Travel Blog

AL GHAT (الغاط)

We stopped at Old Deira Al Ghat Heritage Village, around 250 kilometers from Riyadh. It is situated on the northern bank of the Wadi Al-Ghat and stretches over 1,5 kilometers. It is one of the largest traditional villages in Saudi Arabia in the Najdi style. There is a museum located in...

MANSOUR PALACE (قصر منصور)

We made another crazy stop in Saudi Arabia and hope it is the last one on this trip. We followed the road trip guide and arrived at Al Mansour Palace in Al Awsajiyah. Unfortunately, it’s just a ruin, and sadly, we did not find any information about this tiny forgotten palace...

UYUN AL JAWA (عيون الجواء)

We didn’t expect much from this stop, but to our surprise, we found a lovely old town with a collection of old mud houses built with adobe, clay, and mud. Most of them were completely demolished, but some survived the rain torrents and were renovated. Parking location – Uyun...

FAYD (فيد)

We made a short stop at partial excavations of a major oasis city along the pilgrimage road (Darb Zubaydah) from Baghdad to Makkah. When the Abbasid Caliphs took power in 750, one of their first major decisions was to move the capital of the Caliphate from Damascus to Kufa in...

AL NASLAA (حصاة النصلة تيماء)

We finally made it to the probably most famous rock formation in the Al Ula region. We were lucky enough to meet a friendly guy, Saud, with his old 2WD Nissan, who drove us around the desert rock formations for a couple of hours (50 SAR tip). We saw a Chinese Dragon, a Baby Elephant, a...

DESERT FISH (سمكة الصحراء)

We were stupid enough to follow news from the end of the year 2022 that Khaled Al-Enazi, a Saudi professional photographer from AlUla, spotted a 550-million-year-old formation in the shape of a fish. We followed Google Navigation and parked our truck on the side of the road. Then, it took...

AL-ʿULĀ – II. (ٱلْعُلَا)

After a tough week at the Dakar Rally 2024, when we didn’t get much sleep, we decided to revisit the Al Ula oasis. We were here last time just eight months ago, and to our surprise, a lot has changed here. The entrance gate to the old town disappeared, and several other parts of the...

ROAD #8888 & #328

We followed Dakar Rally to Yanbu via road #328, then drove to visit our friends in Umluj. From Umluj, we took a more exciting road, #8888, back to Al Ula. So, the photos in this gallery are from several days of driving through this western region of Saudi Arabia.

UMLUJ (املج)

On the shores of the Red Sea is another new beach destination referred to as the Maldives of Saudi Arabia. The 104 little islands north of the town of Umluj are all about white sands and ancient swaying palms. It is a future diver´s paradise with pristine and almost virgin territory...

YANBU (ينبع)

After the Dakar Rally final ceremony, we slept on the Dakar beach, and the following day, we moved to Old Yanbu. Yanbu’s history dates back at least 2,500 years, when it was a staging spot on the spice and incense route from Yemen to Egypt and the Mediterranean region. The remnants...