Of all the unforgettable places I have seen in KSA, Medain Saleh is the most beautiful. Many people know of Petra in Jordan, the ancient capital of the Nabataean tribes, the "rose red city half as old as time". But few outside Saudi Arabia know that Petra has a complex of sister cities, Medain Saleh, or by its Arabic name "Hijr". You can see more about Hijr here.
The left photo below shows the entrance to the offering place and the other places where the Nabataeans worshipped their many gods. The entrance is through a narrow gorge. The right picture shows a typical tomb-rock with a carved facade. There are about 130 of these around Medain Saleh.
The desert around Medain Saleh is beautiful. It reminds me of Arizona, or perhaps the Monument Valley in the USA. The dominant colours are the red of the rocks and the blue of the sky, and the shapes are spectacular. Here is a bowling-pin shaped hole in the rocks.
There was something distinctly Dali-esque about the landscape here. I kept thinking about his desert drawings, with elephants and heads and the melting time. Perhaps you can see why: here is the Mammoth Rock. There were other similar rocks. Notice the size of people vs. the size of the rock):
We saw many abandoned villages on the way, and this is one of them. They are built from mud, so the houses have the same beautiful red colouring as the surrounding desert, and the green date palms provide a pleasant contrast and shade. This place is called Khaybar Village. It used to be a Jewish settlement once upon a time, long long ago.
Far to the south of Jeddah we found another abandoned village in another stunning setting: it was at a foot of a mountain of marble, in a gorge, by a stream, wrapped in an oasis of palms and banana trees. It was inhabited by baboons. We called it the Marble Village:
I loved the straight lines and the sharp angles of the houses.
The abandoned Moses Village:
We saw much desert, many mountains, but also there was the amazing Red Sea. Here we stopped for a cup of tea at the beach at Rabigh, on the way home from one of the trips. Of course, swimming was not always an option for me: unless we were on a private beach, it would have been indecent. On diving boats it was just as indecent, but nobody was there to arrest me.
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Silvija Seres, 12 April 2002