AlUla

Hegra, Dadan and the Old Town on booked AlUla tour slots

Two full days cover AlUla's essentials, Hegra on the first and Dadan with the Old Town on the second; four leave time for the Harrat viewpoint, Maraya and the canyon hikes. Almost every site runs on booked tour slots through Experience AlUla, so fix those times first and fit the driving around them.

• Day one, Hegra: the Nabataean necropolis lies 22 km up the valley, and you can only enter it with an official tour. Buses leave from the Winter Park Visitor Center, a 5 km drive from the Old Town, for the Hegra visitor centre some 16 km further on. The standard day tour takes around three hours and stops at the main tombs, including Qasr al-Farid, the solitary 23 m facade known as the Lonely Castle. It also reaches Jabal Ithlib, where a 40 m corridor between high rocks leads to the Diwan hall. Photographers often find it rushed; the vintage Land Rover tour and the night tour move at a different pace.
• Day two, Dadan and the Old Town: a two-hour tour pairs Dadan, capital of the Lihyanites, with the inscriptions of Jabal Ikmah. Dadan's lion tombs are so fragile that you view them through fixed binoculars from about 170 m. Afterwards follow the free Dadan heritage trail through date plantations and old farm ruins to the Old Town, a warren of more than 1000 mud-brick houses whose last family moved out in 1983.
• Days three and four: drive about 20 minutes west to the Harrat viewpoint above the valley, catch an event at Maraya, and join a Hegra nature walk or the geology hike.

Book winter weekends well ahead, rooms included: the town has few mid-range hotels, and the resorts fill in the cool season. Overnight stays inside Hegra are not permitted.

Flights come from Riyadh and Jeddah, and the road from Medina takes about three hours.

AlUla's October-to-April season and how summer changes tours

AlUla's season runs from October to April, with warm afternoons, cold nights and the festival calendar in full swing. From May to September average highs reach 41°C in June and 43°C in July, tours move to early morning and evening, some stop altogether, and resort prices fall far below the winter peak.

January averages 20°C by day but only 6°C after dark, so a night tour of Hegra or an evening of stargazing calls for a real jacket.

Winter is also festival time. Winter at Tantora revives an old celebration of the start of the 40-day winter growing season, named after a sundial in the Old Town that farmers used to read the seasons; the first modern edition opened in December 2018. In 2026 the AlUla Skies Festival celebrates the night sky, and the November listings include balloon flights and a Leonid meteor shower evening at Jabal Ikmah. The Hegra geology hike runs on Saturdays between 24 October and 12 December.

Flights thin out in the hot months too. On the summer timetable Saudia flies from Riyadh four times a week and from Jeddah three times, and Qatar Airways suspends its Doha service for the whole of May, so check schedules before you fix dates.

Resort restaurants versus the cheap Yemeni places of AlUla's New Town

AlUla's restaurants come in two kinds. Resort and Old Town kitchens such as Somewhere, Tama, Saffron and Maraya Social are priced for visitors, while the New Town, 2 km south of the Old Town, has the cheap Yemeni, shawarma and rice-and-lamb places where residents eat. Book resort tables ahead for weekend evenings.

Somewhere sits among the palms of a working oasis farm on the Oasis Fringe. Tama, at Habitas, buys from nearby farms and is one of the most vegan-friendly kitchens in the valley. Saffron at Banyan Tree is a Thai restaurant whose cooks grow their own herbs in a small garden by the door.

On top of the mirrored concert hall, Maraya Social serves rooftop dinners with a view across the canyon, and local citrus turns up on its plates as an AlUla orange gel.

In the New Town the bill is a fraction of the resort one.

The heritage sites carry their own etiquette. The ancient inscriptions are protected, and the only carving visitors are allowed to do is in the Jabal Ikmah workshop, where you cut your name in Nabataean letters into a stone to take home. The small castle above the Old Town can only be visited on a tour booked through the Incense Road.