Now for the REAL holiday :)

After using the first 2 days of our holiday as a practice run for getting used to driving around in our own city and getting used to being on the wrong side of the road etc we both agreed it was time to take the plunge and head of as planned to Riyadh the capital of KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia).

Lucky for us, with it being Hajj, the roads weren’t very crowded within our city environs, so it was reasonably easy to find our way to the freeway. We were both surprised at how far reaching the buildings & industrial section stretched out of Al Khobar. We got onto the Freeway proper after about 45 minutes or so and then as far as one could see was a sort of rubble as well as sand filled desert with many tent filled areas complete with 4wd vehicles next to them all along the highway. Jesse told me that it was a really big deal with the Arabs of getting back to their Bedouin ancestry and that it was very common to get out camping. I still find it hard to believe that they would camp so close to to roadside but I came to the conclusion that one patch of sand is the same as any other patch of sand :)

We were haring down the freeway by this time and I was still watching out my window hoping that the scenery would become a little more interesting when all of a sudden Jesse exclaims………. There it is…….There’s the sign for Riyadh & Mecca!!!!……. so without further ado and without any warning, the car goes screeching to a rather abrupt halt a few metres past it. So then it was a rather scary few minutes whilst he reversed back up – keep in mind that the freeway was chokkers full of trucks and cars all heading in the same direction that we were and all doing in excess of 120km per hour. Note in picture below that they spell Mecca a bit different to us. Then the honking started when I got out of the car from the passing motorists because I was a female with uncovered head on side of road :) lol

After our photo shoot for posterity, it was back into the car and on our merry way once more :) It is a very good system for the Freeway here, the trucks all keep into the far Right lane only pulling into the middle lane to overtake and they are also very courteous as well. The cars are a totally different matter – we were cruising on 140km and tried to stick to the middle lane as the Left lane was go as fast as you like (reality they have a 120km limit), just don’t whatever you do put your foot on the brake for any reason other than an accident right in front of you, and it is totally ok if there is already someone overtaking a slower middle lane car to also overtake you on the shoulder with a honk & flash of the lights to get out of the way. Made our car seem extremely small and fragile and I would say we must be the only people in KSA wearing a seat belt…….not much of a security blanket I know, but at least a small feeling of safety – lol

It was about a 41/2 hour trip, and as you can see in the background in the pics above there isn’t much to look at along the way, so it was actually quite interesting to see the different camping plots, the odd herd of wild camels, and the different real Bedouin sites complete with pens for goats or sheep and their camels. The real Bedouins have a different tent to the white canvas ones, they are usually black with a white stripe around middle and a large opening in the middle.

We made it safely to Riyadh and arrived just as night had fallen. I will fill you in more on this visit in the next day or so :)