Tuwaiq Escarpment, Route 80, Riyadh-Taif Road. December 2014
[from FB post: December 19,2014]
Also I visited the Tuwaiq Escarpment on the Jeddah-Riyadh road. After you drop down off the Riyadh Plateau and look back, you would swear you are in Arizona. Amazing views and largely unknown! Thanks to AM for being patient enough to drive me out there!
When being a Google Earth fan pays off
On a visit to Riyadh, while hanging out with AM, I told him I wanted to make a short trip outside of the city. In a testament to what a great guy he is, he agreed to drive out of the city to a place neither of us had visited on my "hunch" that it would look great. I was so glad he agreed! Not many friends would go along with such a pointless gesture, but Saudi hospitality can be simply amazing!
I noticed on Google Earth/Google Maps that the terrain changed dramatically just outside of Riyadh heading west. It looked like the main highway, Route 80, passed right through it, so I wanted to have a first-hand look. Riyadh sits on a plateau next to an old "wadi" that passes through the birthplace of the House of Saud, Diriyah. Riyadh is mostly just flat. However, take Route 80 west and in a short distance the land drops off sharply to the red desert below. Only then it becomes clear that Riyadh is actually on a plateau. The edge of it is called the "Tuwaiq Escarpment". The road drops through a notch dynamited into the stone in a long, straight descent. At the bottom, AM pulled off onto a service road and we drove back toward the cliffs. In the late afternoon sun, the place looked amazing. Good, but unsurfaced roads ran right up to the cliffs. Clearly, we were not the only people who came here to enjoy the view.
I told AM that if this place were in the USA it would be a national park - he smiled indulgently. As true friends are wont to do, he was trying to make me happy as his guest even if he was having a huge, internal eye-roll. Honestly, I didn't care if he was not impressed - I was. For me, it was a "great discovery" about Riyadh that I had never heard of. Upon returning to the room, I looked up more information online. In fact, northwest of the city was another more impressive section of the Escarpment with a viewpoint called "Edge of the World". In a huge irony, that place had been popularized (and named) by US military staff and other expats over the years. Boon travel companion, AQ, visited Edge of the World while working with the US military and said "Matthew, you would love it." Unfortunately, I only saw his photos and never got to visit. At the time of my visits to Riyadh, one needed a 4WD to get there and my friends all had normal cars. With the rapid development of the Saudi tourist sector, I am sure that dirt track will soon be a surfaced road (hopefully done with low-impact to the area).
Another thing amazed me about this experience. The escarpment, clearly an incredibly stunning geographic feature, continued for miles just outside of the capital city, yet no Saudi I met really knew about it nor cared. They DID, however, wax poetic about "Thumamah", a section of the desert just beyond the airport. Riyadh citizens and visitors would go there in droves to sit on carpets under traditional tents, drink Arabic coffee [see: coffee and dates], and eat plump local dates long into the night when the weather permitted. I passed through Thumamah once - I didn't get it. Not the great sandy desert, but low rocky hills with scrub brush, that was Thumamah. I actually declined several invitations for a "night in Thumamah" with Riyadh friends over the years. My desert walks [see: desert walks] in Abha were through an area just like Thumamah. I could not see the attraction at all.
Once again the question of how much culture determines our sense of beauty and wonder comes into play. Culture defines "fun and enjoyment" as well. Maybe the Tuwaiq Escarpment will never be anything more than an interesting geological oddity that foreigners enjoy outside of Riyadh? And maybe Thumamah will continue to be on the "must do" list of any visitor to Riyadh.
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