On the ground travel in Saudi Arabia

[Scarlett]

Hello folks.
I have six days in Saudi planned over the new years break. I’m visiting Madinah, King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) and Jeddah. I fly into MED and out of JED, so that part is sorted.

Initially I have planned to catch the Haramain fast train between Madinah and KAEC and then take it again continuing south to Jeddah, but when going to book tickets last night their luggage restrictions gave me pause. They only allow one piece of (main suitcase sized) luggage and it doesn’t appear possible to even pay for extra. Instead, officially, extra luggage has to be sent via Saudi Post. Now this is not an Aus Post equivalent and does appear to be a reasonable cost to send extra luggage which would be delivered somewhere between 5-24 hours after the train arrival. It introduces an element of uncertainty of not knowing exactly when you get your luggage back as well as being annoying as you have to make an extra journey to the arrival train station or other ‘delivery’ site to collect your luggage from Saudi Post.

TripAdvisor and Reddit blogs are a mix of people saying yes the train station staff are strict with the luggage rules; no one checked anything; or suggesting to pay the porters to take your (extra) luggage through and put it on the train for you.

Has anyone travelled on the Haramain fast train and care to add their comments on what they saw regarding luggage?

A larger suitcase or even a second one can be easily overlooked as maybe the other family member isn’t with the person etc etc… my extra luggage is a golf bag which stands out no matter how I might try to manoeuvre it (I usually carry it like most golf bags, slung from a shoulder).

My potential new and firming plan will be to take a one way car rental and just drive between the places I want to visit. The cost doesn’t appear prohibitive for the one-way hire (~AUD100) and removes the need to use taxis/Careem/Uber to get to/from airports, hotels and train stations. But does come with the extra costs of parking. Also means I don’t get to travel on the Haramain.

There are a couple of threads on here (for which, thank you to those posters!) about driving in Saudi and I have no issues if I need to do that. It appears straight forward enough but takes much longer.

Any thoughts?

 

[RooFlyer]

As to your issue, being conservative, I wouldn't rely on getting the bag through. You can't travel with carry-on as your 'main' bag and stuff a whole lot more into the checked, golf bag (if the golf bag fits their measurements)?

If its any help, I'm using Enterprise when I'm there in early February. Ignore their depot 'location map' - its not accurate. I'm picking up in Madinah train station a day after travelling up from Jeddah on the train, and driving north, returning same. I've driven in Saudi before and the roads are excellent - but beware crazy manoeuvres. EG with drive on the right, stopped at a traffic light, car on LH 'straight ahead' lane will cut across right to turn the corner.

I'm staying at the Clarion hotel at JED - if you can buy points during one of their sales, its fantastic value. And the Pullman at Madinah.

Looking forward to hearing how you go while there, and the visa process.
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[Scarlett]

Thanks @RooFlyer
Unfortunately the golf bag would be considered oversize. I’m going to take the conservative route and just hire a car for six days. My options for the car (collecting New Years Day) are Budget or local company Key (local to Saudi Arabia but a decent sized player in their market). Suspect I’ll go with the latter at half the cost!

For Madinah I’ve booked the airport Millenium Hotel, due to the planned 2305 hours scheduled arrival at MED. I just need to cross my fingers and hope for a decent schedule change to pick a better (earlier arrival) flight! Thanks for the tip on the Clarion. I’ll look at Jeddah shortly.

I got the eVisa over the long weekend. You have to start by creating an account, including verification of the email address the visa will be sent to. The website is a little clunky (direct link from Smarttraveller) and they require a photo of less than 100Kb, so I had to do some serious cropping. Worked okay after a bit of messing about with their (unnecessary) post-upload cropping. Cost was SAR300 for Australians plus compulsory (health?) insurance of SAR90. Paid with Bankwest Mastercard no probs. I got an application number and then the approved eVisa about five minutes later.

The visa is multi-entry, for up to 90 days per stay. Which is fortunate as I have to re-enter Saudi at Dammam at the end of the trip, for flights home.

One interesting point for the eVisa is that there is a list of about ten dot points you have to agree to before submitting. Normal stuff like not insulting the royals, abiding by the local laws around decency, alcohol etc. But the second last one says non-muslims are not allowed to enter the holy cities of Madinah or Mecca. This is the old rule and is now relaxed for Madinah (I think just not allowed into Haram Madinah - the central mosque), but interesting that they haven’t updated the visa rule.