I had never thought of Saudi Arabia as a travel destination. For most of my life, like many New Yorkers, my mental map of the Kingdom was built from headlines and half-knowledge. Then a friend who had been to AlUla sent me a single photograph — a towering sandstone tomb carved directly into a cliff face, golden in the late afternoon light — and something in me shifted completely.

Six weeks later, I was boarding a flight at JFK with a carry-on, a fresh Saudi visa, and absolutely no idea what I was walking into. What unfolded over the next twelve days was one of the most humbling and beautiful experiences of my life.

The Journey Begins

The flight from New York to Medina runs approximately fourteen hours via a connection in Dubai or Riyadh, depending on the airline. I chose a routing through Riyadh — about eleven hours from JFK to King Khalid International, then a short one-hour domestic hop west into Prince Mohammad Bin Abdulaziz Airport in Medina. From there, AlUla is roughly a three-and-a-half-hour drive south along the Hejaz mountains.

I had arranged a private car for the drive down to AlUla, and my driver, Abdullah, became my first real introduction to Saudi hospitality. Within minutes of pulling away from the airport, he had pressed a bag of dates into my hand, asked about my family, and was explaining the geological history of the Hejaz mountains as though we were old friends catching up. He refused to let me pay for roadside coffee. "You are a guest in our country," he said, in a tone that made it clear this was not a nicety — it was a principle.

Arriving in AlUla

The city reveals itself gradually. You drive through the modern outskirts — tidy roundabouts, new hotels, date palm groves — and then the landscape becomes something else entirely. The old town of AlUla is a mud-brick labyrinth built into a canyon, inhabited for over two thousand years and only abandoned in the 1980s. When you first step into it at dusk, the silence is so complete you can hear your own heartbeat.

I visited Hegra on my second morning, arriving just after sunrise. The tour is guided and takes about two hours on foot. The scale of the tombs is difficult to communicate in photographs — standing at the base of one, looking up at facades fifty feet tall decorated with carved eagles and Nabataean inscriptions, I felt simultaneously very small and very lucky to be alive at a moment when such a place was open to visitors.

Hospitality That Redefines the Word

Travel writers reach for the word "hospitality" too readily. In AlUla, I had to retire the word entirely and find new language. What I experienced was something closer to a moral code — a deep, structural conviction that the comfort and honour of the guest comes before almost anything else.

At my riad-style guesthouse, the owner, Um Khalid, woke at 5am every morning to prepare an Arabic breakfast of fresh khubz flatbread, labneh, honey from local hives, eggs scrambled with dried tomatoes, and the most intensely floral cardamom coffee I have ever tasted. When I tried to leave a tip, she looked genuinely confused. "You honour us by being here," she said. "That is enough."

What I Didn't Expect

I didn't expect the humour. Saudis, particularly in AlUla where tourism has brought an easygoing multicultural energy, are genuinely, unexpectedly funny. My guide on the Elephant Rock hike — a young man from Riyadh named Turki who had moved to AlUla to work in the tourism boom — spent half the walk trading jokes, asking me to rate New York pizza versus bread from his grandmother's kitchen, and explaining with great seriousness why Formula E racing in the desert was going to surpass Formula 1 within five years.

I didn't expect how safe I would feel, walking alone through the old town at night, sitting alone at a restaurant, asking strangers for directions. Saudi Arabia is undergoing a genuine social transformation, and AlUla — designed and invested in specifically as an international destination — feels like the laboratory where that transformation is most visible and most intentional.

Practical Notes for the Trip

Saudi visas for US citizens are now straightforward to obtain online through the official portal — a standard tourist e-visa takes 24 to 72 hours and is valid for 90 days. AlUla's airport, Prince Abdul Majeed bin Abdulaziz, now receives direct international flights, making the old Medina-then-drive routing optional for some travellers. The best time to visit is October through March, when temperatures drop to a comfortable 15–25°C. Summer is genuinely punishing.

Currency is the Saudi Riyal (SAR). Credit cards are accepted everywhere in AlUla's tourist infrastructure, though carry some cash for the old town markets and local vendors. Dress respectfully — shoulders and knees covered — and you will have zero difficulties.

The Last Morning

On my final morning I drove back to the canyon for sunrise. No one else was there. The light came in low and pink, catching the carved faces of the old mud-brick houses, and a rooster somewhere was announcing the day to absolutely no one in particular. I had a thermos of cardamom coffee that Um Khalid had pressed into my hands "for the road, you have a long journey." I stood there for a long time thinking about what it means to be welcomed somewhere — truly welcomed, not as a customer, not as a tourist, but as a person worth the trouble.

AlUla is not a secret anymore. It is, intentionally and ambitiously, becoming one of the great travel destinations of the next decade. But it hasn't yet lost the quality that makes it extraordinary: the sense that the people here are genuinely, almost structurally incapable of letting you feel like a stranger.

Go before the crowds arrive. Go and let yourself be surprised. And when someone offers you coffee and dates — and they will — accept without hesitation, sit down, and let the conversation last as long as it wants to.