Central Asia Tour: Reports

FAQ: How To Cycle Saudi Arabia

How To Cycle Saudi Arabia

Published on 14.11.2023, 13:25 in Tiflis, Georgien

Officially Saudi Arabia opened for tourism in 2019, but the Covid epidemic postponed this opening in practice to 2021 or 2022 in many cases. When we entered Saudi Arabia on January 27th, 2022 we were not the first ones to cross Saudi Arabia by bicycle, but there also was not too much information out there that we could rely on. In order to change that for future bicycle travellers we noted down the most important information in this article.

Don’t forget to also check out our Google Route Map with a lot more information about sights, nice routes, unpaved roads and warnings about certain roads/sections!

If you understand German, you may also refer to our podcast episodes 23, 24, 25 and 26 where we tell about our experiences in Saudi Arabia (in German). You’ll also find many pictures there, on the corresponding English pages (23, 24, 25, 26) also with English captions/subtitles.

Content

1. Where and When Did We Cycle in Saudi Arabia?

We entered Saudi Arabia on January 27th, 2023 at the Al-Mudawwara/Halat Ammar border crossing from Jordan. We then crossed Saudi Arabia via Tabuk, al-Ula, Medinah, Buraidah and Riyadh to Oman, including the long highway no. 95 through the Rub al-Khali desert to the Saudi–Omani border. After spending 50 days and cycling 3026 km in Saudi Arabia we left to Oman on March 14th, 2023.

2. Visa

Probably all western countries are eligible for the Saudi e-visa. It costs 135 € per person, is valid for one year and allows for a stay of a total of 90 days within the one-year validity period. Also, it’s a multiple entry visa, so you can divide your total number of 90 days in as many separate stays as you want. After submitting the application you usually get the visa automatically at the same day. The correct website to apply for the evisa is this one: visa.visitsaudi.com.

There were some reports that people also got a visa on arrival at the border, but I don’t know how reliable that is.

3. Clothing (Women)

The days when women were required to wear the Abaya outside their homes are over. Also a headscarf is not required. And while obviously almost all Saudi women still wear the Abaya and are veiled by a Niqab, it was never even once a problem for Belinda not to wear a heardscarf (the only exception are, of course, the praying rooms of mosques – but no need to wear a headscarf to use the mosque’s toilets).

Regarding the length of trousers and sleeves it depends a bit on the situation, but if lots of locals are around (i.e. within cities and on busy roads) it’s probably advisable to wear long trousers and sleeves. Far outside in the lonely desert with little traffic on the roads and at non-Islamic touristic places, a T-shirt and shorter trousers will be okay as well, but definitely still always cover the knees, and the sleeves should better end not higher than at the elbows.

Regarding the tightness of the clothes: The looser (i.e. not tight) the better. But ‘normal’ trousers and blouses are fine enough. Only better avoid particular skinny/tight ones. And obviously no deep neckline (décolleté).

Regarding the colors: Muted colors are prefered, but especially while doing sports outside bright/colorful clothes are totally fine. In Medinah, pilgrims from all over the world gather around and many muslim women from all over the world also often wear very colorful clothes.

For the clothing rules see also chapter 11 in our Podcast Episode 23 (in German).

4. Clothing (Men)

For men, long trousers and T-shirt are always fine, even in mosques. But as long as you are not doing sports or are far out in the desert, shorts should be avoided. When doing sports, tight racing bicycle shorts are fine as well, also with visible kness (the Saudi racing bicyclists wear them as well, we saw them outside of Riyadh and near al-Ula). When quickly going into a small supermarket I was usually too lazy to put on long pants just for that and I felt I got strange looks on my legs sometimes, but nobody ever said anything. Generally, I felt more comfortable wearing long trousers, but if it was too hot for them, I switched to shorts.

For the clothing rules see also chapter 11 in our Podcast Episode 23 (in German).

5. Sex Segregation

In public, sex segragation is a thing of the past. It used to be the case that public places like restaurants have a female/family section and a male only section and sometimes you can still see the signs on the separate entrance doors to those formerly divided spaces. But the rules are no longer in place. Also small restaurants with only a single room that used to be exclusively for men can now also be visited by women. While we never dared to actively approach women out on the street to ask them a question or talk to them, it happened once or twice that women approached us. But of course, this is rather rare and the vast majority of Saudis that approached us were men.

6. Invitations

Saudis are extremely hospitable and if you cycle through Saudi Arabia for some time, chances are high that you will be invited into their homes for food and usually also to spend the night. Although the sex separation in public places is lifted, the homes of the Saudis are usually still separated into a ‘common area’ (where the Saudi women are veiled) and a ‘family area’ (where the Saudi women are not veiled). As a female traveller, you may be invited to visit both areas (and Belinda never was velied at private houses), while male travellers will never make it into the family areas. Now, with different hosts we experienced different situations. Usually, you’ll both stay in the family area and only meet the males of the family. A veiled woman may come by to say hello or sometimes Belinda was asked to go to the family area shortly just to say hello to the unveiled women. It happened also that Belinda was asked if she rather wants to have dinner with the women in the family area or stay with me – it was up to her. Only once, she was ‘put’ into the family area no questions asked and we spent the complete evening separated while WhatsApp-ing with each other what was happening on the other side. That was a bit awkward but for sleeping Belinda could return to the common area, so we ended up sleeping in the same room.

For detailed stories about our invitations see (for example) also chapters 2–3, 6 and 8 of our Podcast Episode 24 as well as chapter 3 in Podcast Episode 25 (in German).

7. Travelling as an Unmarried Couple

A simple rule for unmarried couples in all muslim countries (or any other conservative countries for that matter): Simply always say you’re married, as this will save you (and your host/vis-à-vis as well!) potential hassle. And be sure, you will be asked about your marriage status! Although we did not wear any (wedding) rings, nobody ever wanted to see some kind of proof or asked some follow-up questions after asking if we are married (except maybe for how long we are married).

By the way, in case you’re an atheist: Don’t say that either. Say you’re Christian or Catholic or whatever religion is most reasonable for your nationality and you have at least some level of knowledge about. It will be so much easier for your vis-à-vis to understand and accept that you have a different religion than that you have no religion at all.

8. Being Filmed

Snapchat is big in Saudi Arabia and when a car stopped next to us for the locals inside to talk to us, it did not rarely happen that they got off the car with their smartphone in their hands already filming. They might also ask questions and film you while answering. This is very funny (and maybe even a bit flattering) at the first time, but especially in the area of Buraidah it happened several times a day and the mood quickly turned upside down: It became incredibly annoying. At one point we decided that we are done and did not accept any attempt to be filmed anymore. But apparently the people didn’t really understand why we would not be okay with it. We don’t have a good solution for this problem, unfortunately. So just be warned.

9. Country Roads

Most roads between cities have a wide shoulder and if they don’t, traffic will be very low. The really big 4-lane and economically important highways with a lot of lorries are usually newly built and there often is an old 2-lane road more or less parallel to it (for example between Medinah and Buraidah the road 340 is parallel to highway 65). This old road may still have a wide shoulder and look like a proper 2-lane highway, but there won’t be much traffic. And of course, it’s perfectly fine to cycle on small back roads, if you find some, but there are not too many of those. So, all in all, it was rather easy to avoid the really big highways and then traffic was really no issue – except inside of the cities, of course. The tarmac quality is very good most of the time, but not always. Some streches between Medinah and Buraidah (maybe 10–20% of that section) were quite bad with bumpy tarmac cracks every few meters. And also the small section that we rode on the Medinah–Buraidah highway was not much better. But as said, that were rather exceptional cases.

10. City Roads and Traffic

We heard many stories that cycling in Saudi cities is absolute hell that includes the requirement of U-turns on busy 8-lane highways. Well, obviously, it’s not the Netherlands regarding bicycle infrastructure, but it was not worse than other big cities in Turkey or the Balkans, in our opinion – at least if you manage to avoid the dusty industrial areas, e.g. in the south-east of Riyadh.

It’s true, however, that cycling within Saudi cities requires a bit more careful planing than usual. This is because most of the crossings in cities are desined in a way that you cannot turn left and if you are cycling on the smaller of the two crossing roads you can also not go straight, but only turn right. With this design the Saudis avoid installing (and jamming in front of) nasty traffic lights, but this comes at the price of extended detours. Probably a reasonable compromise for cars, but not so much for cyclists. So when planing your routes within the cities take care that you actually can go straight and left where you want to.

11. Wild Camping

Wild camping is absolutely no issue – it’s legal and safe. Apart from the empty desert with unlimited camping space we also camped in parks/picnic areas – maybe not in the middle of Riyadh, but many cities and towns have these parks/picnic areas a bit outside of the center and you can camp there easily. The only issue is that the desert often is a bit rocky with thorny shrubs which can make it hard to find a suitable surface for the tent. And it can be very windy. But you’ll be okay.

Note that other cyclists also reported that it is a great option to sleep inside mosques. If you are a male solo traveller I would definitely consider doing this. As a couple, we didn’t feel so comfortable trying it, so we have no experiences.

12. Prices

Groceries: Average. Not as cheap as Turkey/Iran, but a bit cheaper than Western Europe. For restaurants you’ll find cheap options targeted at the migrant workers and, within the cities, more upper level ones for the Saudis. Hotel prices are more like Western Europe. We only stayed in the hotel for two nights – in Buraidah and Medinah. Because of this and all the invitations it were the cheapest months of our trip. But the evisa costs 135 €, as you might know (90 days, multiple entry, valid one year).

13. Safety

Never mind about it – with almost certainty it’s safer than most other countries you have travelled through. Terror attacs are a relict of the past (there was a deadly attac on tourists in 2007, but we have not heard of anymore ever since) and crime rates are low (probably not least because of the harsh punishmensts). Walking through cities at night, leaving your bicycle unlocked in front of a store and wild camping is probably safer than in virtually all European countries. We heard a single story of a crime happened to a cyclist in Saudi Arabia: A stolen GoPro. But the police was very motivated to help and found the thieve within a few days and they got the GoPro back.

14. Police Escorts

One annoying thing that happend to quite a few cyclists in Saudi Arabia are police escorts. After crossing the border from Jordan, we were escorted right away. They are friendly and I guess they are honest when they say that they do it to protect you from the traffic (even though the road was empty). Still, one of the police officers escorting us also blocked away locals that wanted to talk to us and give us water. They escorted us in three shifts a day. After the second day, they left us alone when we left the main road to find a place for the tent and they luckily did not return (or didn’t find us) on the next morning. After that, it happened maybe two or three times that a police officer started following us after he saw us on the road, but we learned from the experience and stopped immediately and told him friendly, but firmly (with Google Translator) that we are fine on our own and it is really not necessary to escort us. And indeed, they left us alone. So, all in all, we were luckily only escorted for two days of our whole trip. But we also heard stories of them guarding your tent throughout the night while you’re sleeping and sometimes even forcing you into hotels …

For the detailed story about our police escort see chapter 5 of our Podcast Episode 23 (in German).

15. Water Availability

Yes, Saudi Arabia is (almost) all desert, but still water was not too much of an issue for us. There are several types of water sources in Saudi Arabia:

A) You’ll come across a lot of water filters. They are placed at arbitrary places within villages and cities, in particular next to mosques, and in some regions (particularly near al-Ula) also simply anywhere along the street. They look a bit like stainless steel refrigerators and yes, they actually do cool the water down (if they are working)! And despite some of them might look a bit old, rusty and filthy, we drank their water all the time and never got stomach issues (but of course, we preferred to use the new ones with working cooling system).

B) If there is a mosque, there is water, and there are a lot of mosques in Saudi Arabia. Since muslims need to wash themselves before prayer, almost all mosques have bathrooms with running water (except maybe very tiny ones that are no more than a 2×2 meter roof over a carpet). The water from these bathrooms is not filtered and not cooled down and more often than not comes from a tank on the mosque’s roof instead of a water pipe system, but still we used this water for cooking and, if there was no water cooler around, also for drinking and had no issues. But we might have been a bit lucky, who knows?

C) If you are out in the desert, chances are high that people will stop their car and ask if they can help you. And even if you say that everything is fine, they mostly will hand over one or more bottles of water to you. And even if we tried to better be safe than sorry and filled up enough water to not rely on those friendly donations beforehands, the help of these car drivers always relaxed our otherwise tight water budget by a lot.

D) Your own supplies! If we say water was never really a problem for us in Saudi Arabia, that was of course also due to the fact that we planned ahead and topped up our water reserves whenever we could so that they would hold until the next place with a reliable water source (like a village, town or gas station). When we left the last gas station 260 km ahead of the Saudi–Omani border, we carried 24 liters of water (divided among our two bicycles).

16. Food Availability

If water availability is not really an issue, food is neither. Almost every gas station has a small supermarket and while the choice might not always be great, it well let you survive. Also smaller villages usually have a small grocery shop. But on the other hand, there sometimes are not too many small villages around, so a bit of planning ahead is necessary, of course.

17. Weather

Temperatures: We travelled from Jordan to Oman from end of February to mid-March. It was a bit cold around Tabuk/al-Ula and especially around Buraidah (maybe between 5 and 15 °C during the day, but still above 0 °C at night), but hot at the lower-altitude cities of Medinah and Riyadh (maybe around 30 °C). For the Rub al-Khali desert close to Oman, mid-March was already a bit too late for perfect temperatures as we struggled quite a lot with the heat in this region.

Rain: We never had a single day of rain during our time in Saudi Arabia, only at night it rained a little bit once or twice, but nothing to worry about. But we also heard from other cyclists who where around Ha’il maybe two weeks before we entered Saudi Arabia that they had to fight heavy thunderstorms and rain. We also read a report about somebody entering Saudi Arabia from Oman and facing a thunderstorm in the middle of the Rub al-Khali. So rain definitely can happen, also heavy rain.

Wind: The climate is rather hot, i.e. there’s a lot of energy in the weather system, and there’s nothing in the wide empty desert that could break the wind. So yes, we had heavy winds most of the time. And as every cyclist knows, they rarely push you forward but most of the time slow you down. The fierce head or side wind was maybe the biggest struggle we faced during our time in Saudi Arabia, physically as well as mentally. Luckily, during our time in Saudi Arabia, the wind usually slowed down during the night and it was never really a problem for camping. And when it didn’t slow down we were able to find a wind shelter for our tent. But you might not always be that lucky, so watch out and have an eye on the forecast. Regarding the wind direction it seemed random. From Medinah to Buraidah we had three days of tailwind and three days of headwind despite cycling almost a straight line the whole time. Near the Persian Gulf, however, winds seem to go from Kuwait to Qatar/Dubai most of the time (at least in spring), so try to avoid cycling along this coast from south to north.

You can look up the weather we had in Saudi Arabia in the right columns of the Daily Statistics Table (see the little ‘?’ button below that table for more explanations).

18. SIM Card

There are three providers in Saudi Arabia. The biggest one with best quality/speed/coverage is STC, then there is also Mobily and Zain. Because STC had an IT problem and couldn’t sell us a SIM card when we were in Tabuk, we bought a Mobily one and it was absolutely fine, good coverage, also in the empty regions between cities (along the roads). Actually, it’s quite impressive how they put on one transmission tower after the other along the desert roads so that you have more or less continuous coverage when driving. We payed 69 SAR (about 17 EUR) for 8 GB/1 month. After this month with the empty Rub al-Khali ahead of us we switched to STC, because Rub al-Khali is the place where the provider does make a difference regarding coverage. Cost us 75 SAR (about 19 EUR) for the equivalent package. Buying a SIM card is easy in the cities, you only buy the package and no extra fee for the card (as far as we understood), you need to bring your passport though.

19. Routes, Regions, Sights

Be aware that the distances in Saudi Arabia are huge! It will take you several days, maybe a week and in some regions even more, to cycle from one interesting city/place to the other (while there are usually smaller/boring towns in between to stock up water and food, of course). But despite you often have to fight the wind, there’s one thing that makes it easier for you: Saudi Arabia is (mostly) flat! Unbelievably flat! It is so flat, we had days with 80 km or more and not a single tiny slope that would speed us up to more than 22 km/h.

And while it is not quite true that the whole country is only empty desert, the landscape still often is not particularly interesting. At a large scale, try to spend as much time as possible in the west of the country, not too far away from the Red Sea. This is where the mountains of the country are, which makes the landscape less monotoneous and more interesting. If you don’t come to Saudi Arabia in the deepest winter, this will be the only region with bearable temperatures anyway.

Central and east Saudi Arabia are much more monotoneous, but have some nice sand dunes at certain places. For example in the Rub al-Khali close to Oman or south east of Buraidah. Check a satellite image and look for the vast reddish patches, that is were the nice sand is.

Interesting individual places include Hegra/Maddain Saleh, the Prophet’s mosque in Medinah and the Edge of the World northeast of Riyadh.

Check out our Google Route Map for more sights, more detailed information about these sights and recommended routes and roads!

20. General Experience

All in all, Saudi Arabia was an amazing experience I really don't want to miss. One of the most exciting countries I ever visited, also simply because I really did not know much about it before. It's really exciting to experience this very different, but also extremely hospitable culture.

But still, after we have crossed Saudi Arabia for about 1.5 months, we were also very tired of it. The distances are huge and while the landscape changes more than one might think, it still changes very slowly and you'll cycle for days to get from one place to the other. Cycling 16 days from Riyadh to Ibri (Oman) was a huge challenge, especially mentally, but also physically and after that we were kind of broken and we cycled Oman and the UAE more because we kind of "had" to (now that we were here) than because we wanted to. It took us several weeks to mentally recover and being able to truly enjoy cycling again.

In chapter 19 in our Podcast Episode 26 we draw an overall conclusion about our time in Saudi Arabia (in German).

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