Saudi Gazette report

TABUK — Some people consider traveling by land a pleasure while others find it a complete torture. A single trip will show you which one it is.



Whatever the trip might turn out to be, you will find along the road isolated villages and poor services and a lack of interest to develop the rural areas. This is part of the sufferings of the inhabitants living along the Sahel Road running parallel to the Red Sea coast, from Tabuk in the north to the mountains of Abha in the south.



A reporter from Al-Riyadh daily newspaper traveled by this road to find out.



Start of the journey



The journey took off from Tabuk toward the western coast passing through Dhiba region. The moment you are out of this small town, you will immediately sense an enormous deterioration in services in the stations along the road and also in the nearby villages. This is in contrast to major towns and cities which boast of their civilized facade.



The civilization begins to fade out the moment you leave the gates of the town. It is as if the development was limited only to the major towns and cities.



There are a number of villages and hamlets scattered between Dhiba, Al-Wajh and Umluj. Each of the three small towns is separated from one another by a distance of about 200 kilometers. The only sign of development in these villages is that they are along the highway. They do have electricity posts but municipal, health and social services barely exist. There are no services for the motorists along the highway. The gas stations are old, few and far between. The mosques are all deserted and make you wonder: Just who is responsible?



City of lights



When Umluj we left behind after crossing a distance of 460 kilometers, the boundaries of Yanbu city became clear from the welcoming billboards erected by the Ministry of Transport.



A few more kilometers on the road and the agony starts. There is a sudden detour leading to a single-lane road which is congested by trucks and cars. There are also many unattended camels roaming freely on the road toward the industrial city of Yanbu.



This is a city of lights which make its nights look like day. The city is bustling with life. There are a number of factories and oil companies along either side of the road. The quandary of the traveler here stems from traffic bottlenecks. There are a lot of traffic lights and no flyovers to ease the traffic jams. Restaurants along the road are substandard. There is a clear lack of health supervision by the local municipality.



Although there are many hotels and furnished apartments, they are not sufficient to meet the rising demand. When the road opens up toward Jeddah, it becomes spacious with three lanes. This is the sector of the road linking Yanbu with Jeddah. Although it is about 400 km long, it does not have gas stations or motels.



When the road brings you closer to Jeddah, 1000 km away from Tabuk, you will immediately note large scale development projects. There is the Haramain Express Train project whose tracks take the traveler to a number of crossings along the road from north to south. There is also the airport expansion project and the works under way on bridges and underpasses that make Jeddah difficult to cross.



Southern Road



When you get out of Jeddah toward the south, the road will take you through a number of regions whose villages are also severely underdeveloped. From Yalamlam Miqat (where pilgrims coming from the south put on their ihrams) the road again turns into a single-lane pathway. There are also a number of wandering camels that put the lives of motorists at risk. There are no services for the travelers until you arrive at Al-Laith which has a complex of various services at its entrance. The complex is usually overcrowded.



You head south from Al-Laith and you will not find any services along the road. The restaurants and toilets are not clean. There are no automobile service stations. There are many intersections along the road between Mahayil Asir and Abha which is a single lane. You pass through the Al-Shaar mountain road project on which work has been "progressing" for more than 30 years.



This Sahel road, extending from Tabuk in the north to Abha in the south, is pitiful and must be developed to keep pace with the overall development in the Kingdom.