{"id":19974,"date":"2025-12-15T12:53:36","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T04:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=19974"},"modified":"2025-12-15T12:53:36","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T04:53:36","slug":"how-saudi-arabias-mountains-offer-an-authenticity-rarely-found-elsewhere-in-the-kingdom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=19974","title":{"rendered":"How Saudi Arabia\u2019s mountains offer an authenticity rarely found elsewhere in the kingdom"},"content":{"rendered":"


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From the air, Abha\u2019s mountains emerge as a shock of emerald green rising from a sea of sand.<\/p>\n

Terra firma brings other surprises: a bracing wind that has me grabbing for a jacket \u2013 a piece of clothing all but ignored in other parts of Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n

Indeed, so much of Abha, the capital of the southwestern province of Asir, seems a world away \u2013 and two dozen degrees cooler \u2013 from the scorching desert that dominates Western notions of the kingdom.<\/p>\n

I am here as a tourist \u2013 and Saudi Arabia hopes for many more. The government is spending nearly US$1 trillion to make attractive what, just over a decade ago, was one of the most tourist-averse countries on earth.<\/p>\n

If you have read anything about tourism in Saudi Arabia, you have probably seen mention of Vision 2030. The all-out diversification plan to reduce the kingdom\u2019s reliance on oil includes Neom, the sci-fi-esque desert metropolis with plans for an artificial moon and flying cars, and the Red Sea Project, which intends to turn a 92-island archipelago off the country\u2019s pristine Red Sea coast into a network of 50 luxury hotels and about 1,000 residential units.<\/p>\n

Those two flagship projects were heavily featured during US President Donald Trump<\/span>\u2019s visit to Riyadh in May, which saw Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman \u2013 Vision 2030\u2019s architect \u2013 guide him to a hall with elaborate mock-ups of the finished products.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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From the air, Abha\u2019s mountains emerge as a shock of emerald green rising from a sea of sand. Terra firma brings other surprises: a bracing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[4678,13006,11777,9912,1875,3916,4677],"class_list":["post-19974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-arabias","tag-authenticity","tag-kingdom","tag-mountains","tag-offer","tag-rarely","tag-saudi","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}