As always, our Saudia Airline flight from Riyadh to Medina started with prayer.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the flight attendant said over the intercom. “The text that you are about to hear is a supplication that the prophet Mohammed, peace be upon him, used to pray before travelling.”

Madain Saleh was once a thriving city along an ancient spice trade route (Credit: Marjory Woodfield)

The rest was in Arabic. I listened to the record voice, low and ponderous, as I looked out the small window at the unending desert below. I was travelling with friends to Saudi Arabia’s hidden desert city of Madain Saleh. While many people have heard of Nabatean capital  Petra in Jordan, Madain Saleh, the Nabateans’ second-largest city and a Unesco World Heritage Site, remains relatively unknown. Once a thriving city along the ancient spice route, it played a crucial role in building a trade empire. But today its monumental stone-hewn tombs are some of the last, and best preserved, remains of a lost kingdom.

Its monumental stone-hewn tombs are some of the last, and best preserved, remains of a lost kingdom.

From Medina, we drove four hours to the oasis town of Al Ula, and then continued a little ways further to our hotel in Saudi Arabia’s Hejaz province, 1,043km northwest of Riyadh. Our guide Ahmed met us next morning after breakfast. He was tall, lightly bearded and wore a traditional Arabic thobe (robe) and red ghutra (head scarf). Smiling, he told us that he learned his English in New Zealand.

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