Al Jahamah
I’m adapting to local time better and woke at 0430, then getting out of bed at 0630. After a breakfast of oats and milk, and cheese on rusk, we departed around 0900 for Abha with two stops planned, namely Al Jahamah historical village and Al Habla viewpoint.
After about 1h40 on the road, we saw a nice collection of old homes around Dhahran Al Janub on our right-hand side. We tried a couple of side roads to attempt a closer view before continuing our journey.
Old village near Dhahran Al Janub.
Around 1300, we reached our first planned stop at Al Jahamah historical village. We seemed to have taken an awfully long time to get here. Google’s estimate of 2h30 journey time had taken about 4h with perhaps a 30 min look around Dhahran Al Janub. I can’t work out what went wrong.
The name of this place, suggested to me, some kind of over-restored touristy place but it was quite the contrary.
It was an awesome collection of mud houses, with a redder hue than the ones back in Najran, with rows of slate spaced evenly along horizontal lines. Some restoration work was in progress and I can imagine some buildings will be over-restored. However, the expanse of the site is such that it will be a while before the entire village will look too fake.
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- Al Jahamah.
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- The mud buildings at Al Jahamah have a redder hue and are interleaved with slate.
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- The mud buildings at Al Jahamah have a redder hue and are interleaved with slate.
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- The mud buildings at Al Jahamah have a redder hue and are interleaved with slate.
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- The mud buildings at Al Jahamah have a redder hue and are interleaved with slate.
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- The mud buildings at Al Jahamah have a redder hue and are interleaved with slate.
Al Habala
We continued to Al Habala viewpoint about an hour away by car. Getting three around 1430, we were disappointed to see the viewpoint and restaurant closed. The view of the canyon was impressive but we couldn’t really get up close for a better look.
We didn’t linger here but continued to Abha, getting to the Ferbion Hotel around 1600.
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- Scenery on the way to Al Habala.
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- Disappointingly, we couldn’t get any closer to the edge at Al Habala.
Quick look around Abha
We ventured out of the hotel around 1700, parking near the giant flagpole. Built on hills, with no straight lines, it’s quite hard to navigate on foot.
Our attempt to get to the old Ottoman Bridge took wrong turns, even with E’s normally expert navigational skills. From there, we walked around some of the old homes in the surrounding area.
The Art Street nearby didn’t look that appealing but perhaps we didn’t locate it correctly. In any case, it wasn’t a priority for us, instead opting to find dinner in the same area.
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- Giant flagpole.
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- Old Ottoman bridge.
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- Old houses in Abha.
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- Old houses in Abha.
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- Old houses in Abha.
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- Houses here are made from rock and may then be plastered over.
After dinner, E wanted to look at a dam. It was very misty and the road appeared closed by the police.
Continuing to Shamsan Historical Castle lookout, we somehow ended up on a different hill called Jebel Akhdar. My navigation or Google Maps had gone completely crazy.
Abha, like Amman, is a sprawling mess over many hills. Driving is a challenge with few straight roads, one-way, u-turns, slip roads and under/overpasses. Miss on turn and you’d have to go a very long way to correct the situation.
We seemed to have been driving back and forth numerous times and doing u-turns going from one place to another, then add a few more times to correct missed turn-offs.
We made it to the Shamsan lookout where we had a good view of Abha by night before returning to the hotel around 2100.
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- View from Shamsan Historical Castle.
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- At Shamsan Historical Castle.
