As Saudi Arabia swelters in scorching desolate tract temperatures, a few are escaping to the “City of Fog” — a mountainous oasis of cool wherein heat apparel is wanted even in summer time season. Sitting with buddies on a picnic blanket, beneathneath mild rain and a thick, swirling mist in Al-Namas, Abdullah Al-Enizi wears a body-hotter over his conventional white gowns to protect towards the chill.
The retreat, 2,800 metres (9,2 hundred feet) above sea degree in Saudi Arabia’s rugged south, is in stark evaluation to different elements of the vast, in large part desolate tract u . s . a . wherein summer time season warmth of as much as 50 levels Celsius (122 levels Fahrenheit) is an annual challenge. At Al-Namas, humid monsoon climate maintains temperatures beneathneath 30 levels Celsius, losing as little as 15 levels Celsius at night, as fog blocks out the solar over verdant hills.
“It’s forty six levels in Riyadh and most effective 20 right here, it is 26 levels lower,” says Al-Enizi at the vacation vacation spot, approximately 850 km (530 miles) southwest of the Saudi capital. “We’re escaping the warmth. Here, it is cool and the rain and fog are right here almost all of the time,” brought the semi-retired Saudi, 45, who drove approximately 12 hours from Riyadh.
Around his institution of buddies, households experience the breeze as their kids run round withinside the sparkling air, instead of being cooped up of their air-conditioned homes as is traditional someplace else withinside the u . s . a .. Clusters of holidaymakers in raincoats and woolly hats sip Arabic espresso and crowd beneathneath umbrellas, whilst kites flutter withinside the wind.
“Before we came, we packed all our iciness things!” says Nouf, who did now no longer need to present her surname, whilst doing up her daughter’s coat. Tourist government have constructed a “fog road” for hikers and cyclists traversing a excessive summit that overlooks the mist-shrouded mountains. Khalaf Al-Juheiri travelled to Al-Namas together along with his spouse and kids from Tabuk, in Saudi Arabia’s north, to experience the “cool climate”.
“We certainly pass over this climate while the temperature is going over forty levels in summer time season” in Tabuk, stated the 33-year-vintage civil servant, masking his head towards the rain. In 2020, a observe posted with the aid of using the Science Advances mag confirmed that the Gulf area had the freshest and maximum humid weather at the planet. Because of worldwide warming, a few Gulf towns should come to be uninhabitable earlier than the give up of this century, specialists say. Thanks to its altitude and robust winds, Al-Namas escapes the worst of the growing warmth, says Hassan Abdullah, a Jordan-primarily based totally respectable from the WASM climate generation company.
It has come to be a prized vacation spot at a time while Saudi government, trying to find new earnings streams aside from oil, are closely selling home and worldwide tourism. The “Visit Saudi” merchandising is in complete swing simply 3 years after visitor visas had been first made to be had for overseas traffic in 2019. As aircraft fares surge after the pandemic, Saudi households spent eighty billion riyals (approximately 21 billion euros) on home tour final year, a 30 percentage growth from 2019, ministry of tourism figures show.
“Summer is the height visitor season, going from May to October,” says Abdullah Al-Shahri, a hotelier at Al-Namas, wherein iciness temperatures now and again plunge to 0 levels. At the pinnacle of a hill that overlooks the inexperienced valley, Mushabab Al-Omari takes withinside the view, sitting subsequent to his spouse. “I’ve been right here almost 3 months,” says the retiree, “and I’m equipped to live some other 4 or 5 months if the climate remains like this.”
