Saudi Arabia

The tourist eVisa — or visa on arrival, same eligibility list — is valid a full year with multiple entries and the mandatory medical insurance folded into the fee. Around fifty-odd nationalities qualify (all EU/Schengen, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, China) and the list has been expanding, so the exact count and the 90-day stay rule are the two things worth confirming on visa.visitsaudi.com before you book — sources disagree on whether the 90 days is per visit or cumulative across the year.

The trap is the pilgrimage layer. The tourist visa lets you perform Umrah and travel to any city, but Makkah is closed to non-Muslims entirely, and Hajj needs a separate Nusuk permit. If a trip involves the pilgrimage cities, the rules are different from the ordinary tourist track — see transport below for how that shapes even the train.

The Red Sea coast around Jeddah is warm year-round but humid (around 57% in summer); its diving runs all year, with water dropping only to about 22°C in February. Ramadan reshapes the day wherever you are — street cafés shut through the fasting hours and public eating in daylight is prohibited, though hotels keep discreet daytime dining and evenings come alive. It shifts about eleven days earlier each year; in 2027 it falls roughly mid-February to mid-March.

Relaxed: foreign women need no abaya or headscarf since 2019 — modest, loose clothing covering shoulders to below the knee is the rule for both sexes, stricter only at religious sites. Unmarried couples have been able to share a hotel room since 2019, and women can book and travel alone. Prayer-time closures are no longer legally enforced since the 2021 reform — malls and hotels stay open — but smaller shops, souks and family restaurants still pause 20–30 minutes at each of the five prayers, and Friday midday is quiet.

Not relaxed: alcohol is totally banned (see below), same-sex relationships are illegal, extramarital sex remains an offence, and public displays of affection are prohibited for everyone. Photographing government, military or diplomatic buildings is arrestable, and you should never photograph people — women and children especially — without consent.

Two that are easy to miss. The alcohol ban is total — the single licensed store that opened in Riyadh in 2024 is for non-Muslim diplomats only and has explicitly not been extended to tourists; ignore any report of tourist-zone alcohol, which a Saudi official publicly denied, and note the 2034 World Cup is planned entirely dry. And from 1 November 2025, travellers carrying common prescription medicines — Adderall, Xanax, Tramadol and similar controlled drugs — need advance electronic clearance from the SFDA, which is simple but easily overlooked. (Conduct facts here follow the UK FCDO travel advice.)

The Haramain high-speed railway is the single genuinely fast surface link — 300 km/h from Jeddah up to Madinah via the airport and KAEC. But the catch is structural: the line’s southern terminus is Makkah, which non-Muslims cannot enter, so a non-Muslim tourist rides the Jeddah–airport–Madinah stretch and must not book a Makkah leg. For everything else, domestic flights do the work — the Riyadh–Jeddah corridor is one of the busiest in the region.

Within cities, a car is close to mandatory outside Riyadh. Women driving is fully legal and normal since the 2018 ban lift, and applies to tourists; Uber and Careem are everywhere; and fuel is among the cheapest anywhere — a flat, subsidised ~$0.60 a litre nationwide, which softens the long distances the country forces on you.

AlUla and Hegra — the Nabataean tombs that are Petra’s quieter sister — cannot be visited independently. You book the official Hegra day tour through experiencealula.com: an air-conditioned coach with a licensed rawi guide, from around SAR 95 a person, and it sells out on weekends, so book two or three days ahead in season. It does not close in summer despite the common belief, but October–April is the humane window.

Near Riyadh, Diriyah — the mud-brick UNESCO birthplace of the Saudi state — is self-guided and, for 2026, free to enter from 1 May to 30 September (a day pass applies otherwise; check on arrival). The Edge of the World, the cliff escarpment about 90 km west of the capital, needs no permit but does need a genuine 4×4 for the final unpaved stretch — a sedan will not make it — so most people take a guided 4×4 trip rather than risk it.

Saudi runs roughly 20–30% below the UAE on hotels, dining and transport at comparable quality, and being dry removes an entire budget line — no bar tab, which in Dubai or Doha alone can add $50 a day. But it is mid-to-high-end, not a backpacker destination: hostels are rare outside Riyadh and Jeddah, so most travellers default to hotels, and the fly-and-drive geography adds domestic flights to the bill. VAT is 15%, and the tourist refund launched in 2025 covers physical goods only — not hotels, dining or fuel — so for a normal trip it barely applies.

The frustrations are real: the country is vast and the marquee sights are far apart, so a Riyadh–AlUla–Jeddah loop is a fly-plus-drive project, not a road trip. Public transport barely exists between cities, prayer-time pauses still interrupt the day unpredictably, and outside the big hubs the tourist infrastructure is thin — booking sites revert to Arabic, and English drops off. The best sights being pre-booked-tour-only compounds it: you cannot improvise your way through Hegra.

What surprises people: the two things travellers most dread tend to flip positive. Alcohol-free evenings — corniche walks, mocktail lounges — are widely reported as pleasant rather than a deprivation, and solo female travel comes back easier than expected: no guardian, no headscarf, women-only metro sections, and safety rankings among the highest in the G20.