Riyadh & AlUla

You are met at the airport and driven to your hotel. Riyadh is the country's main air hub, so it is the usual arrival point whether or not it is the reason for the trip.

Distances inside the city are large and it is built for driving, so your vehicle and driver stay with you for the whole of the Riyadh leg. Nothing is scheduled for the rest of the day.

The National Museum of Saudi Arabia first, inside the King Abdulaziz Historical Centre. The halls run in order - geology, pre-Islamic Arabia, the life of the Prophet, the successive Saudi states, unification - so the whole span can be walked in one visit without doubling back. There are lockers at the entrance, because some halls restrict entry with large bags.

Then Al Masmak, a short distance away in the old centre. Four watchtowers, thick clay walls and a single studded door: this was a garrison building, not an ornamental palace. The tip of a spear thrown in the 1902 battle is still lodged in the gate. Both sites sit in the same quarter, which makes them one half-day rather than two outings.

About twenty minutes from central Riyadh, At-Turaif was the seat of the Emirate of Diriyah, which ran from 1727 to 1818, and has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 2010. Thick mud-brick walls, stepped parapets and triangular openings cut high for light and air - the most complete Najdi architecture at this scale anywhere. It has been restored as a museum quarter, so you walk the streets rather than a perimeter fence. Wadi Hanifa runs directly below.

In the afternoon you are driven to the airport for the flight north to AlUla, and met again on arrival.

Hegra is the largest conserved Nabataean site south of Petra and the first place in Saudi Arabia inscribed on the World Heritage List. More than 110 tombs are cut into sandstone outcrops scattered across the desert floor, their facades carved straight into the rock, dating from the 1st century BC to the 1st century AD. The site was occupied from before the 1st millennium BCE and became the Nabataeans' southern capital on the incense road running north.

Access is by guided tour with an AlUla Rawi, one of the local storyteller-guides, moving between the tomb clusters by vehicle. Daily numbers are capped, so the tour is booked before you travel. At the Hegra Visitor Centre there is the reconstruction of Hinat, a Nabataean woman excavated from one of the tombs in 2008.

Late afternoon in AlUla Old Town, a labyrinth of mud-brick houses built from the 12th century, walled with fourteen gates and overlooked by a fort of around the 10th century, 45 metres above. It is busiest after 3pm, with shops open to about 11pm.

Dadan in the morning: the capital of the Dadanite and Lihyanite kingdoms, whose tombs sit almost 50 metres up the cliff face as square openings cut in a line across the rock, two of them guarded by carved lions. Excavation is ongoing and a good deal of the site is still unread.

Then Jabal Ikmah, the canyon nearby whose walls carry more than 300 carved inscriptions in Dadanitic, Thamudic, Minaic and Nabataean scripts - the largest concentration of Dadanitic and Lihyanite inscriptions anywhere. It was added to UNESCO's Memory of the World Register, which covers documentary heritage and is a different list from the World Heritage List. There is no ticket and the canyon is short and mostly level.

The day ends at Elephant Rock, a 52-metre sandstone outcrop weathered into the shape of an elephant with its trunk to the ground. Known in Arabic as Jabal AlFil, it turns deep red as the light drops, and there are sunken seating areas cut into the sand around the base.

The morning is free, and the transfer for your onward flight is timed to your departure.

If your departure is late in the day, the Old Town lane is the easiest place to spend the last hours without committing to a drive.