The Road to Riyad

I've been travelling on business to Riyadh a lot recently. Normally, I fly but this time I decided to drive.

Despite (or maybe because) of the fact that the Saudia flights are subsidised by the government, flying "goat class" is not very pleasant - and, of course, you can't get a drink. So this time, as I said, I decided to drive.

On the outskirts of the city where I live, large areas of desert have been cleared and levelled by bulldozer, presumably, in preperation for developement. (How long it will take to develop these huge areas is another matter.) Unfortunately, the dust and sand has been loosened by the bulldozers and when it's windy, as it was this morning, you get a dust storm. The visibility is comparable to being in thick fog back home.

The sand was also being whipped accross the road, literally sand-blasting the outside of the car. While cars in Saudi tend to suffer a lot less from rust, the sun, sand and dust more than make up for it.

When I was finally past the dust storm I realized that the surrounding desert was suprisingly green! We've had a particularly wet winter here and that has resulted in a tremendous amount of green stuff growing. Unfortunately, it will all die away when the summer heat comes.

Actually, the land I was driving through isn't really desert - it's not the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter. Geographers would probably call it semi-desert. People, and animals, can survive in such places. In fact, on my drive today, I saw more camels than I've ever seen before. I saw at least half-a-dozen herds, some of which had hundreds of animals in them!

As I approached Riyadh, I started to get low on petrol. I had passed several petrol stations on the way, but now that I needed one, they seemed to be all on the other side of the road! Eventually, I gave up and did a U-turn at a junction and stopped at the petrol station I came too. If you are familiar with Saudi, or have read my earlier posts, you will probably have guessed that the petrol station was just closing for prayer (grrr).

So I continued on my way, after another U-turn, and arrived at my destination with the fuel gauge just touching empty. Ho, hum!