A Dramatic Return To SAUDI ARABIA ????????

Day 291. 66km (69420kms)

Around midnight I was woken by the frenzied flapping of the fly. As the rain began and the cross pole bowed under the strain I resigned myself to a sleepless night as I attempted to hold everything down. Two hours later the rain clouds had passed and the wind had lowered enough that I ventured out to remove the fly and poles to sleep under the collapsed tent. At 3:30 after I’d finally got back to sleep I was awoken again, this time by the same unwelcome man gesturing into the wind telling me something about a مشكلة / problem. No shit Sherlock! I’ve been handling it! I was furious; the worst of the storm having now past I was certain he wasn’t here to help and now I’d been needlessly woken up again! He vexingly continued squatting beside my tent until I had to bluntly ask him to go away. (Literally ‘can you go away please?’ Not ‘get TF away from me’ ????????‍♀️ still have a long way to go on my assertiveness.)

And so it was in an uncaffeinated, grumpy, sleep-deprived mood that I arrived at the Saudi border. At the first booth I was asked to wait for a car escort and given coffee and a lunch bag while I waited. Once at immigration proper I wasn’t sent ahead of the men as I’ve become very happily accustomed to, but had to wait line! Then a wealthy-looking man was bumped ahead of me. Maybe he was a sheikh or something. At last it was my turn with the squinting man who through the translation help of a fellow traveller and the explanation of my police escort painfully slowly processed my exit from Qatar. It was the bike that appeared to be the confusion which maybe supports the claim of the Saudi guard who told me on the entry to Qatar that I was the first by bike..

The Saudi side was even more confusing as I was asked for my passport at several points in the gale across no-man’s land. I’m sorry to say I did not handle these repeated stops at all gracefully. Once at Saudi immigration I was moved back and forth between booths amongst much confusion regarding Qatari procedures and missing stamps. A resolution found that I was never party to I was stamped in by Saudi immigration and set free into Saudi Arabia once more. I expected a highway patrol car to find me but no such car arrived.

At a small collection of shops I broke the 1000 Emirati dirham note I’d been given, receiving the change in Saudi Rial. With this I bought a meal in a restaurant by pointing at a pictured menu. Led through the male section and into the family area I closed he curtain behind me and sat down on the carpet of a private eating booth.

I shovelled down as much of the steaming hot rice as I could, but I was eager to go. I’d given myself 4 days to cover 400kms to keep a New Year’s Eve commitment and had already lost much time at the border. But the wind was not my friend today. It was becoming clear this distance would be impossible to cover in time with this wind, but an opportunity presented itself in the form of the unfinished Hwy 5 up the coast. If I was allowed, and if the surface was decent, this route would save me a day’s cycling. Otherwise I’d more than likely be spending new year alone in the desert of a country that does not celebrate solar new year. I decided to give it a shot.

Granted access to the unfinished road all I could do now was cross my fingers the surface continued sealed, put my head down, and push into the fierce headwind. I knew I wouldn’t find any services on an unfinished road but I had some food and water. More pressing was finding shelter; at sunset a low range on the horizon provided the best and only opportunity of a little cover. Pushing the bike through the sand I scouted the most sheltered spot I could reasonably push the laden bike to and settled in for the night.

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#saudiarabia #travel #cycling