Al Ahsa Escape

Meet our guide in the morning at 9 am. We will take the train to Al-Hofuf which is the main city of Al-Ahsa a region in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. Al-Ahsa is the largest oasis in the world with an area of around 85.4 km2 (33.0 sq mi), and more than 2.5 million palm trees that are fed from a huge underground aquifer which allows agriculture all year round in a region that is otherwise desert. Al-Ahsa also hosts an ancient secret: the Greek geographer Strabo described an ancient Arab kingdom whose capital Gerrha had "fancy tools made out of gold and silver, such as the family gold, right triangles, and their drinking glass, let alone their large homes which have their doors, walls, roofs filled with colours, gold, silver, and holy stones". Until today this site has not been found by archaeologists but one of the candidates is the modern city of Al-Hofuf where we will start our exploration of Al-Ahsa. Lunch in the tour. There we will visit the Ibrahim Fort and its mosque, then the Jebel Qarah, a limestone outcrop with caves and canyons that offers overlooking views of the huge palm tree cultivations. We will finish this first day in Al-Ahsa at the historical mosque of Jawatha. Dinner and overnight in Al-Hofuf.

Breakfast at the hotel. Today we will explore the desert of Al-Ahsa, starting with a stunning viewpoint on one of the lakes located just a few kilometres east of Al-Hofuf that reveal the vast water resources of the grounds of Al-Ahsa. This special one is called the Yellow Lake because of the colour of the surrounding dunes. Lunch en route. This landscape made of flat grounds rich with water in between dunes is typical of the Eastern Province and is called sabkha. They are particularly impressive 500 kilometres to the south in the vastest sand dune desert in the world called the Rub’ Al-Khali. After Yellow Lake, we will go for a special drive through those dunes and sabkhas. In the afternoon we will drive back to Riyadh around 18h. End of our trip.