There was actually almost no planning and minimal preparation for this trip. We knew we wanted to be on the Jan 15th around Dammam for the 2023 Dakar Finish and knew that we would not have enough time to do western part of Saudi Arabia but other than we were free. Fortunately, the weather forecast was good – it rained a few times in recent weeks – so we planned to leave 7am the next day.
Day 1
Since as per plan, things often go differently than planned we started our day at ROP where Artur had to get his new motorcycle license (mulkiya) as he lost it somewhere. Thankfully, getting a new one was as simple as dropping by for milk to a grocery shop. Public services run really well here.
Light packing this time with no camping gear – only a small sleeping bag just in case.
With hugs and kisses from the family we left Muscat.
After some 500 km riding and a smooth Omand/UAE border crossing we reached Jabel Jais Entrance.
Riding up and down Jabel Jais was very pleasant and compared to Al Jabel Al Akhdar in Oman more enjoyable going down where we could have some speed rather than continuously breaking.
Interestingly, Jabel Jais is a home to the world largest zipline – certainly on the list especially that is so close by: https://visitjebeljais.com/adrenaline/jais-flight/
We continued to Dubai for the night. We reached Sharjah just before the dark where we had the best food during our entire trip.
After the dinner we went out for a 6km walk around Sharjah corniche road – it was interesting to see this part of Dubai – for me it was the first time in this area.
Day 2
We started Day 2 with a tour around the Dubai’s Corniche road.
Along the route we saw some huge residences and… this guy was coming out of water 🙂
After Corniche road we left Dubai and headed to Abu Dhabi with a small detour through Yas Scenic route to arrive for a nice coffee at Arabica.
Riding in Dubai was really challenging to say the least. Especially, during morning rush hours in the center with endless lane changes and connecting roads.
We had racers changing lanes diagonally from left to right or right to left, Indians looking for some sort of revenge on smaller and more vulnerable, angry ladies in newest V8 Nissan Patrols who apparently were missing something from life and needed to show some sort of domination, as well as all the rest who simply treat motorcyclists invisible. This – it turned out – was just a warm up to what was waiting for us in Riyadh.
With close calls from front, back, left and right at some point we really felt endangered – thankfully after some minutes the traffic receded and we were off on 140 km/h highway to Abu Dhabi.
In front of the cafe we learned that apparently it is not very legal to park bikes on a walkway, so after a brief coffee we headed west towards Saudi border.
We wanted to visit The Presidential Palace, but unfortunately it was closed for some rehearsals. We also saw a parade with rows of camels and horses and people holding Korean and UAE’s flags.
The plan was to reach Al Dhannah City for lunch and then continue west to Sila town for overnight before crossing the border the next day.
Before we reached Dhannah we took an off-road detour to see what the coast in this area looks like.
Some one hour later we reached Dhannah. But before we met an Italian cyclist who was on his 9-month trip, sleeping in his tent or abandoned gas stations (those are plenty in Saudi Arabia) and enjoying the Middle East. We are all travellers – some just take it to another level.
For kilometres there is nothing along the road. The only ‘point of interest’ was a nuclear plant Barakah Nuclear Power Plant (no picture, but link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant) which was huge with its enormous four reactors.
And then we arrived at Al Ruways industrial city – again a strange experience – nothing around for kilometres and then suddenly a city emerges.
They even had a golf course.
After having reviewed all open restaurants this turned out to be our selection – Sniper Burger.
After food and 2nd coffee we continued to Sila with hope of finding some place to sleep.
To our surprise there was no accommodation in Sila despite Google maps showing at least 7 different places. We tried to talk to some locals, but with little common language we gave up and decided to sleep on Saudi side.
Arriving just before dark we managed to cross the UEA/Saudi border. The crossing was rather smooth with number of check points, but eventually we made it. We also had to buy a mandatory 3rd party insurance for our bikes (90 SAR for 2 weeks – who know how long we will need it for 🙂
A few kilometers after the border crossing we found a hotel for the night. It was not a 5 star but it had 2 beds and that’s all we needed.
The plan for next Day was to drive to Riyadh.
Day 3
This was our hotel just past the Saudi border – Dream Home – if only they had towels… Anyway we moved out quickly cheered up that the world is still a good place when saw eight Ferrari’s on a tow truck.
We stopped by for some food in McDonalds. The restaurant had two entrances: ‘Single’s Section’ and ‘Family Section’. It turns out that until recently, all the restaurants required to have two entrances separating women and families – using Family entrance – from men eating alone – using Single’s entrance. Not a good news when you are single female I guess.
We continued with aim to reach Dakar camp in Al Hofuf where the team supposed to arrive the next day. We later wanted to come back here when the teams were around, but having talked to a few folks we realised that they would have not allowed us to enter anyway, so we continued towards Riyadh.
We reached Riyadh early evening and went out to see around.
In the Boulevard City we bumped into a paid mall. Yes you need to pay money to spend money – interesting concept.
Another interesting thing we saw in Saudi was “car dusting” – painting the front of your car with a brown paint to avoid the bodywork being damaged by sandstorms. I still don’t get it – you damage your car to avoid it being damaged – but maybe there is some logic in it…
One last thing we did that night was to visit Polish Consul in Riyadh who welcomed us warmly.
Overall, we clocked 620 km on that day.
Day 4
The first thing we saw when we opened the hotel door on Day 4 were wet streets.
Without checking the weather and hoping for the best we took off to look for breakfast.
With a little searching we found a nice place where we had a best coffee so far in Saudi.
The cafeteria had plastic bottles shredder machine. For each bottle you put in you get a voucher to redeem your coffee – interesting win-win solution.
We noticed that not only enforcing the traffic rules is a challenge – to say the least – but also the rules themselves don’t help. Check out those traffic lights on the clip below: light for pedestrians changes from green to red at exactly the same time as from red to green for cars – there is no chance you will have enough time to run away from all those cars waiting with roaring engines ready to go! I’d think twice before stepping on the road as a pedestrian – but maybe this is to make things safer by scaring people off and making them avoid crossing the road at all… who knows.
Trying not to get killed (again) on the road and after three unsuccessful attempts to see Al-Busaidi Heritage Park (all access roads were closed) we left Riyadh towards the Edge of the World.
Before we reached the offroad section it started drizzling – we put the rain jackets on and continued.
We continued in a small rain offroad then it started pouring, so we came back a little, it reduced again and then we continued towards the Edge of the World.
The road was pretty easy with a few hilly sections.
It all went well – I only felt once. With a black-top tire one small mistake in the mud and you are down.
Those two little dots on the right in the picture above are two folks having a camp fire and some tent – they were calling us for coffee but with still ambitious plan for the day we had to pass and went back to the black top.
On the way back we found two motorbikes from Dubai – who knew what they were looking for there?
Here we met another cyclist who cycled all he way from Germany who was on the road for months already.
After the black top we continued towards our second destination for the day – an old historical village.
Along the road we encountered hoards of camels.
Driving in Saudi is really dangerous we thought. There were many situations, but the one below summarises it all in a short clip: two guys overtaking a truck uphill on double solid line.
We had a lot of fast food during this trip.
Arriving in Shaqra was such a nice feeling after the night in busy Riyadh the night before.
Shaqra.
Immediately after we entered we were greeted by two local Saudis – one from Shaqra and one from Riyadh. They were really kind and showed us around for almost 2 hours.
With last bite for the day we went back to the hotel.
Day 5
The aim was to reach Dammam from Shaqra – slightly above 600km distance with not so much to see along the road – to reach on time for The Dakar 2023 Finish that was scheduled on that day.
We tried to avoid the rain and with a few stops we manage to get almost dry to our destination – once or twice we got wet by passing cars.
There were two highlights of the day:
- Finish of the Dakar 2023 race
- Riding in rain in Riyadh
If I had to pick, the second one I will remember the most. Riding on a motorcycle in Riyadh is a very unique experience like nothing else. There is no distance keeping, no rules, no lights, no breaks, no warnings, no respect no nothing. Doing this in rain brings it to another level – this was one in a lifetime experience. Would we do it again? Probably yes if we had to, but that is nothing one enjoys. You constantly feel like your life is endangered. But we have done it!
It is really unfortunate that Dakar Finish is not an open public event. We tried all we could to get ourselves in (we almost had one of the participating team members to help us out), but unfortunately no luck. Getting in was a secondary problem, firstly we had to find it. We only knew that the Finish was in Dammam, but no further details. After talking to random people on the street with no real help – it turns out that locals are not aware such event is happening in their town – we decided to go to McDonalds and ask there. Artur finally got the coordinates and we head off to the Dakar 2023 finish line. It was funny to see some people were taking video of us as we would be one of the racing teams.
The security was really tight with police guards all over the place. We tried our luck but without the passes we could not get in. A little disappointed as walked toward a highway exit which was a bit higher and from where we had some view of the ceremony.
That was end of Day 5 – in Dammam.
Day 6
A few kilometres on the road and the holes were so large that I lost my phone in the middle of the highway. We stopped by to find it and with help of the police who protected our bikes I was lucky to find it with only one extra scratch. With broken English, the policeman said that “they will kill you” when you try to find your phone, but he was also worried about our bike which were parked on the highway side of the barrier. He was very kind and move the police car behind our bikes to protect them from being hit by any vehicle.
Then we stopped for breakfast at a restaurant at one of the gas stations along the road. With hands waving and a few mouth expressions we got a really good breakfast.
The weather was not easy on us, but we continued.
The night before we made up our mind to head for Kuwait but we had a little doubt when we saw the weather forecast – nevertheless in the below caffee we decided to go for it.
Pushing for Kuwait.
In Kuwait we were welcomed by Artur’s old friends who really took care of us. It was nicely a mid point of the trip and so much appreciated especially after riding in the rain for most of the day.
Day 7
We left Kuwait in the morning next day knowing that we will get wet again. It must have been heavy rainfall over night as sides of the road were full of water – sometimes as fas as the horizon. Who would have thought that we will be going in rain, at 13 degC surrounded by water in the middle of the dessert. It was certainly not what we planned for – as I said at the beginning we didn’t plan for anything anyway…
On the way the wind was picking up so we stopped along the road to get a bite. Seeing two adventure bikes parked outside the restaurant we wondered how wet their riders got. We got to know Katrina and Noora there who escaped the storm while hiding in a mosque and like us were heading to Bahrain.
Some two hours later and with a pretty smooth border crossing we arrived in Bahrain which was quite different than their neighbours.
We checked Bahrain’s nightlife as much as we could (too much details to put them all here:) ) and with a little delay around 10 o’clock the next day we were on the road back home.
Day 8
We stopped a few time along the road, here buying local Saudi cookies for the families back home.
After a few stops and some 600 km later we entered UAE.
Initially, we aimed for Al Ain but we ended up on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi. We wanted to avoid night riding but the road was very well lit and empty – with almost no traffic and good visibility we clocked some 200 km on the UAE highway making sure we stay within the speed limit.
Day 9
We woke up pretty early and with wind in our sails we left Abu Dhabi towards Oman.
While entering Oman through the curvy mountain roads we realised (again) how beautiful the beautiful country it is and that we still have plenty to see and explore there on the motorbikes!
With some more kilometers and after the total of 5100 km we ended back home – just before lunch 🙂
What an adventure!