Beginning of the end

Back to Jeddah

Today we return the car after 11 days back to Medina Station and take the train to Jeddah where we finish our trip together.  This is the beginning of the end.  This rental, our second in Saudi, had taken us 3119 km.

We commenced the day with one of our rare hotel breakfasts before leaving at 1000 to re-fill the car.  The return went OK, even though I had put a light scratch on one hubcap.

We had to wait for the office staff on his lunchbreak to return before we could finalise the paperwork.  Just as well, we had some spare time before our train to Jeddah at 1330.

The train ride was uneventful, topping a maximum of 300 km/h.  We arrived at Jeddah at 1511 where we relaxed till 1600 to collect our third rental car, booked for 1630.  We timed it perfectly such that we drove off at the booked time, after doing the checks with the friendly garage team consisting of an Indian, a Pakistani and a Nepali!  They speak to each other in a pidgin language.

This car rental is only for 24h, to explore Jeddah and the surrounding areas.  We drove it kinda across the road to our hotel, the Warwick, which required a detour due to the Saudi road layout.

It was worse than that because E didn’t trust Google Maps’ routing which required a U-turn on the north-south, so took us through an alternate route exiting in the easterly direction, which required a major zig-zag through the back streets before finally reaching the hotel.

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Old Jeddah by night

We drove into old Jeddah and parked in one of the several large vacant tracts of land adjoining the old city.

E was careful to mark where the car was parked in that large busy space.  I would never be able to find it otherwise but he has an amazing sense of direction and probably could.

We walked to the Beit Nassif area and did random walks all around and followed some signs.  The various buildings we visited included Beit Al Nawar, Beit Gout and Beit Jokhdar.

At the first, there was some Arabic music playing.  The female vocalist sounded good with a low strong but perhaps slightly strained voice. I confirmed that it was Umm Kulthum and remarked to E that I normally don’t like her as she sounds like she’s being strangled, and that I much prefer Fairuz with her husky voice.

To my surprise, E agreed and it stunned me as to how much we are in agreement with many things and how much we have in common.

I went to the barber and had my beard tidied a little.  It didn’t make much difference.

We had a simple Arabic sandwich dinner around 1945 at the highly-atmospheric Hejaz House at an inflated price.  But it was worth it for the ambience-galore.

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Tonight, there seemed to be a lot of activity, antique or art display, a few limited drinks stalls in the old city tonight.  The authorities do attempt to make the place interesting and lively.

Jeddah’s vacant land

I was extremely curious to understand about the large tracts of empty land where we had parked around old Jeddah.  My first glimpse of it had been at night when it looked like our highway was over the sea or desert.

I googled it and found that it started around October 2021 and is ongoing.  The goal is to get rid of slum neighbourhood which authorities have claimed are a hotbed of drugs and crime (in Saudi?).  On the other hand, NGOs claims of people being displaced with short notice and not being adequately compensated.