Medina to Al Ula (Mada'in Salih Vacation)

The last three days have been the best of my Hajj holiday. For the past month all I could think about was going to Mada'in Salih, ancient city of the Nabateans, and we actually made it. We wondered if it would be possible because we needed to obtain permission from the government, flights to and from Medina (and hope for the best we could get on the plane with only a copy of our passports), hotel reservations, and transportation. Fortunately, the hotel was able to do most of that for us. My main worry was if they would let us on the plane (they did) and the funny thing was I felt like it was more of a hassle to get on the train to Dammam last week. From Riyadh to Al Ula, it would have been 13 hours by bus, so flying was definitely the way to go. I was surprised to learn we could actually fly to Medina. It is the second holiest city in all of Islam. It is the location of the prophet's mosque, the place where the prophet is buried. Of course, we were very limited to where we could go in the city. The trip by plane was about an hour and a half. We passed through the very flat and somewhat dusty deserts I'm used to in this part of the country, but when we got nearer to Medina, the landscape became very mountainous. Here is a view of the landscape near Medina from the plane. The blackish blue stuff on the bottom is not water, it must be some kind of volcanic rock or something.

This is the most I will probably ever see of Medina with my own eyes. Luckily Chris got this amazing pic from the air, and I managed to get a number of pics from the ground as we drove through the city.

We were surprised that our hotel arranged a bus for us rather than a van from Medina to Al Ula. Our driver Abdullah was very nice. He was already there waiting for us when we arrived.

It was great to see mountains again! Medina was a beautiful city from what I saw. Above is a sign marking the Haram area, the area that only Muslims could enter, which is a big portion of the city. I'm sure the sight of six white Americans was somewhat unusual in this part of the country. Throughout our trip we had a police escort follow behind our bus or van to keep us safe from danger.

From Medina to Al Ula it was about a 4-5 hour drive. Again, we passed some very nice mountain areas and a fair number of camels. I was extremely surprised when we entered the city of Al Ula. It looks almost identical to Moab Utah, my second home, and for that reason (and soon for many more) it instantly became my favorite city in all of Saudi Arabia. We arrived at the Al Arac Hotel and had a few hours before we left on our tour of the city (Mada'in Salih would be saved for the next two days). We took a badly needed nap since we were up at 3:45am to catch our flight that morning.

Below are our hotel rooms. Since we were pretty sure we weren't going to Mada'in Salih on our first day, we wondered what we would do to keep ourselves busy. I had no idea the city of Al Ula was as awesome as it was. Al Ula is actually a city mentioned very briefly in the Bible (under the name of Dedan) as a city that traded with other more famous cities and in connection with the battle of Gog and Magog that is supposed to take place at the end of the world. The Dedanites lived in the city as early as 600BC and have left tombs behind today. The picture below is a small walled mountain. It used to be the location of a pagan Dedan temple that was destroyed by the Muslim inhabitants 300 years ago. The Muslims then built a city out of mud bricks taken from the ancient tombs of the Dedans. The remains of the city still exist and this was our first stop.Here is the inside of one of the many old homes in the mud city.

Climbing to the top of the city.

Here is a picture of the city 300 years ago compared to the new modern city in the background.

Here is another view of the city. It kind of reminds me of the city that you see in Disney's version of Aladdin.

Here is another view of the old city with the new. I love that red rock in the background.

Before we came here we saw on the itinerary we would see "mud homes". That sounded so lame to us. How wrong were were. Everything about this trip was so much better than I thought it would be. Below is Sam, and I think Jim exploring the city. Currently the city is being restored to look more like it did 300 years ago, which will probably take the people a good amount of time to do. I was happy to see it in its current state.

After the mud city we drove to the other side of the valley to look at the ancient Dedan tombs (the same tombs they build a lot of the mud city from). It was fenced off because they believe that there is still ancient Dedan treasure there.

If you look closely at the picture above you will see some holes in the mountain. Those are the tombs. Below is a close up view.

Nearby this location is a Dedan city that remains underground. They have still not excavated the site (this place is seriously an archeologist's paradise). Afterwards we drove out into the desert to a location known as Elephant Rock. Can you tell why?

Its kind of hard to tell but the little dot there next to the trunk of the elephant is me. This spot seems to be pretty famous for four wheeling. I think it gets a lot of visiters. Below is what they call the Bowling Pin (the hole in the rock)

On the other side of Elephant Rock there was a lot of grafiti in both Arabic and English. Here is Sam climbing all over everything.

Here is our whole group on the other side of Elephant Rock. Below is our security guard patiently waiting in the shadows to finish our visit to the site.

Our last stop for the day was to drive up into the mountains and watch the sunset over Al Ula.

Here is a view from our ascent up the mountain. I couldn't believe how much it was like Moab.

The sunset over the amazing red rocks.

Chris says he imagines this is what Mars looks like.

Here is the city of Al Ula from the top. That was pretty much our day. We went and had some kappsa at a restaurant in town. I have to say the day was far better than I could have dreamed. Our guide was amazing throughout the whole trip. He is one of the best guides I've ever had on a vacation like this. He was very knowledgable about the area and fun to be around. It was extremely interesting to hear his thoughts on Saudi Arabia and the things that happen here.

This was all great to me, but the best part of the trip was yet to come. Mada'in Salih was mind blowing, but I'll end here because this post is already long enough. I feel like I put too many pictures in my posts, but there were too many incredible things to see. I discovered I took 519 pictures when the whole trip was over (which probably isn't surprising to those who know me). I'll post about the rest of the trip in a day or two.

Searching for the Edge of the World

Did you know that gas costs less than water here in Saudi Arabia? It is literally about 45 cents a gallon. That makes renting a car extremely useful. We had heard of a place called the Edge of the World located about an hour or two northwest of Riyadh. We rented an SUV for 500 riyals which, when divided amongst seven of us, came to be about 17 dollars for the day. Just about anything in the wilderness here is difficult to find. I get the feeling locals don't care too much for a cool desert scene and whatnot. We looked up directions online and almost all of them accompanied stories of people getting lost on the way. So to keep up tradition we did the same.

This is us getting lost in the desert. We knew we were heading to the Edge of the World so we figured if we drove in the right direction we would eventually get there. We were wrong.

These twin mountains were one of the only landmarks we had to guide us to our destination. At one point in our wanderings we came across a road that was pretty narrow along a small cliff. There was a bit of tension as we drove along wondering if we would go over. I'm sure we would have lived if the SUV had fallen. Luckily it didn't. We passed many camels along the way just feeding on plants. We even passed a number of Saudi families camping which I have heard is popular to do. They say that the families will go out into the desert and have camel bbq's together.

We finally found our second landmark, a dam (which we assume fills up in rain season?) and that led to a gate with police vehicles but nobody was there to check us. We continued our drive through the desert and then drove to what we thought might be the Edge of the World.

Above we are checking it out to see if this was the right place. It was. The huge cliff gave it away.

This is me, living on the edge!

Now I am contemplating the vastness of the burning desert sands of Arabia.The place was really beautiful and we decided to go on a little hike and explore. Everything about this place reminded me so much of Utah and the hikes we would often go on. Below is Sam, our faithful driver.

The picture below is of me. This is one of my favorite pics of the day because it looks so endless.

Below is the entire scene. Extremely beautiful stuff!

Here is another pic below. This one is of Chris. He decided to go all the way out. I waited an took a few pictures of him.

Below is a close up of the valley. We were able to spot a single tent in the vast desert. Perhaps it belongs to some desert bedouins? Its kind of small so look close. Its kind of whitish.

Here is Chris walking back to us.

I hear this cliff edge goes on for about 100 miles.

We thought we might try and recreate the famous scene from Thelma and Louise where they drive into the Grand Canyon, but we thought it might be a little expensive, so we decided against it.

This is us, heading out. I'm really glad we didn't break down in the desert. Our SUV handled itself pretty good. If you plan to travel here in Saudi, its almost best to rent a vehicle rather than take a cab or a train (depending on what you are going to do). We brought plenty of water and our phones which did get reception out here so we felt mostly prepared. It was really good to get out of the city for awhile.

That is all for now. We have one more adventure yet to do before the break ends (Inshallah)

Al Khobar Getaway (continued) and Eid Mubarak

Did I mention that the sun is down now around 5:00pm? Its really psycho and messes with me pretty bad. I feel like its 10:00pm at about 6:00 these days. So to continue our little getaway to Al Khobar, we also visited some other cities. Below is a picture of the Aramco Exhibit in the city of Dhahran. The city is mostly industrial so this was the only site we visited. Its basically a museum dedicated to the largest oil company in the world, Aramco.
Believe it or not the museum was actually worth it, despite a few very corny self-aggrandizing videos. I learned a lot about the oil industry here in Saudi, which made the country what it is today. Oil changed everything here and without it there would probably still be far more bedouins and fewer modern cities that the people live in like Riyadh and Al Khobar. The grandparents of my students were still taking long trips by camel when they were children. This country is so rich because of oil that Forbes recently named the King of Saudi Arabia the 3rd most powerful person in the world.

We next went to Dammam. This is where our train trip ended a few days before and we wanted to at least see some of the city because this is where one of our company's schools is located. We went to a nice restaurant while we were there but the city seemed somewhat empty. We caught a taxi and had him take us to the cities Corniche along the sea but he dropped us off at a beach area that was kind of trashy. Along the sea here there were old broken down boats and a lot of litter. We passed fisherman along the way, but we were surprised that is wasn't nicer.

Here is me on an old broken down boat in the Persian Gulf, Dammam.

The funny thing was that we discovered about an hour after we left that we weren't at the Corniche at all. We looked on the internet and the real thing was really nice looking with paved stone walkways. Our taxi driver must been on something. So that will give us something to look forward to if we ever return. Our walk down this beach was still pretty interesting though.

That evening we went to the train station to return back to Riyadh. It was then we learned that all the tickets were sold out because of the holiday, Eid Adha, which is a feast to commemorate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Muslims believe that it was Ishmael and not Isaac who was the preferred son). Because of this we decided we would catch a cab to Hofuf, about a 2 hour drive away, and we would catch the train there the next day. It only cost us 150 riyals for the trip, which is about 37-39 dollars. I was somewhat annoyed we missed the train, but the cab ride made it worth it. It was nice to get another view of the country from a car. It was dark but you could see many lights shining in the distance beyond the immediate desert. Our taxi driver was really cool. About 20 minutes in he had to stop for the last prayer of the day, so he pulled off next to a mosque and we waited in the cab. When he returned he filled up the gas tank and bought us tons of orange juice, pepsi, and water (he would have gotten us candy as well but we told him he didn't have to). He didn't speak a lot of English but he would describe some things for us along the way.

We had heard good things about Hofuf. We got ourselves a room for the night and made plans for things to see the next day. Of course we weren't thinking and it turns out everthing was closed the next day. Why? Because of Eid Adha! All the families were getting together for a big feast so our plans were kind of a wash. We spent a lot of time walking around exploring the city, but didn't get to do much. By the way, Eid Mubarak (in the title of this post) means "blessed feast" which basically is like saying happy holidays. You say it to each other during this feast. Incidentally our President's name is Barak (blessed) Hussein (beautiful) Obama. Just thought you might want to know. Below are some things we saw but didn't do:

This is us finding out the doors to Ibrahim's Palace are locked during the holiday.

This is me in front of the empty palace wishing we could get in.

This is us at an empty souq (market place) that would have been really awesome if it would have been open. Still cool to see empty though.

Luckily not all restaurants were closed. We went to a restaurant and ordered kappsa (chicken and rice). But the way you eat it is by hand. You literally rip off pieces of chicken scoop up a ball of rice in your hand and eat. We do it sitting on the carpet. It was pretty weird just ripping off chunks of chicken while others are doing the same thing to the same chicken. But it was good.

Here is Chris with a handful of rice and chicken. Our hands were really greasy afterwards.

Here is a nice looking but mostly empty Hofuf. The streets would likely have been very busy had it not been for the holiday.

I don't know what it is with the people of Hofuf and Sponge Bob Square Pants, but we literally passed 4 cars completely covered in Sponge Bob stickers and had Spong Bob dolls hanging in the windows.

So that was our Hofuf adventure. We then caught a train back to Riyadh. It was nice to be back and relax from our vacation. While I'm at home I've just been reading tons of books. I finished reading the Qu'ran recently and I've also been reading an incredible book about the life of the Prophet Muhammed. I have to say that his life was pretty miraculous. The book I've been reading is quite amazing and I'm surprised I didn't know about the Prophets life until just now. Currently we still have another week left of our vacation so we hope to do a little more travelling before we return to our students.