes that the people were destroyed by lightning and earthquake. Our guide told us the prophet Mohammed said that the area was cursed and that whoever drinks the water of this region will also be cursed. It is for this reason that MANY people in Saudi Arabia refuse to come to this incredible place. Our guide also told us that in the city of Al Ula, the Bangladesh boys, and the Sudanese boys who pick dates, will have to lie when they sell them to other cities and say they came from another place because the dates are cursed and people would not buy them otherwise. Now on to the pictures:
This is our guide, who was amazing by the way. He knew a lot about the area and told us a lot of incredible stories. The circle he drew in the sand is a model of the area Mada'in Salih. He is telling us that the circle in the center is still off limits to all people because of the curse! So we could not go into that portion of the site. He tells us though that there is probably much that could be excavated there, and there are still many treasures yet to be found that people would love to find and sell on the black market.

These were some of the first tombs of the Nabateans that we saw here. There are over 150 tombs like this at Mada'in Salih. Each tomb belonged to a family and they would bury their family in that spot at death.

This is Chris and Sam looking at the burial place of the tomb. The bodies of the Nabateans were placed in these areas with their treasures at death. Today most of them are gone, but there are still some tombs with bodies and treasures in them. But we could not go inside

Me in one of the tombs.

This tomb is fenced off because it still has a body and maybe some treasure inside.

The picture above is of the Nabatean holy place. This was an area where they would go to pray to their gods. I think it functioned like some sort of temple for them.

Here we are sitting in their holy place. Our guide is explaining to us the functions of the area and their gods.

These slots in the wall are where they would place statues of their gods and pray to them.

Continuing our march through the Nabatean holy place. There was a lot to see here. Many slots in the walls for the gods, and places to ritually wash themselves as well. We saw an area where they would sacrifice animals as well.

This grafiti was placed in the Nabatean holy area. Our guide told us it means "No god but our god" , obviously placed there by a Muslim

Also located at Mada'in Salih was the old Hijaz railway station. It was destroyed during World War I by Lawrence of Arabia and his army of Arabs who fought off the Turkish empire. Lawrence was near this area for some of his battles. The old rail station still remains today.

The old train.

Here I am under the train now. I look so happy.

I thought this random lamp post looked really cool by itself with the desert background.

Back to the tombs again.

Me, Sam, and Chris in front of the tombs.

This was a common feature of all the tombs. Do you see the eagle above the door? Well its head has been knocked off. That is because this eagle represented a god to the Nabateans and so the Muslims destroyed all the eagle heads because, as the grafiti in the earlier picture said "our god is the only god" The five flowers you see in the picture represent the number of sacrifices this family would do (I think on a yearly basis) Some tombs had only one or three flowers. Five flowers meant you came from a rich family. Also, can you see the head with the two snakes at the side? This is a warning to people who enter the tomb. You can only go in your own families tomb or other tombs IF you have permission. The snakes at the side of the head mean that god will curse you if I remember correctly.

Another look at the inside of the tombs.

From one of the tombs, if you climbed up it led up the mountain. We were able to climb up to the top of this particular moutain. That is our guide waiting for us below.

Getting higher and higher.

At the top of this mountain were the remains of an old fortress build by the Ottomon Turks. You can see the old walls in the background. Far in the distance is the Kings Tomb.

Everyone enjoying the view.

This is the Kings Tomb. Probably the most spectacular of them all.

Here I am in front of the Kings Tomb. That was all for our time at Mada'in Salih on this day. We went home that night and we watched the movie "Lawrence of Arabia" in a bedouin tent, using a computer and projecter screen. It was the first time I had ever seen the movie and it was really great. There was probably no better place to watch the movie than right near where he fought some of his battles.