Rijal Alma & Soudah viewpoint

Rijal Alma

We have time today to explore the sights west of Abha before flying out to Jeddah in the afternoon.  My calculations suggested that we would have some buffer time to return the car and get to our flight if we left after 0800.

After a breakfast of oats, rusk and cheese (again), we left the hotel around 0815.

It took only about 15 mins to get to the lookout where we would have a spectacular view of the Soudah mountain area but it was on the wrong side of the road.

Instead, we continued to our next destination, as we could more easily call at the lookout on our return journey.  The road from the viewpoint took us down a series of treacherous hairpins to the valley below.  From the maps later, we counted 26 hairpins and E estimated that we descended from 2500m to 1500m.

Arriving at Rijal Alma Museum around 0915, the façade was poorly illuminated due to the direction of the morning sun.  We paid our entry fee to go “into” the museum but it was largely to walk around the alleys and stairs between the restored buildings, rather than to enter specific buildings.

We also went a little beyond the restored areas where we could see plenty more unrestored buildings waiting for a new lease of life.

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Soudah viewpoint

We left after about an hour.  E had fears that the car may struggle uphill but it was actually easier than going downhill in a runaway automatic which required intermittent braking.

We took a stop at the mosque on the way up as the site provided a good view of the mountainous territory.  It was another 10 min up to the viewpoint which we had missed earlier in the morning.

It was around 1050 when we got to the viewpoint where could see the stack of hairpin turns that we had done going down and returning up.  Here, we took the chance to repack and clear the car for its impending return to Enterprise.

There are cable cars operating on the Soudah mountain area but we didn’t go in search for them, despite having about 3h spare.

Instead, we followed various brown signs which indicated points of interest to visitors.  This included the Abu Sarrah Palace hotel and a couple of small museums of very limited interest.  We didn’t actually enter any of these but took a passing glance as part of our explorations to kill time.

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We returned to Abha and stopped for our first-ever lunch break this trip, at McDonald’s on the way to the airport.  The woman workers were dressed in black complete with full face veil.  The burgers were nicely assembled and didn’t have that mangled look that I’m used to elsewhere.

Flying to Jeddah

We returned the car at 1400 instead of the 1530 time we had booked for, but the agreement stated 1200.

Over the five days we had done 1100km, which was more than the 1000km allowed.  Presumably, they would just charge us for the extra day, a couple of hours and/or extra kilometres as we had exceeded the daily allowance based on 5 days.

There was lots of confusion at the car return.  They couldn’t locate the details for the rental as it had come from Gizan.  After about 30 mins, they had everything sorted and dropped us off to the airport.

We later realised that they hadn’t collected a payment from us at the return, nor taken our card details at pick-up or the online booking process.  [Edit:  We contacted them later on in the trip to settle the bill.  The process for speeding violations is tied to every visitor’s entry record and we couldn’t risk a similar process limiting E’s exit from Saudi Arabia at the end.]

We spent perhaps 90 mins in the airport lounge together as E had his own access.  Our Saudia A330 departed 10 mins earlier than the 1630 departure time and got landed in Jeddah an hour later, some 25 mins before its scheduled arrival.