Slow Saudi

You arrive on the west coast and continue on to AlUla, where you are met and taken to your hotel.

The rest of the day is open. AlUla is a sandstone valley that was farmed and settled for thousands of years because it has water, and that sat on the incense road running north out of southern Arabia; the sites are all within a short drive, so nothing needs to be rushed.

Hegra is the largest surviving Nabataean city after Petra and the first site in Saudi Arabia on the UNESCO World Heritage List. More than 110 tombs are cut into sandstone outcrops standing on open desert floor, the facades carved straight into the rock.

Entry is by guided tour only, with an AlUla Rawi, moving between the tomb clusters by vehicle; daily numbers are capped and the booking is made before you travel. The reconstruction of Hinat, whose burial was excavated in 2008, is shown at the visitor centre. Back at the hotel by the middle of the afternoon.

Dadan was the capital of the Dadanite and Lihyanite kingdoms, which controlled the oasis and the trade through it for centuries before the Nabataeans reached Hegra. The tombs are cut almost 50 metres up the cliff face as a row of square openings, two of them guarded by carved lions. From the valley floor the scale only registers once you notice how small the people below them look.

Then Jabal Ikmah, a narrow canyon whose walls on both sides carry hundreds of pre-Arabic inscriptions in Dadanitic, Thamudic, Minaic and Nabataean script. They record names, dedications and offerings rather than proclamations. The canyon is short and mostly level, the inscriptions are close to the path, and there is no ticket.

The day starts late. Elephant Rock, known in Arabic as Jabal AlFil, is a 52-metre sandstone outcrop weathered into the shape of an elephant with its trunk to the ground, standing alone on open sand about twenty minutes from the old town. Sunken seating is cut into the sand around the base and the stone turns deep red as the light goes.

Afterwards, AlUla Old Town, a labyrinth of mud-brick houses built from the 12th century on the incense and pilgrim routes, walled with fourteen gates and overlooked by a fort of around the 10th century standing 45 metres above it. The restored lane of shops and restaurants comes alive after three in the afternoon and runs late, which makes it the one place in the valley with a proper evening.

No fixed programme. If the calendar has something on, Maraya is worth the drive: a concert hall in the Ashar valley twenty minutes from the centre of AlUla, clad entirely in mirrors so the cliffs continue across its face and the building nearly disappears. It holds the record as the largest mirrored building in the world.

Otherwise the day is yours, with the car and driver on call. Sharaan Nature Reserve runs its experiences in the cooler months, and red-necked ostriches, Arabian ibex, Idmi gazelles and rock hyraxes are among the wildlife there.

A last morning in AlUla, then you travel on to Madinah and are taken to your hotel.

Hotels around the Prophet's Mosque are the usual choice for visitors whose time is built around daily prayers; for a calmer stay the guidance is to visit the central areas outside peak prayer times and major seasons. The evening is free.

Madinah is a city of orchards and volcanic plains in the Hejaz, one of the two holiest cities in Islam, and open to visitors of any faith. Access to the sacred areas at its centre, including Al Masjid an Nabawi, is for Muslims only; Makkah is different and is closed to non-Muslims entirely.

The day covers the historic neighbourhoods, the date farms, the museums, Uhud mountain and the old lava fields that make the ground here unlike anywhere else in the Hejaz. Muslim visitors wanting Al Rawdah Al Sharifah need a permit, booked in advance through Nusuk.

Madinah sits on the Haramain high-speed line, so the leg west is done by train rather than by air. You are taken to the station, and met again on arrival in Jeddah.

The afternoon is free. Jeddah is the most relaxed of the big Saudi cities and the seafront is the obvious first walk.

Jeddah has been the sea gateway to Makkah since the 7th century, and the pilgrim and Indian Ocean trade paid for Al-Balad, its old merchant quarter, on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2014. The buildings are the signature: coral-stone tower houses faced in roshan, the carved wooden bay windows.

A good part of the quarter is propped and being restored building by building, so it is a working site rather than a finished one. The rest of the day is open.

The morning is free depending on your flight time.

You are collected from the hotel and taken to the airport for your departure.