What AlUla Keeps for the Second Day

AlUla is usually done in a day and a half. A flight into the small airport north of town, a timed tour of the Nabataean tombs at Hegra, an hour at Elephant Rock as the sun drops with several dozen other people photographing the same silhouette, and out again on the morning plane. It is a good day and a half. It is also the smallest possible version of the place.

The valley is long, the governorate behind it is very large, and almost everything that separates AlUla from a well-lit archaeological park sits out at the edges: up on the volcanic plateau that walls the west side, out on the open sand to the north-west, and in a canyon almost nobody photographs because the interesting part is text rather than scenery. What follows assumes you have already walked the old town and stood in front of Qasr al-Farid, and asks what to do with the two days after that.

Why the second day is harder to plan than the first

Day one plans itself, because the tour desk plans it. Day two does not, for three structural reasons worth understanding before you arrive.

First, almost every archaeological site here is ticketed, timed and entered only in the company of a guide — AlUla trains local storytellers, called rawis, and they are genuinely the difference between a wall of scratches and an afternoon you remember. Tickets go through the official AlUla booking platform, and in the winter season the good slots typically go early. Book before you fly, not when you land.

Second, the sites are strung out. Dadan sits roughly eight kilometres north of the old town, Jabal Ikmah a couple of kilometres further on, Hegra around twenty-two kilometres out, and the pinnacle field at AlGharameel considerably beyond that on the Tabuk road. Nothing connects on foot. You want a hire car or a driver, and you want to accept that a straightforward-looking day holds one large site and one small one, not four.

Third, the season governs everything. Winter, roughly November through March, is what AlUla is built around: the festivals, the ballooning, the cycling, the outdoor dining. In high summer many experiences pause outright or shift to dawn-only starts, and open sites become genuinely punishing by late morning. Confirm what is running before you commit to a date; the answer changes by month.

Up onto the volcano

The black wall on the western horizon is Harrat Uwayrid, a basalt lava field sitting several hundred metres above the sandstone valley. It is the single most underused thing in AlUla, and the reason is simply that you cannot get onto it without a four-wheel drive and, sensibly, a guide.

Go anyway. The transition is abrupt and strange — red sandstone, a switchback climb, and then a flat plain of broken black rock with the whole valley laid out below from the escarpment viewpoint. It is colder up there than in town by a noticeable margin, and windier; take a layer even in what feels like a warm afternoon.

The archaeology is the reason to bring a guide rather than just a driver. Scattered across the harrat and the ground around it are mustatils — long, low rectangular stone enclosures, Neolithic, which archaeological surveys have now recorded in the high hundreds across north-west Arabia and which are generally interpreted as ritual rather than domestic. Alongside them are "pendant" burial cairns with stone tails, strung along the lava margins. Unguided, they read as rubble. Guided, they read as a landscape people organised thousands of years before the Nabataeans arrived, which reframes the whole valley.

The Sharaan Nature Reserve occupies the canyons on this western side and is the base for a reintroduction programme — Arabian oryx, Nubian ibex, gazelle. Be realistic about wildlife: this is a young restoration project on very large ground. The Arabian leopard is the long-term ambition of the conservation work here, not an animal anyone is going to show you. Come for the canyon geology and the sense of scale, and treat any oryx as a bonus.

AlGharameel, and the case for staying out after dark

Roughly forty-five minutes north-west of town, the flat sand is interrupted by a field of dark sandstone fins and spires standing more or less vertically out of nothing. AlGharameel is the best sunset in AlUla, and unlike Elephant Rock the crowd is dispersed across a large area rather than stacked behind one viewpoint.

The real argument for it is what happens afterwards. AlUla has invested heavily in its dark skies, and out here, away from the light spill of the valley floor, the difference is obvious rather than marketing. Operators run evening trips with tea, a fire, dinner of some description and often a telescope. Be clear-eyed about what you are buying: this is an organised experience with other guests, not a solo wild camp, and prices vary considerably between operators, so compare before booking.

Two pieces of practical advice. Check the moon phase — a new moon for stars, a full moon if you would rather see the rock formations lit silver, and the week in between for neither. And bring proper warm clothing. Winter nights in the open desert here can fall towards freezing, and the standard visitor mistake is dressing for a mild afternoon.

A canyon that is also a library

Jabal Ikmah is a narrow cleft north of the oasis whose walls carry hundreds of inscriptions in Dadanitic, Thamudic, Minaic, Nabataean and Aramaic. UNESCO added it to its Memory of the World Register in 2023, which is a listing about documents rather than monuments — the right category, because the site is essentially an archive.

It rewards slowness in a way little else in AlUla does. Ask your rawi to show you the difference between a formal, deeply cut dedication commissioned by someone with money and a shallow scratch left by a passing herder, and to point out Dhu Ghabat, the deity named again and again in the Lihyanite dedications. Once you can tell the registers apart, the canyon turns into a conversation across several centuries. Go early: the walls hold shade for much of the morning and the carving reads far better in raking light than at midday.

Pair it with Dadan itself, a few minutes back down the road, where the Lion Tombs are cut high into a red cliff above the palm groves — capital of the Dadanite and then the Lihyanite kingdoms, and older than Hegra by a good margin. Access is by guided tour and not all of the excavated ground, including the rock-cut stairway climbing to the sanctuary at Jabal Umm Daraj, is open at any given time. Confirm rather than assume.

Going back to Hegra on purpose

This is the recommendation most people resist and most people are glad of. The standard Hegra tour is a loop of four stops, heavy on the funerary architecture, and it is over in a couple of hours. A second visit, ideally on a different tour option, buys you the part of the site that is not tombs.

Jabal Ithlib is the outcrop at the eastern end, split by a natural cleft. The Nabataeans put the Diwan here — a rock-cut chamber with benches along three walls, open to the north, used for gatherings — and lined the narrow siq beside it with votive niches. It is the civic and religious quarter rather than the cemetery, and standing in it is where Hegra stops being a set of photographs and starts being a town where people argued about water rights.

While you are there, walk the restored Hejaz Railway station near the site. Ottoman-built, part of the Damascus-to-Medina line that ceased functioning during the First World War, with workshop sheds and rolling stock. It is a twenty-minute stop that adds a whole extra century to a place otherwise fixed in the first.

The long day out

If you have a third day and a car, Tayma is the trip worth making: roughly 230 kilometres north, about two and a half to three hours each way on excellent, near-empty road. Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, spent around a decade here in the sixth century BC, and the town still shows why anyone would bother — Bir Haddaj, a great open well in the centre of town, is enormous, ancient and still worked, and the remains of the town's defensive wall run for kilometres across the plain.

The honest caveat: Tayma is not curated the way AlUla is. Interpretation is thin, some ground is fenced, and the small museum's hours vary, so confirm before setting out. If you want polish, skip it. If you want an ancient oasis town with no tourism apparatus at all, it is the most interesting day in the region.

Two alternatives, both with strings attached. Wadi Disah, a palm-filled canyon with running water, is roughly three hours to the north-west and needs a local four-wheel drive for the canyon floor — a very long day, but a spectacular one. Khaybar, to the south, has a lava field and an oasis with fort ruins and is being developed for visitors in stages; check what is actually accessible before building a day around it.

Hands rather than eyes

The best half-day in AlUla that involves no driving is Madrasat Addeera in AlJadidah, a former girls' school converted into an arts and design centre, where local artisans run sessions in weaving, palm-frond work, pottery and jewellery. Places are limited and often booked out in season, so check the schedule early. It is the obvious answer for a rest day, for travelling teenagers, and for the flat, hot middle of the afternoon.

The valley's contemporary art layer is worth a look on the same logic. Desert X AlUla has placed site-specific sculpture in the desert in alternate winters since 2020, and Wadi AlFann is a valley of permanent large-scale commissions from artists including Manal AlDowayan, Ahmed Mater, Agnes Denes, James Turrell and Michael Heizer, opening in phases. Both are worth confirming rather than assuming: exhibition dates move and phased openings slip.

What goes wrong

Drive times. People plan Hegra, Dadan and a sunset in one afternoon and arrive at each in a rush. Two sites a day is the honest maximum.

Turning up. Most archaeological sites are guided and timed, and walk-ups in the winter season generally fail. Book.

The middle of the day. From late morning to mid-afternoon the light goes flat and the open sites go hot even in winter. Spend it indoors, on a workshop, or at lunch.

Assumptions about the country. There is no alcohol anywhere in the kingdom. Modest dress is expected; an abaya is not required for foreign women, but covered shoulders and knees are the norm. Cards work almost everywhere, though a farm stall may prefer cash, and smaller shops often close briefly around prayer times.

And the classic: leaving the tarmac in a hire saloon. The sand beside these roads is soft and it will hold your car for as long as it takes someone to come and pull it out. If your plan involves the harrat or the pinnacle field, that means a proper four-wheel drive or a driver who does it daily.