A great time to visit the Middle East!
 

I have just come back from a fascinating, wonderful, bucket-list tour of Iraq in my trusty Hilux Surf, something I have wanted to do for many years.

I see a lot of people planning to do overland trips in Asia at the moment, and with Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, India, Burma and basically all of SE Asia closed (for overland entry), I think these trips are not going to happen this year. More worryingly, I think that key countries such as Turkmenistan, China and Burma could easily remain closed for a few more years. That said, you can currently get as far east as Pakistan, which in my opinion is the most worthwhile country in the region (actually, the planet), but that is a dead end, unless you want to test the new security status quo in Afghanistan (my intel is that the south is now relatively safe).

However, the situation in the Middle East is the opposite to closed-down Asia; it has never been so open to visitors. There are covid restrictions (vaccination, quarantine, testing etc.), but there is no single country except perhaps Yemen which is closed to overlanders. In recent years, due to the Syrian civil war and demise of some key ferry routes, the region has slipped off the overlanding radar, but I would say, for those with a sense of adventure, it is very much back on the radar.

So I'll give a bit of a run-down based on research and experience:

Turkey - open and the same great place as ever. I entered Turkey several times in the last few weeks and have never been asked for any vaccination or test. Life goes on there as normal. The currency has also crashed, making it much cheaper than usual.

Iran - open as usual with a PCR test. Same procedure as before with visas, same difficulties for American / British / Canadian passport holders. The currency is worthless and you almost can't spend your money.

Iraq - since March 2021, for the first time since at least the 1980s, Iraq issues tourist visas to individual, independent travellers - only at international airports and some land border crossings (though not with Turkey). The country is safe and calm and you will be one of the first tourists to see this place in a generation.

Jordan - open as usual.

Syria - open, by arrangement with a travel agent. You may enter from either Jordan or Lebanon. Borders with Turkey and Iraq are closed to civilians. Damascus and parts of the coast are safe; your travel agent will be able to tell you exactly where it is possible to go. Transiting from Jordan to Lebanon or vsa-versa is safe.

Lebanon - open. There is a (very) expensive ferry running twice a week from Tripoli to Tasucu (Mersin) in Turkey. Note that older (without a DPF) diesel vehicles are proihibited from entering the country.

Israel - open as usual.

On the Arabian peninsula, Saudi, UAE, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait are all open. The long awaited border crossing between Oman and Saudi has recently opened. If you really wanted to see Yemen, I think it can be arranged, but it's probably not the best time.

So, while the long overland routes across Asia are closed, perhaps have a think about the Middle East.

Good luck

EO

Sweet, thanks for the comprehensive overview. I have been looking into visiting these countries.

Quick question, maybe you have an info - I have read reports that the ferry from Bandar Abbas to Dubai is currently not taking tourists. Do you know anything about this?

Cheers,
Benjamin

As someone who spent time in both Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the past few months, I feel that I need to add some comments to this thread, as its not entirely accurate, in my opinion.

Calling Iraq safe and calm is rather inaccurate. Compared to what it was like during the American or ISIS occupation, its certainly far better than it was at any time in the last two decades. However, I have to question what part of the country you visited if you felt it was safe. While ISIS was largely removed from power, they continue to launch strikes several times a week, mostly at night. People are being killed often. Its absolutely not safe at night, particularly in the north (Mosul, and many parts of western Iraqi-Kurdistan). As for southern Iraq, there's a lot of political tension, and unless you are fluent in Arabic, you'd have a very difficult time getting past the huge number of military/militia checkpoints that exist throughout the country.

I'm not saying don't go to Iraq, but definitely do not go there thinking its "safe and calm". While the odds of being harmed are relatively low, they are not zero. This isn't Jordan.

Saudi Arabia is definitely open to tourists for the first time, in most people's lifetime. But the country is not entirely ready for tourism. There's a lot of ignorance, confusion and basic lack of understanding of how tourism works. Most places that I went didn't even understand how to read a foreign passport, and still have no clue what a tourist visa looks like. I had one guy staring at my Sudanese visa from over a year ago, demanding to know why it was expired, because he thought it was my Saudi visa. And to add to that there seems to be fear or concern that tourists are going to either cause problems or get hurt. There were so many places that I visited where I either had some random minder following me about scolding me for doing anything at all, or outright refusing to let me do something like following a clearly labeled hiking trail (Hegra & Al Waha crater).

Absolutely go, but be prepared for some friction.

I am not sure at present - there is up to date experience / info on the Overlanding Middle East FB group. My understanding is that it is currently RORO only, i.e. you cannot go on the vessel with your vehicle, but that might have changed. Certainly there are vessels lcarrying cargo on this route.

EO

Nice, which parts of Iraq were you in?

Things like safety are quite personal, according to one's risk aversoty and confidence, and ability to look at things objectively rather than thinking 'what if...'. In my experience Iraq was safe and calm. I drove from Basra up to Karbala, Hillah, Najaf, Diwaniyah, Nasiriyah, Chibayish, Qurna, Amarah, Kut, Baghdad, Samarra, Tikrit, Mosul, Zakho and into Turkey.

There are areas which are not safe, for example parts of Diyala, the western desert regions of Nineveh, the Hirmal mountains, but the police will keep you out of these regions. Typically these places are away from the highway, and attacks target the police / army. If you are saying Mosul city is unsafe, I strongly disagree. I spent three days there walking around the city day and night. All local poeple who I asked said it was now safe, and it felt that way. I am not sure about Hatra, I had an offer to go there ($200 for the escort) but chose not to, partly for safety. You won't get there without local connections.

Not my experience. I speak no Arabic. Very nearly all checkpoints were friendly. They can be aggravating if you are in a hurry (don't be in a hurry in Iraq), but I always got through. The only troublesome checkpoint I had was just outside Baghdad on the road to Ctesiphon where I was refused entry and had to take a small road through the fields to reach.

I stand by saying Iraq was safe and calm - in my experience. It is a place that requires a sense of adventure, it's not Switzerland, and there are some no-go areas, but rather like Pakistan, the police will keep you out of them. No areas have zero risk of being harmed. Driving anywhere in the Middle East is already a risky activity.

I've not been to Saudi, but what you describe sounds exactly like the priveleged view of someone visiting a country that has just opened to the outside world. That is an amazing travel experience for me. Be glad it is not 'ready for tourism'. If you want 5 star service, English speaking waiters and cold beer, try an all-inclusive resort in Alanya.

The forum provides an easy way to quote posts, yet you opted to ignore that and break quoting. Why?

I'm not going to manually piece apart your post, other than to say that you are entitled to your opinion, but your experiences do not match mine, and your response strongly implies that anyone who doesn't match your views is clueless.

A mixture of cluelessness and laziness. I have mended my ways.

If you have had different experiences in Iraq which lead you to think the country is still unsafe, it would be valuable to post this. But you give no details of when and where you were in Iraq. If it's just a difference of opinion in what constitutes 'safe' based on something other than direct experience, then of course you are entitled to that opinion, but that is not of great help to others.

For example, parts of South America where petty / violent street crime if rife and targeted towards foreigners, I would regard as not being safe. I have been the target of several (unsuccessful) robbery attempts in South America, but I don't discourage people from going there (though I tell them Asia is way more interesting!). Iraq was safe for me because I never once, for any single moment thought I was the target of anyone's bad intentions, and locals told me it was safe (in most areas). Of course, bad things can happen there, but in my opinion, the danger of being in the wrong place at the wrong time is just an inescapable part of life.

I assume a certain level of adventurousness in people here (and state that in my initial post), and your experience of, what to me sound like very minor annoyances in Saudi, (which are all very common in Iraq) seem to be more in line with what an adventure should be; not the easy, safe tourist experience which you can have in, say, certain parts of Turkey.

EO

Hello, all. I have just spent almost three months backpacking around Saudi Arabia. While I do agree with the point about officials not understanding how to interpret passports (I can't tell you how many times my old Mauritania visa from 2017 has been mistaken for my passport page), I would say that many parts of the country are ready for tourists, or at least are trying their darndest to be.

Al Ula is the best example. They have completely renovated and organized the place to cater to tourists. There are visitor's centers. If you don't have a private tour organized you must book one of the goverment-operated group tours; unfortunately this informaton was not even available at their official website, and I ended up having to wait days for a tour of Hegra as they were all booked (this was Christmas Day). So there's something that's not entirely "ready for tourists" and should be improved upon.

Unfortunatly I was unable to visit many museums, as several cities are doing a complete overhaul of their regional museums and are therefore currently closed. This was the case when I visited Tabuk, Tayma, Al Ula, Hail, and Jeddah (the House Museum, not the National Museum).

Jeddah and Riyadh and also trying their best to cater to tourists. I saw many groups of Western tourists with local guides walking around these cities. They have workshops and events geared towards tourists and liberal young Saudis. They had traditional dancing in front of the famous Nassif House in Jeddah when I was there.

There is a lot of information about Jeddah's historic El Balad neighborhood and there are colorful tourists maps available, and several rennovation projects are underway.

There is also an official government website, visitsaudi.com, which is chalk-full of tourists information (though not much practical information, hotels, transportation, etc.).

Another thing I'd like to mention is that Saudi has a really big camping culture. It's practically the national passtime. This means that, unlike every other country I've ever been to, you are basically free to camp anywhere you like that isn't private property, and it's seen as completely normal by Saudi standards. I just spent a week camping along the southern Red Sea coast, no problems at all, lots of facilities (showers, toilets, huts you can camp underneath for free).

In short, I would say KSA is much more accomodating to tourists than many countries I've been to, and the people here are some of the nicest and most generous I've ever encountered. They should definitely meet their 2030 goal of increasing tourism. The country is very much used to foreigners (foreign workers), just not foreign tourists.

So what land borders can be used in Saudi? And what's the visa process like?

The visa was all online and very quick and painless. After about 10 minutes I got an email with my visa attached.

As far as I know all of KSA's land borders (except Yemen) are open. As for sea borders, I recently took the ferry from Egypt to KSA (see the report I just posted), and there is supposed to be a ferry between Port Sudan and Jeddah which I may take next week.

In my experience, it wasn't officials that didn't know how to interpret passports, it was everyone working in hotels. They seemed to love to look for any random visa that happened to have Arabic on it, and decide that must be the one for their country (it never was). The only officials that I encountered (outside the airport) were at police checkpoints where they either didn't even care about looking at my passport, or glanced at it briefly, and returned it (without making any effort to find a visa).

I believe that they instituted the overhaul of the Hegra "tour" system immediately after the new year. I was able to purchase the requisite group tour in early January via the website.

That said, I found much of the tourist infrastructure in and around Al Ula to be extremely frustrating. The Hegra tour was a massive wasted opportunity. The minders literally scolded anyone who dared to step even a foot off the official route. We're visiting these massive stone monolith tombs, and I merely wanted to see them from all sides (without touching or entering them), yet was scolded repeatedly by minders. Also, they had official hiking trails (with professional signs), yet when I attempted to walk one of them, someone scolded me and ordered me to get on the bus. The downtown & old town area was also a huge mess. They literally closed off one of the two main roads through town to convert it into a pedestrian mall, which forced all traffic onto a single road, which was always severely congested. But the worst part is that they also blocked off the only parking area, and instituted a completely undocumented (at least in English) parking shuttle bus system, which meant that it was impossible to easily visit anything in the area, as it required parking 3+ km away. When I attempted to ask police for details on the shuttle, they either couldn't speak enough English to understand my question, or knew nothing about the shuttle beyond "park near Kudu, ride shuttle", which was useless information.

The Harrat viewpoint was one of the rare examples of getting it right. Ample parking, really great facilities, and ample English fluent staff.

Perversely, the Nation Museum was closed the one day that I attempted to visit. Apparently they were filming something there at the time.

Agreed, Al-Balad was a great area to explore.

While I agree its got lots of info, its not well maintained. Much of it was outdated when I looked at it.

The people are indeed very friendly & welcoming. Also something as basic and fundamental as road signs remain very inconsistent in terms of using western numbers or even English. A basic speed limit sign was more often than not, only in the local number system, but something in both western & local, and then very rarely, only in western. That was minor, and its not hard to learn the local numbers. But large information signs only in Arabic is a pretty big issue. There were so many times where there were huge overhead signs only in Arabic, reporting I don't know what, because they were only in Arabic. If some information is so important that it needs to be posted over the roadway, then it should be important enough to include an English version.

I'm just not convinced that the government has a good idea of how to do tourism when so many different pieces of infrastructure are broken, poorly planned & unavailable.

netllama,

I cannot comment on many of the issues you had as I do not drive and only got around via hitchhiking and using public transport. For Al Ula's Old Town, for example, I hitchhiked directly from the main town and asked to be let off right in front of the Old Town, potential parking/shuttle crisis averted.

I also was a bit let down by Madain Saleh, though in my experience the guides don't really keep much track of you-- I stopped to use the toilet and when I came out my group had left me behind.

It seemed like we didn't really see much on the Hegra tour, just the main site, the Lonely Castle, and a few other tombs. Most of the time seemed to be dedicated to taking pictures, and the guide didn't seem very informative. I think a private tour would have been better.

I suspect that they really wanted to keep track of everyone, but weren't doing all that great of a job at it. The bus departed without me as well while I was using the restroom. That's when I noticed the hiking trail literally just past the facility, and the bathroom attendant scolded me for wandering in that direction. I was tempted to ignore them and continue, but as a guest in a country, I generally try to follow the rules.

The Hegra guides were fairly useless, and couldn't answer any questions. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised that the guides were all female, as seeing employed women was relatively rare. Not that I didn't see any elsewhere, but the gender ratio is is still heavily in favor of men.

From what I've read, before the pandemic (and any "vision 2030" plans taking effect), Hegra was basically completely open, with no restrictions or access controls whatsoever. Anyone could just show up and drive around, wander around and go wherever they pleased. While I can understand the desire to protect the site (especially if they want to drive a lot of tourism in the area), I would have much preferred the old system. I could have easily spent a full day there, if I had the freedom to move about as I wished. Instead I ran out of officially permitted activity after ~2 hours.

I had the same (easy) experience getting a tourist visa. Although for anyone who does acquire one, make sure to carry a hard copy of it with you for the duration of your time in KSA. Every hotel demanded to see it at check-in, and both immigration & emigration officials also requested it.

Its a bit disappointing that this seemingly critical document couldn't be added as a sticker to my passport when I entered the country.

I don’t know whether this is applicable to your situation, but I’ve been known to tape or staple a loose, printed-off-the-internet visa into my passport. No one has ever objected to this, including my own State Department (when submitting an old passport for renewal).