Riyadh – A False Oasis

“Why? Why on God’s green Earth would you want to go to Saudi Arabia?”, chimed the chorus of travellers and Jordanians in a confused harmony. To be fair, to the general public, the internet’s collective wisdom on Saudi Arabia does amount to a compilation of horror stories and stern warnings. Tales of oppression, beheadings and international terrorism reach the eager ears of the West and the everyday consumer is realigned with some misguided colonial superiority imprinted on their psyche. People once again believe that they live in a benevolent and altruistic state, antithetical to the wild and ruthless Middle East. While the barbarism of the Saudi regime is indisputable, the country itself has been swept along with every broad stroke of the media’s brush. But no matter how much you hear and read you cannot begin to truly understand a place without embracing the culture and meeting local people. With the Saudi tourist visa only existing since 2019, my trip would be more of a flailing jump into the void rather than a leisurely dip into calm waters. Despite this information vacuum, I did anticipate a change from the romantic and wild the tales of Thesiger and Lawrence. I instead expected to see a wealthy and increasingly connected nation and wondered whether a modern Arabia is compatible with the ancient customs and culture that have ruled generations for thousands of years. So, with one Against the Compass article and this dude giving me a few pointers, I settled into the blissful ignorance and nervous anticipation of a new adventure.  

Bus Travel – A Half Life, a Cursed Life

Throughout the years, I thought I might have exhausted all complaints, joys, trials and tribulations associated with the marvellously simple mode of transport that is a bus. But no. It turns out that a combined 34 hours on buses from Amman to Riyadh granted me a new depth and clarity into the world of bus travel. 

After rushing out of the hostel in Amman and redirecting my Uber driver in a frantic attempt to make it to the bus on time, I rocked up to the bus stop and waited around for half an hour. The annoyance at the fact that my brain so incessantly retains the British attitude for timekeeping was washed away by the realisation I had made it to my bus and I was soon to be on my way south. Five or six hours later I got off the bus in Aqaba and circled back into the Jett bus station. It was chilly at 11pm and the bus station was sheltering a mob of Arab men shouting away in the large waiting room. Most of the rows of blue seats were empty but the men occupied one wall where their suitcases were stacked haphazardly. I sat a few rows back from them, trying to decipher the unnecessarily loud argument, lively debate or simple conversation about weekend plans (obliviousness to volume does not end at serious arguments but extends to all areas of human interaction). As I watched, it became apparent that these men were probably going to be my bus mates for the next… well I didn’t actually know how long it would take to get to Riyadh (owing to the previously mentioned lack of available information). The call came a few minutes later, I joined the mob in the spitting drizzle and then entered the bus which would carry us across the border. 

The drive from Aqaba to the border is a short drive of forty minutes or so. But during this time the passengers prayed together (led by a Saudi man on a microphone), the driver smoked directly beneath the no smoking sign and a man across the aisle from me incessantly chomped his way through a bag of sunflower seeds. While the bus hummed with sleepless anticipation for the border crossing, my nervousness grew, slowly constricting my chest. Saudi Arabia was the vast unknown and I was on a bus with no English speakers, no internet and no information other than my final destination. 

Luckily, my nerves soon dissipated when the first of many dramas occurred on the bus. One old man didn’t have the exit tax money on him and moments later the shouting began. Everyone loves to be part of everyone else’s business in the Middle East and this was no exception. Wild gesticulation accompanied each person’s point of view and soon the whole bus was involved in the intensifying clamour. With a half spirited attempt to bring order, the bus driver stood and joined the fray but his voice was soon lost in the dissonance of debate. However, it wasn’t long before people had gathered enough money for the old man and then bus stopped for an hour… Before the border…. All of that frantic debating could’ve waited or slowed down during our stop but that’s just not how things go. Our stop was at a sort of intermediary wasteland where tea, coffee and water were available before the border. In this strange pre-border purgatory, where narrow streams of rainwater reflected the light polluted sky and trickled downhill through the dirt towards the border, I paced impatiently and tried to enjoy the very cool evening air.

The border was a long and drawn out affair. Our driver drove us to each checkpoint and stopped the bus. Rising from his seat he would wearily reach for the microphone and sighing through his thick moustache he began every announcement with “Ya shabab…” which means “Hey guys…”. This was our sign to listen because he would then tell us which documentation we would need for this specific stop. Unfortunately, my Arabic didn’t quite extend to the vocabulary for official documents so I just watched my fellow passengers to get some idea of what I should be doing. At this border is where I realised that the bus was almost entirely Egyptians on their way to Saudi for work. Other than them there was one Saudi couple and one Jordanian. And me. The tourist. At the Saudi side of the border at around 4am I got singled out and taken off to an office. In there I handed over my passport and was asked by the guard where I’m from. My answer of “Ana britani (I’m British)” was met with a smiling questioning look followed quickly with “Are you Moroccan?”. I smiled and realised I was back on the well-trodden path of explaining my ethnic ambiguity. Their disbelief was funny and they were friendly which put my tired brain at ease. Soon I was reunited with my Egyptian bus mates and we were only an hour or so from crossing into Saudi Arabia properly.

Once we had changed buses on the Saudi side we settled into our new home and immediately tried to get some sleep. Some people set themselves up in the aisle, managing to stretch out on the unthinkably grotty floor while I stayed firmly in my seat. Thanks to the drawn out border crossing, it wasn’t long until the hazy light of a desert morning crept through the windows of our infernal wheeled home. We were just across the border from Wadi Rum and the landscape was much of the same, vast in every dimension. However, there was only so much I could take in. Everyone has felt that hallucinatory blur of reality that washes over you when you don’t have enough sleep. Well, long term bus travel keeps you there, held in some slumberous middle ground between unconsciousness and consciousness. So, as we cruised towards the east, I only saw the desert through this blurred inebriation of tiredness. As the day wore on it became more and more apparent how far it was to Riyadh. I wasn’t going to make it that day and, due to my lack of internet, my Couchsurfing host would remain none the wiser. However, the most pressing issue was my dwindling water supply. I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours but the tiredness and burgeoning dehydration had managed to abate the worst of the hunger. The frequent stops at petrol stations/services for the toilet and food meant that I could head out to restock my water supply and get snacks, however I ran into a few issues. Firstly, in Saudi Arabia Mastercard and Visa are second best to Mada. Unfortunately, this means that quite a few places don’t accept Mastercard (including all of the bloody petrol station shops). So, to recap: I was without a payment card, cash, internet, and finally, I was without the full mental capacity of my brain. Feeling a little dejected, I was stood in the biting wind of the desert which was whistling through the flimsy exterior of the small restaurant behind me. There I watched people down drinks with a gluttony that was almost arrogant to my eyes. Things weren’t looking great. Getting desperate I started up a conversation with one of the guys who had chatted to me at the border. I explained my situation in broken Arabic and then he walked off and got me a bottle of water and a strange mango drink. I thanked him profusely and got back in the coach. Later that night we stopped again and once again my Mastercard was refused. So, with two fleeces on, I followed the rabble into a restaurant to shelter from the cold. Instead of eating, everyone went to pray in the small booths that I would come to release are the norm for Saudi restaurants. Listening to everyone praying and focussing on keeping warm, I was cursing my own stupidity for not bringing any Saudi Riyals with me, but then a random guy from the bus came up to me. I had not spoken to him before but at that moment I thanked my shaky grasp of the language because he asked me if I was hungry. I said yes and so then he said he’d buy me dinner. He didn’t even eat, he just bought me chicken, rice and some tea then got back on the bus. If that man hadn’t bought me dinner, I wouldn’t have eaten until I met my host a whole 40 hours after my previous bite of food. I polished off that plate with the single mindedness of necessity. 

After another long night and very loud bus-wide argument with the driver (who had been driving for 24 hours straight), we got into the bus station at around 3am and the 34 hours of bus travel was finally over. But I wasn’t done yet. I was without internet, my host was asleep and I was in a new city with no money. After failing to find a functioning ATM or any WIFI, I decided to just wait around for as long as I could bare and then decide what to do. So, outside of the busy bus terminal, I watched all sorts of people come and go while I waited around in the dark. After an hour I was getting bored of the taxi rank scenery so decided to use a tiny amount of my data roaming to check my host’s address and then catch an Uber to his apartment. I realised that he wouldn’t be up but some new scenery and escaping the hungry eyes of the taxi drivers was high on my agenda. 

Perched on the pavement outside his apartment, I greeted another sleepless sunrise. Three hours later, after watching a downloaded Joe Rogan podcast to pass the time, I met my host Miteb and my time in Riyadh could properly begin. 

Riyadh Season

Despite trying to readjust to a world not held in perpetual motion by 4 wheels, I found I had enough energy on both evenings to join Miteb to the events put on during Riyadh Season. Started in 2019, Riyadh Season is part of a countrywide initiative by the crown prince whose vision for Saudi’s future focusses on mind-blowing modernisation and opening the country to the world. Riyadh season then is a city wide celebration of a modern and progressive Saudi Arabia, with concerts, events and enormous venues. It’s one superficial sign of the kingdom’s movement away from a religious focus both for tourism and state. 

The Boulevard

Not knowing what Riyadh season was or what the mysterious “boulevard” could be, I was just coming along for the ride, deferring to the incredibly hospitable local to take me somewhere cool. What I expected was a big road with shops and restaurants but as we powered through the traffic of Riyadh and chatted, I started to get the impression we were going somewhere more impressive. The car park we pulled into was enormous and lit by the constantly shifting lights from an array of screens. These rectangular billboards not only displayed beautifully artificial light, but also lit the entrance to the boulevard. As we passed through the barriers and stood under their dazzling luminescence, contrasting to the deep blue of a desert twilight, Saudis filed into the hidden venue beyond. The narrow canyon of lights ferried all sorts of people onwards, each unexpectedly diverse group was fascinating to me. 

Inside the venue, the scale of the place exceeded all expectations. We wandered around a stylish food court, an artificial lakefront lined with posh restaurants, a live music venue and more, until my endlessly mischievous stomach required attention. There was no ignoring it anymore. So, we went back to the circular food court which had since filled to the brim. We waited for shawarma for a long time and then ate it perched among the crowds. Refuelled but not totally satisfied we continued our wandering through themed sections and fancy revivals of fairground games but eventually we felt like we had seen our fill and Miteb had let slip a certain fact about Riyadh. A fact that motivated me to leave the busy streets of Riyadh Boulevard in that instant. Habibah (the restaurant that holds my soul in its syrup soaked hands) has a single outpost in Saudi Arabia and it’s in Riyadh. So, of course Miteb was soon persuaded to make a detour so we could check out the state of knafeh in this remote outpost. 

We sat out on a rare stretch of Riyadh pavement and tucked in. It had only been two days since I had consumed knafeh but the physical and mental ordeal of bus travel meant that I craved its welcoming embrace. It was perfect. The distance from Jordan hadn’t affected the quality of the dish. Habibah was still Habibah. 

Winter Wonderland

The next evening we swooped by a cabin filled, fake snow adorned section of the city. We walked up and down through the rows of cabins but tiredness was replacing my enthusiasm with severe disinterest in fairground rides. That being said we had bought enough credit to enjoy a cheeky ride on the Ferris wheel. The view of the city and the long rectangle of wintery fun was looked pretty amazing in the dark.

Elsewhere in Riyadh

During my second day and before our walk around Winter Wonderland, I went out for a signature James city excursion. For those who are unaware of my particular brand of city walking, it involves heading towards a location with no route or plan. Instead of filling my head with such nonsense, I let the Holy Trinity of exploration lead the way. The Father is the watcher from above, your hidden guide, the one who gives you that feeling that you shouldn’t walk down that road or the curiosity to climb that rock. The Son is the sacrifice you make, the decision you take to stretch out your legs and choose cultural and sensory immersion instead of comfort and calm. He is the manifestation of masochistic joy you feel as you turn your nose up at the convenient taxi or the comfortable tour group. You are no longer a spectator of the world unfolding behind the glass, but a participant in the vibrant colours of life. And finally, the Spirit is the one that enters you and gives you the willingness not just walk but see and interact. While Bangkok, Panama City and Fes have all been scenes of vintage James walking excursions, Riyadh was proving difficult to explore. The city is largely dominated by large highway type roads which separate and intersect different districts. These reduce walkability and then combine this with the dire lack of pavements and you’ve got one of the least accessible cities I’ve ever been to. The problem is, the Saudi government is somewhat of a reflection of the populace when it comes to the idea of walking. They don’t care for it. However, it does make sense. Throughout the country temperatures stay solidly in the 40s and 50s during the summer which doesn’t make for optimum strolling conditions when perusing the high street. Nevertheless, with a focus on walking comes a much more interesting and varied street culture. And as I found out in Riyadh, the fact no one walks anywhere reduces the interest and diversity found at street level. The city has an iconic and modern skyline but it seemed to me that the ground level has been neglected being left to become soulless car parks and expansive malls. Despite my observations thus far, I was still excited at the thought of a day out, sightseeing and walking between the large Masmak fort and the National Museum through the old part of the city.

Masmak Fortress is a clay and mudbrick building that remains as one of the only surviving historic buildings in Riyadh. The reason for its survival comes down to its important role in the unification of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The history of this struggle for unification spans decades, includes unhelpfully long names and complex localised power struggles. However, it’s a historical tale goes to explain the establishment of the Saudi state and the religious ideals that underpin the country’s infamous isolation during the last century. 

The story begins with Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab who was born in 1699 in the centre of modern day Saudi Arabia. He grew up with a basic training in the classical Sunni Muslim tradition but being the resident bad boy of his mosque he started to challenge the popular religious practices. He started arguing against the visitation to and veneration of the shrines to Islamic saints or wali, he claimed that this amounted to heretical religious innovation or perhaps idolatry (the deification or worship of anyone or anything other than Allah). So, he began preaching for social reform based around the oneness of God and soon took on the role of an activist where he encouraged the destruction of ancient sites, monuments and graves which had been revered by locals.

After gaining influence, but angering the Islamic mainstream, this argumentative hipster came to the Emir of Diriyah (on the outskirts of Riyadh) for support and changed things forever. This Emir was Muhammad bin Saud. In 1744 they made a pact to work together. This pact offered bin Saud a clearly defined religious mission and gave him the ideological impetus for the house of Saud’s expansion. They expanded through most of present day Saudi Arabia, with bin Saud as the political and military leader and al-Wahhab as the spiritual guide of the nascent Emirate. This expansion eradicated all other practices that fell outside of the strict Wahhabi doctrine and brought the populace back to the “true” principles of Islam as they saw it. This first Saudi state captured Mecca in 1802 but the Ottoman Empire had exercised sovereignty over the city since 1517, so weren’t keen to lose it to some uncivilised radicals from the South. They tasked their most wily and powerful viceroy Muhammad Ali (see this post for details of his Egyptian antics) with the destruction of the Saudis and the recapture of Mecca. Despite the glory days of the Ottoman empire being long gone, this task was executed with ruthless efficiency. Mecca was recaptured and the home base of the House of Saud (Diriyah) was destroyed in 1818. The imam (leader of the First Saudi State) was executed but Saudis survived in exile until returning to rule until 1891. This second Saudi state was less influential and was rife with infighting which led to its downfall at the hands of another powerful Arabian dynasty, the House of Rasheed. The house of Rasheed finished off the building of the Masmak fort and reigned until the new century which would mark their end.

Like many of his family before him, Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman Al Saud (a.k.a. Ibn Saud) lived in exile, his family finally settling in Kuwait during the reign of the House of Rasheed. However, in 1902 he re-entered the country of his birth and raided his way to Riyadh. Using tilted palm trees to get over the city walls he and 40 men captured Masmak fort at the heart of the city and killed the Rashidi governor. This was the beginning of what we now know as Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud went on to subdue the rest of the country through the next three decades which is a long time but the Bedouin tradition of doing whatever the hell you want is quite a difficult one to subdue. And even with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia fully formed in 1932, the Bedouins continued to live an untamed lifestyle for decades to come. 

Ibn Saud presided over many important events during his long life including the discovery of petroleum in Saudi Arabia in 1938, but in my eyes the sheer virility of the man is perhaps the most impressive. He had 45 sons. He was the perfect Saudi (or Chinese) man. These sons went on to be the kings of the country, with today’s king (Salman) being the sixth son to rule since Ibn Saud’s death. With the House of Saud back in charge of the country once again, they readopted the religious teachings of Al-Wahhab and established them as the state sponsored form of Islam. However, as of this year (2021) the power of religious clerics has begun to wane. The de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia (Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman) has enacted social, religious and economic changes to the country which emphasise the non-Islamic components to the Saudi identity. Therefore, some see this as the beginning of the end for the Wahhabi doctrines that aided the Saudi house to power in the 18^thcentury. 

Back in Masmak fort, the centre of this historical turmoil, I wandered around with two other tourists who happened to be there at the same time as me. I walked through the earthen rooms and read the history of Saudi Arabia with a vacant gaze. Almost nothing was being filed into the memory banks. The problem with the Masmak fort as a museum is that I found the building much more interesting than the displays. The lack of artefacts and abundance of written explanations meant that I craved space to just take in the beautifully formed building. Towards the end of my self-guided wander I did find a couple of empty courtyards but on the most part I was feeling pretty ambivalent towards the place. 

I left and headed a few hundred metres to the Deera square which is infamous for being the location of the public beheadings that still occur in Saudi Arabia. On two sides of the square were a few cafes and restaurants while the other two were dominated by the large mosque and courthouse. Apart from the busy construction occurring around the square, the place was quite serene, a few old men sat outside a small local restaurant and baristas pottered around in a café waiting for lunchtime customers. I walked around the old streets of this area for a while, taking in the carless quiet and watching the slow street life of the old men. All of them were sat on chairs, some in the marbled sunlight at the borders of tree-lined boulevards and some in the impenetrable shade of the covered market. 

Soon, however, I decided to walk to the National Museum. On my zigzagging journey there, I walked along dusty main streets filled with lifeless tailor shops and dirty back streets where Pakistanis were hurrying back and forth. I eventually made it to a park and then hopped across to the museum. That walk, no matter how visually uninspiring it was, did give me my first real feel for the city. 

The museum was huge and comprehensive. It started with the geological history of Saudi Arabia and then went through all of the ages of human beings and their increasingly complex civilisations, remarking on their influences on the Middle East. Some of the ancient history was very interesting but, as the walk through history continued, I spent less time reading because much of the content was similar to the Masmak fort. Instead, I spent time looking at photos and artefacts which have always held more interest to me than long accounts (yes I realise the irony of this assertion when I have written long accounts about all sorts of much less globally important things). 

My First Taste of Saudi

While I had rushed off to Habibah with a feverish dedication to the Jordanian part of my soul, I hadn’t focussed much on Saudi food yet. That was until Miteb took me to Najd Village, a beautiful restaurant built in the style of traditional architecture of the central Najd region that Riyadh sits in. Walking into the restaurant I was in awe of the warmth of the architectural style and the relaxed atmosphere. The seating was in small booths which were carpeted and had small cushions around the outside wall for comfort. Each of these little booths had low walls so you could take in the open courtyard garden and watch the waiters and chefs milling around among the earthen walls. This was my first experience in a restaurant like this, where the use of tables was thought of as an unnecessary extravagance and I was loving it. Our food arrived fairly quickly and we had the bowls of local dishes (chosen by Miteb) laid out in front of us on a plastic sheet to protect the carpet. I expected something out of the standard playbook of middle eastern cuisine (chunks of lamb cooked in sauce) and I was right, however two of them contained a strange new ingredient. Tiny thin wheat dough disks were cooked in the sauces and their soft texture and slight wheaty flavour was a strange addition to the robust spice of the sauce and meat. Other than this perplexing addition, the food was amazing and I was enjoying trying new flavours. However, this wouldn’t be a middle eastern meal without one special food. It’s hot or cold, it’s sliced or ripped, it’s dense or fluffy, it’s crusty or soft; it’s bread and it’s more than just a food, it’s a unifying, universal human experience. Empires rise and fall, wars rage and peace fluctuates, borders change and cultures evolve, but bread is always there. From the earliest recorded history of humanity, bread has been a staple food. Without our hunger for bread (and thirst for beer) the domestication of the first plants, wheat and barley, would not have occurred so quickly. This foray into agriculture for the first time in human history (12,000 years ago) brought people away from the hunter gatherer “let’s throw sticks at hairy elephants”  lifestyle of their ancestors and unified them under a common goal. This unification soon produced villages, towns and cities; civilisation followed the rise in agriculture production and therefore bread consumption. Since then bread has been hand in hand with social change and political reform. For example, during the Russian revolution of 1917 when the Bolsheviks overthrew the imperial government (creating the world’s first socialist state), the Bolsheviks promised “peace, land and bread”. This articulated the grievances of the Russian peasantry and demonstrated bread’s importance among the three necessities for life, an opinion I can get behind. Weaving its way into society beyond political influence, bread takes on special significance in religious ceremonies (e.g. Eucharist & Passover) and has even become an important metaphor for basic necessities and living conditions in the vernacular of different languages. So, not only is bread an actor on the global stage but also a companion (Latin for “with bread”) to each of us in our daily lives.

Anyway, the flat bread in Najd Village was incredible, freshly cooked and subtly layered while remaining a slightly dense and chewy character. Tearing through dinner plate of steaming carbohydrates, my mind wasn’t thinking about the westernisation of the global diet and the eventual global takeover of wholesale bread consumption, instead I was transported to that deep, dark and comfy hollow of comfort food.

Final Thoughts

Riyadh was my “land ahoy” moment after a long voyage across the sandy seas of northern Saudi. With no Saudi comparisons to draw from, I expected to be overawed by the exciting experiences of a new city. However, I found Riyadh a lacklustre attempt at a city, a funnel for money that has bypassed the natural evolution of a settlement. This evolution is what creates oddities and character, Riyadh by contrast is almost dour in its monotone modernisation. It was undoubtedly a good place to see the new face of Saudi Arabia but the almost boastful extravagance of the stylish modern architecture lacks the foundation of a cohesive liveable city from which to enjoy it. 

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If you liked this post drop me a comment below, it would be great to know what you think! If you didn’t like this post feel free to send me an email. I will reply with a set of coordinates and a date. We shall meet underneath the blazing British sun and settle our differences in the only way befitting a denigration of this scale… crying into each others arms about the source of the negativity in our hearts. Then, to finish off the meeting we will fight to the death so that the other’s secrets remain safe. I am still standing, so email me at your own peril.