Hegra's Nabataean tombs, Edge of the World, and ancient desert wonders awakening
Saudi Arabia has opened its doors to tourism for the first time in history, and AlUla is the crown jewel — a landscape of extraordinary sandstone monoliths, a 2,000-year-old Nabataean city carved from rock (the sister city to Petra), and sweeping desert vistas. Combined with Riyadh's ancient Diriyah and the dramatic Edge of the World cliffs, this is history's newest and most exciting frontier.
Hegra has virtually identical Nabataean carved rock tombs to Jordan's Petra — but with almost no crowds. In 2023, it received 200,000 visitors vs Petra's 1 million+.
Saudi Arabia only opened for tourism in 2019 — making this a genuinely frontier destination where you're among the first tourists to see extraordinary sites still discovering themselves.
AlUla's sandstone rock formations, sculpted by wind over millennia, create a landscape that's part Utah, part Wadi Rum, and entirely unique — it needs to be seen to be believed.
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