Ride the cable cars down the escarpment
The Asir escarpment is the reason the region exists as a destination, and the cable cars are the quickest way to understand it. They drop from the plateau edge down the cliff face, and because the escarpment catches monsoon cloud, what you are looking at is green, terraced and forested rather than desert. Cloud sitting below the cable car is normal here, not a spoiled view.
This is also the thing that makes Abha unlike the rest of the country. The mountains behind the town are the Sarawat range, the ground is farmed in terraces, and the trees are juniper. That climate is the reason Saudis themselves come here in summer, so the season runs backwards to everywhere else on the map.
Walk in Asir National Park
The park has marked trails through juniper forest and the terraced ground the region is farmed on. It is the part of Abha that rewards slowing down: the interest is the landscape itself rather than a single site to tick off. Al-Soudah and the escarpment takes in the high ground, including Al Soudah, which is the highest peak in Saudi Arabia.
Go up to Al Habala
Al Habala Park sits at high altitude on the cliff edge, named for the rope ladders once used to reach the village on the cliff below it. It has its own cable car and is listed by the tourism authority as suited to nature, families and friends. The cliff village itself is the subject of Habala and the hanging village, which gives the site a full day rather than a photo stop.
Spend a day at Rijal Almaa
Rijal Almaa is 45 kilometres from Abha, down the escarpment road, and carries about 700 years of history. The houses are dark basalt laid in courses, several storeys high, with lines of white quartz set into the outer walls to shed rain, stacked so tightly up the mountainside that the village reads as a single building from the valley floor.
The interiors are the surprise. Walls are painted in Al-Qatt Al-Asiri, geometric bands of bright colour applied by the women of the house directly onto the plaster; UNESCO added the practice to its intangible heritage list in 2017. Several houses are open as a museum running to 20 sections of traditional pieces, old manuscripts and farming, building and transport tools, and there is a visitor centre that covers the history of Asir from prehistory to the Saudi era. There is no ticket to enter. Qasabat Al-Owus Tower has the highest view over the valley, and Shaokan mountain above the village is named for the prickly pear that grows on it. The village and the escarpment road are really one experience, which is how the drive should be planned.
Walk the markets and the old quarter
In town, the official destination material points visitors at the local markets, historic landmarks and traditional villages, and that is the shape of Abha markets and the old quarter. It is the one thing on this list that does not involve a mountain road, which makes it a useful half day on arrival or before a flight.
What fits into how long
| Outing | Roughly | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Markets and old quarter | Half a day | Town level: markets and historic landmarks |
| Cable car and escarpment | Half a day | The drop off the plateau edge, and Asir National Park trails |
| Al Habala | Half a day | Cliff-edge park, cable car, the village below |
| Al Soudah | Half a day | The highest peak in Saudi Arabia |
| Rijal Almaa | A full day | Painted stone village 45 km down the escarpment |
Fitting it together
Two or three days is enough for all of the above if the drives are spread out rather than stacked. Where you sleep matters more than usual because everything radiates outward from the town, and where to base yourself in Abha works through that. The wider orientation, including why the season here runs backwards to the rest of the country, is in the first-timer's guide to Abha.
Because summer is the high season in Asir and nowhere else in Saudi Arabia, this region is the natural anchor for a hot-weather trip, which is what Asir in summer is built around. If you want the mountains twice over, Jeddah, Taif and Abha strings the coast and both highland towns together, and the road down to sea level is set out in driving from Abha to Jeddah.