The rising sun's rays slowly flood the two-millennia-old red sandstone steps ascending toward the heavens. One by one, each tier of the façade begins to change colour, bringing the features of the Tomb of Lihyan, son of Kuza, into focus. Three cavetto cornices cascade down the front, meeting the pin-straight pilasters crowned with iconic Nabatean horned capitals – inspiration for countless Corinthian capitals across the Greco-Roman world. Perched at the apex of the Hellenic pediment, just above the entrance, is an eagle (now headless) with its wings spread wide, a symbol associated with the Nabatean god Dushara.
“If you look beneath the eagle, you will see a rough line where the work stopped,” explains my tour guide, Abdur Razzak, who looks to be around 30 and is wearing a white thobe so pristine I can't find a single crease. “We know that Lihyan is mentioned in the Nabatean inscriptions as a general in the army, and in A.D. 106, when the Romans invaded, perhaps Lihyan participated in the war and got killed. Maybe this is the reason he never finished his own tomb.”
The fact that the tomb's façade is unfinished does nothing to diminish the formidable majesty of what the locals call Qasr al-Farid, or the Lonely Castle, for the way it stands alone in the barren, harsh desert of the Valley of AlUla, a vast region in northwestern Saudi Arabia rich with archaeological wonders.
I can't quite believe I am finally here, after waiting for years. Like the rest of the world's nearly two billion Muslims, I have a special relationship with Saudi Arabia, home of Islam's two holiest cities. I performed the last hajj before the global pandemic, alongside 2.5 million fellow pilgrims. I also used to live in the Kingdom, and authored a guide to Saudi Arabia in September 2019, months before the country announced a brand-new simplified tourism visa and opened its doors to international tourists for the first time in its 90-year history.
By the time of my last visit, in 2019, Saudi women had been granted the right to drive for the first time and no longer needed a male guardian to leave the house; unmarried foreign men and women were allowed to check into a hotel room together; and the rules forcing businesses to close their doors during the five daily prayers were relaxed. This was all forbidden in the past under Saudi Arabia's ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam. Even the fearsome mutawa – the religious police tasked with enforcing these rules – were conspicuous by their absence. These new freedoms stem from the Kingdom's Vision 2030, a drive to diversify Saudi Arabia's oil-dependent economy and gradually update age-old norms. As a result, I found myself travelling through a country in the midst of a cultural and industrial revolution. I explored stretches of unspoiled Red Sea coastline, swam in waters alive with virgin coral, and viewed ancient rock art from 5,500 BC as new visitor paths were being laid. But while I did visit the region of AlUla, and the modern town of the same name, I wasn't able to see the historic Nabatean sites, which remained closed to all visitors.
I first set eyes on the Lonely Castle on the cover of a book about Saudi Arabia's archaeological wonders in a Jeddah bookshop back in 2005, when I was living in the Kingdom and working as an English teacher. The image had been taken from the sky, magnifying the tomb's solitude within the dramatic desert landscape. I was awestruck, but in a kingdom with a history of aggressively destroying religious monuments deemed idolatrous, I doubted that a site full of pagan tombs would ever become open to visitors.
I soon learned that the Lonely Castle was located in Madain Salih, an ancient Nabatean city and Saudi Arabia's very first UNESCO World Heritage Site. A friend confirmed that it was indeed permanently closed to the public. When I asked why, I was told not only that it was a pagan site but also that the Prophet himself had forbidden us from visiting it.
Was this true? I ask Abdur. “Yes, it is sahih” – authentic, he replies. Abdur is part of the new breed of tour guides called rawis, modelled on traditional storytellers. As he tells me the story of the Quranic people of Thamud, who betrayed the prophet Salih and incurred God's wrath, he becomes visibly animated, pointing out different rocky formations linked to the narrative. As we clamber into our green vintage Land Rover to make our way to Jabal al Ahmar, the second site on the five-stop tour, he explains, “When the Prophet passed through the cursed area, he told people, ‘Never come to this place!’ That's why a lot of people were afraid to come here.”
The idea of this place being forbidden is an ancient one among Muslims. When the famous 14th-century Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta came through here with the Syrian hajj caravan, nobody in his party drank from the local wells, because in the tradition the Prophet hadn't. Although he was impressed by the construction of the tombs, Ibn Battuta believed they were the homes of the people of Thamud and that the place was indeed cursed. This association with the Quranic story and the curse is probably why the Saudi government changed the name from Madain Salih to Hegra, based on the city's name in antiquity, Al Hijr. Abdur remembers spending time in the surrounding area with his grandfather, cooking on an open fire while the family picnicked nearby.
“So what's changed?” I ask as the wheels of the 4x4 kick up plumes of dust along the new dirt track. The temperature on my phone reads 82 degrees and climbing; in the hour we have been out, I have seen only one other living thing, a low-flying crow. “Well, we don't know if it happened here or not,” says Abdur. “Also, the fact that these are tombs, not houses, and they were built around the time of the Prophet Isa, not Salih, who came before him, tells us this is probably not where the people of Thamud lived.”
Hegra was the second city of the Nabateans, who also built Petra, their capital more than 300 miles to the northwest, in modern-day Jordan. Hegra sits along an ancient incense route in a protected plain of huge sandstone outcroppings that have been sculpted into dramatic shapes over the course of millions of years. In its heyday, between the first century BC and second century AD, the city was a thriving cosmopolitan hub, an identity still reflected in the decorations found on its tombs.
At Hegra's Jabal al Ahmar and Jabal al Banat, immense sandstone formations with several impressive tombs carved into them, Abdur points out Roman rosettes, griffins, urns, lions, sphinxes, and even a snake-headed woman he claims is a primitive Arabian Medusa. He highlights other design features from ancient cultures like the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Phoenicians. There are about 111 decorated tombs in Hegra, many of which face inward to the site where the city and its grand bazaars once stood.
“It was like a kind of ancient world trade centre!” Abdur exclaims. Today it is just a barren plain.
Our last stop is the highest outcropping at Hegra, Jabal Ithlib. Here at the entrance, just like at Petra, there is a siq – a narrow, naturally formed passage – where numerous niches, baetyls, and altars have been carved into the walls, each one housing the different idols foreign traders paid homage to. This is also the location of the diwan, a huge chalk-white room with decorative pilasters carved out of the rock, where banquets and other important gatherings took place.
We trample through the sandy cavern of the siq and arrive at a sacrificial stone altar, a large smooth rock nestled in a corner, overlooked by ornate carved niches that once held the most significant idols. It feels surreal to be standing in such an important pagan site in Saudi Arabia without any fear of reprisal.
When I came to research AlUla in 2019, Hegra wasn't the only pagan site I couldn't visit. Other spaces sacred to the mysterious people of Dadan and Lihyan, who predate the Nabateans, were also off-limits. This included Jabal Ikmah, located about 10 miles from Hegra, which has more than 500 ancient inscriptions confirming it as a site of pilgrimage, and the mysterious Lion Tombs, just south of Hegra, believed to have been the final resting place of royals.
During this visit to AlUla, I'm staying at Habitas AlUla, part of a growing number of high-end properties built to usher in this fresh age of tourism. It will soon be joined by an outpost of Janu, the recently launched sister brand to Aman, and Sharaan Desert Resort, designed by the French architect Jean Nouvel. Upon checking in, I take part in a welcome ceremony that involves lighting incense to symbolically burn away my worries; later, I'm sitting in a lounger, watching swallows swoop down to wet their beaks in the blue infinity pool tucked away at the back of our private valley, when I see a bikini in Saudi Arabia for the first time.
In the evening, we head to AlUla's Old Town, which used to be a bustling green oasis along the Syrian hajj caravan route. For centuries, it welcomed weary pilgrims like Ibn Battuta, who stayed there for four days, describing it as a “pleasant village with palm gardens and water springs,” where “trustworthy” people resided. The site was abandoned in the 1980s after almost nine centuries and left to rot. On my last visit, I picked my way through the ruined mud walls and collapsed wood ceilings of the former pilgrim stop, passing goats nibbling piles of rubbish, excited to be walking in the footsteps of the great Ibn Battuta.
A narrow section of the ruins has now been completely transformed into a strip, like the ones you might walk down in Sharm el Sheikh's Old Town or Old Dubai. Led by my young host, Sulaiman al-Juwayhil, of the Royal Commission of AlUla, I wander past rebuilt mud dwellings with neat wooden shutters, locally run craft boutiques, and open-air cafés and restaurants filled with women in niqabs and hijabs, chatting away under a starry desert sky. We pass Saudi families, out for an evening stroll, and Southeast Asian tourists; occasionally, we hear the odd American accent. After a while, we stop at a café next to a stall called Sadu AlUla that sells brightly coloured headdresses and tasseled decorations. Our hosts are two young women whom Sulaiman spoke to in a relaxed manner.
As one of the girls brings over our waters, I remark on how surreal this all feels. “Things are changing very quickly,” Sulaiman says. In his late 20s, he is enthusiastic and upbeat. Like Abdur Razzak, my earlier guide, he speaks immaculate English. I explain that only three years ago, I'd parked my car in the desert away from a picnicking couple, and still the man asked me to move, because he felt I was too close to his wife. You didn't argue in those situations; you just moved the car. It hadn't felt unusual at the time. Maybe excessive, but not unusual. “And now look,” I say.
Sulaiman listens, unmoved. We both lived in that Saudi Arabia, so there is nothing bizarre in my little tale. Finishing his cigarette, he leaps up with a bounce. “That was the old Saudi, man!” he says, laughing. “So many things are changing. Believe me, when people realise this, Saudi Arabia will be on everyone's bucket list!”
Because I am a Muslim, it had always been on mine. Now that I have finally glimpsed the country's great pagan secrets, I'm starting to believe it might end up on everyone else's.
All About AlUla
In once insular Saudi Arabia, several multi-trillion-dollar “gigaprojects,” as the government calls them, aim to dramatically transform the country's landscape, culture, and attitudes. These include resorts along the Red Sea; the “future-proof” city of Neom in the northwest; a mix of heritage sites and modern attractions outside Riyadh known as Diriyah; and AlUla, whose development is furthest along. While the restoration and opening of its ancient sites has been international news, the buzz about the area can also be attributed to the arrival of the trailblazing hospitality group Habitas. The brand, which caters to upscale hipsters seeking a wilderness hit (its flagship hotel is in Tulum), has scattered 96 tented light-touch villas across the area's Ashar Valley. The tents, which can be removed without a trace, are decorated with local textiles and have outdoor showers under date-palm thatches; an infinity pool set into rock shimmers like a mirage. Nearby is Caravan by Habitas, a collection of 22 Airstream trailers (and three food trucks) on a lush oasis arranged around tented common areas. While AlUla has been busy cementing its standing as a must-see ancient wonder, it has also been inventing itself as a contemporary art destination with playful installations commissioned for Desert X AlUla, an art biennial imported from Southern California, by creatives such as Lita Albuquerque and Superflex. This fall, Habitas will be joined by Banyan Tree AlUla, the Asian brand best known for tented luxury in the Gulf. Inspired by the nomadic nature of Nabatean culture, the property will offer Bedouin-style canvas villas as well as a signature Banyan Tree spa. Aman will enter the fray too, with a desert camp, a ranch, and a desert resort from Janu, its fledgling sister brand, in the works. Another newcomer is the Sharaan Desert Resort from French architect Jean Nouvel, who earned his stripes in the region with the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the National Museum of Qatar. It will be partially subterranean, with a circular courtyard carved into a sandstone outcropping as well as 40 rooms, 3 villas, and 14 pavilions.
This article appeared in the October 2022 issue of Condé Nast Traveller, and was originally published on Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.