Dubai and the United Arab Emirates have been attracting celebrities and Essex good-timers for two decades; Bahrain’s Grand Prix since 2004 and Qatar’s World Cup in 2022 among other events have enticed sport fans; and Oman has for a while been a hip trip for explorers looking for somewhere a bit more exotic. But now the whole Arabian Peninsula – except Yemen, which is still stuck in civil war, but including Kuwait and driven by change in Saudi Arabia, the whale in the pond – is waking up and opening up. So much so that a single tourist visa for all six Gulf Cooperation Council countries will be available imminently.
This is the perfect moment to come, when everything is suddenly accessible but there are still very few visitor numbers. There are brand new cities of tomorrow, with experimental statement architecture and environmentally friendly infrastructure, world class heritage sites that few have ever even heard of never mind visited, desert camps with Bedouin experiences and dune bashing almost everywhere, mountain trekking in the great ranges of the Hajars of Oman and the Hejaz in the south-west of Saudi Arabia, and scuba diving in the Gulf of Oman and on the unexplored Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. Precious little of all this is set out in mainstream guidebooks, because like the current Lonely Planet’s Oman, UAE & Arabian Peninsula they largely focus on Dubai and Oman, and are miles behind the times.
The most rewarding consequence of any visit is sure to be fresh cultural insights into a part of the world crucial to global stability and yet so misunderstood and so feared in the West. This little article aims to flag some of the basics to enable you to understand more when you are here. Salam.
Who Is Arab?
“Arab” is not a race, and there are many ethnic differences between Arabs. Instead, “Arabic” refers to a language and a culture that pre-dates Islam and gives a common identity to the Arab World. That is usually defined as those 450m people living in or descended from the twenty-two countries of the Arab League. These stretch across North Africa from Morocco to Egypt (plus the Comoros, Djibouti and Somalia), the Levant (the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq) and of course the Arabian Peninsula. The western part of the Arab World is known as the Maghreb and the eastern the Mashriq.
I have lived in Dubai, worked in Riyadh, and travelled most weeks all over Arabia for more than three years. Along with consuming local media, films and books, as well as making local friends – Khaleejis – this has led me to appreciate it rather differently to how it is portrayed in much of the world. Of course, the region is defined by its common boiling hot climate, Islam, oil, and autocratic royal families, although there are many subtle differences between the seven countries here. More than that, this is a region going through rapid change, with nations cautiously liberalising their societies and carefully diversifying their economies even at the same time that rulers have been suppressing dissent and consolidating power.
The picture is complex, and the future is uncertain. But it is this that gives context to visitors who come with open minds. The GCC nations clearly feel their time is coming, and now adventure travellers have the opportunity to get under parts of its skin that have until recently been well and truly hidden under a veil. Marhaba.
It was in the age of the dinosaurs, about 80 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous Period, that the polar icecaps formed, significantly reducing the level of the oceans and drying out the Arabian deserts for the first time. However, the world’s largest peninsula itself was not created until the rifting of the Red Sea, somewhere between 50 and 25 million years ago, cut it off from Africa.
This geography, geology and topography has of course been central to the development, or lack of it, of these lands, where burning summers regularly reach 50°C, though it can be surprisingly cold in the winter, as low as 15°C with snow in the highlands. It goes without saying that by far the best times to visit are the temperate spring and autumn months.
On top of this, a common history, culture and economy has been shaped by two defining moments of human history that occurred 1,300 years apart: the coming of Islam in the seventh century and the discovery of oil in the twentieth.
It was in 570 that the Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him) was born in Mecca, and in 622 that he migrated to Medina in the Hijrah that begot Islam. Following his death in 632, he was succeeded by Abu Bakr, Umar ibn Al Khattab, Uthman ibn Al Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib, a quartet collectively known (at least to Sunnis) as the Rashidun Caliphate, which began entrenching Islam from Iberia to the Indian sub-Continent.
The root of the great rift in Islam, however, is that Shia hold that Mohammed (PBUH) in fact designated the fourth of these caliphs, Ali ibn Abi Talib, as his rightful successor. They therefore believe in the handy concept of imamah, that certain descendants of his extended family have greater spiritual and political authority than other imams over the Muslim community.
These days, Muslims comprise the overwhelming majority of the 90 million people spread across the seven countries on the Peninsula; there are 35m in Saudi Arabia, 33m in Yemen, 10m in UAE, 4.5m in Oman, 4m in Kuwait, 2.5m in Qatar and 1.5m in Bahrain. The majorities of these in most countries are Sunni. However, 75% of Bahrainis are Shia, though the ruling House of Khalifa is Sunni. And as many as 35% of Yemenis are Shia, which is a major factor in the civil war where Shi’ite Houthis have been attacking the Sunni government since 2014.
The region has of course long been ruled by a strictly conservative interpretation of Islam through Sharia Law. That has notoriously controlled the lives of women and criminalised homosexuality, and it is common and always shocking to see men in white thobes trailed by up to four wives, likely to be in black burqas, looking like giant salt and pepper pots. Yet there are clear signs the grip of religious ultra-conservatives is weakening.
You will hear the muezzin calls to prayer morning, noon and night, the soundtrack to any visit, and you will struggle to get a cab on Friday lunchtimes. To have any chance of understanding these societies a basic grasp of the values and festivals of Islam is essential.
The Five Pillars of Islam
- Shahada. Professing the faith that “there is no god but Allah and Mohammed (PBUH) is the messenger of Allah”.
- Salat. Praying at five specified times every day.
- Zakat. Donating at least 2.5% of net income to charity each year.
- Sawm. Abstaining from water, food and intimate relations between sunrise and sunset during Ramadan in the ninth month of the Islamic or Hijri calendar.
- Hajj. Pilgrimaging to Mecca in the twelfth and final month of the Islamic calendar at least once in a lifetime.
Ramadan is of course the most famous Islamic festival, and a cause for sales in the malls and binge eating in the evenings. During the day some shops are closed, and in public you should not drink anything (even in ferocious heat) or eat anything (some restaurants are shut too) and be even more than usually cautious about displays of emotion and flesh. Everything grinds to a halt until an hour or so before sunset when there is gridlock as people race to their homes or restaurants to gorge themselves sick.
However, across the region, these constraints are less rigorously observed or enforced than even two or three years ago. Qatar remains the strictest, but even in Saudi Arabia the five-star hotels will happily continue serving you F&B behind screens, while in the UAE although Emiratis tend to follow the rules they have more or less given up trying to police them across Dubai. Ramadan Kareem.
Ramadan
The precise date of Ramadan is usually confirmed only 48 hours before its start, once the moon has been assessed. It marks the Laylat Al Qadar or “night of power”, the moment Allah sent an angel to the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) to reveal the Qur’an in the year 610, and it is a month of obligatory (fard) fasting (sawm) between sunrise (fajr) and sunset (maghrib).
Traditionally, Muslims were woken very early – about 3am – by a musahrati, traditionally a man wandering the streets shouting, and you can still hear them in some places, though these days they have largely been replaced by alarm clocks. The suhur is basically a very early breakfast, taken before dawn prayers. In the evening, canon salutes signal the setting of the sun, the immediate guzzling of water and the rush to iftar, which is typically a huge meal that in restaurants is normally a vast buffet (accompanied, oddly, by buckets of Vimto).
There are two other major Muslim festivals to be aware of, not least because they are both week-long public holidays when more or less everything shuts down. Eid Al Fitr, the festival of breaking the fast, is straight after Ramadan, and Eid Al Adha, signalling the start of the Hajj season by marking the moment when Ibrahim was willing to sacrifice his son for Allah, comes a couple of months later. Welcome to the year 1446, as 2025 is in the Islamic calendar. Eid Mubarak.
As Islam has shaped these societies for centuries, they have been funded by oil for decades. For thousands of years, local wealth was limited to the camel trains that took spices from India and incense from southern Arabia up east to Mesopotamia and Persia or west to the Levant and the Mediterranean. It is largely the oases and ruins of the major stopping points on these routes that form the great heritage sites open to visitors today. From the mid-eighteenth century, this prosperity was supplemented by the pearling industry around the Arabian Gulf, especially in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar and above all Bahrain. But oil changed everything.
It was struck first in Bahrain in 1932, then Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in 1938, Qatar in 1939, the UAE in 1958, and Oman in 1964. It was discovered in Yemen in 1984 but it has yet to be properly exploited there. It lined the pockets of elites across the Arab world, though little enough dripped onto the hands of the vast majority, who remained terribly poor. In most cases, even the national infrastructure was left to rot while the coffers were looted.
Unlike in most other Middle Eastern and Islamic countries, the rulers on the Arabian Peninsula are hereditary monarchs (with the notable exception of Yemen). Most of these had come to power during the later years of imperial occupation. That had begun in the sixteenth century with the Portuguese in Oman, followed by the Ottomans in Saudi Arabia and North Yemen, and of course Britain in South Yemen, Kuwait, and the Trucial States that are now the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar. Right up to today, they retain all the realities as well as the appearances of power, from royal decrees through to grand palaces, with their portraits displayed prominently in every public building and many private ones too.
These extended families flourished during the largely liberal period of Arab nationalism in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, a time when feminists publicly burned their veils as they did their bras in the West. However, the mood changed after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Although the elites continued to enrich themselves, they now partied abroad while seeking to appease rising religious extremism at home by implementing more and more austere measures, banning pleasure along with sin, and notoriously forcing women to cover their hair and faces. This successfully fended off domestic terrorism, which instead targeted the West, and it is notable that (apart from those involving Houthis at war in Yemen) there have been no major incidents reported on the Arabian Peninsula. This was true even while Al Qaeda was attacking New York (not just Osama bin Laden but also fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia), and when ISIS rose in Iraq and Syria.
The Arab Spring of 2011-2012, across North Africa as well as in the Gulf, was in large part a popular revolt against this kind of hypocrisy and corruption as well as economic stagnation. In the GCC it threatened but ultimately failed to unseat any of the ruling autocrats (though the president of Yemen was felled).
We can now see that the royals learned several lessons from this warning because slowly they began to open their societies and invest in welfare and infrastructure, even while they further tightened their grip on power.
Yemen
The apocryphal Queen Of Sheba is no doubt turning in her grave at what has happened to her country. For the ancient trading hub for aromatics including coffee, frankincense and myrrh, the second largest country on the Arabian Peninsula, has for a decade been the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
After centuries of rule by successive dynasties, this portion of the desert was split in the nineteenth century between the Ottomans in the north and the British in the south, to be reunited only as recently as 1990. In the way of these things, the unified country’s first president, hard man Ali Abdullah Saleh, reigned for twenty-two years until finally resigning in the wake of the Arab Spring.
During the 1980s, Hussein Badreddin al Houthi had founded a Zaidi branch of Shi’ite Islam, officially called Ansar Allah, “Supporters of God”, primarily to oppose Saudi Arabian religious influence in the country. In 2014, these Houthis pounced on the upheaval triggered by the Arab Spring to take Sana’a, the capital, from the Sunni government of Saleh’s successor, empty suit Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi. This plunged Yemen into a civil war that has cost 400,000 lives and displaced 4 million people. For years the north was controlled by the Houthis, funded by Iran, while Sana’a and the south were propped up by the Saudis and the US. When I first moved to the region it was possible to see Houthi rockets being shot down over Riyadh.
By 2022 the Houthis had to all intents and purposes won the war. This had the initial effect of easing tensions in the region. Although a Saudi naval blockade continued, ostensibly to stop Iranian weapons getting through but also inevitably contributing to widespread poverty, the US no longer felt the need to conduct counter-terrorist operations against the fading remnants of Al Qaeda there. It revoked its designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organisation, and switched its regional priority to potential Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. Moreover, an initial Saudi-Yemen ceasefire in the spring of 2022 catalysed a continuing reduction in violence and I myself soon visited the border without fear. After seven years, Saudi-Iranian diplomatic relations were restored in the spring of 2023, since when actual peace talks have continued between all parties.
However, the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 has slammed the brakes on. The Red Sea is one of the most densely packed shipping channels in the world, feeding the Suez Canal, and the Houthis immediately launched missile attacks on vessels it claimed were allied to Israel. This blocked the route at the Gulf of Aden pinch point until the US and UK responded with Operation Prosperity Guardian, attacking Houthi small boats and shooting down their missiles and drones. Sadly, the prospects of peace for Yemen, and travel for visitors, except to the island of Socotra, has receded again.
Tentative government reforms in all but Yemen are now being overtaken by events, starting with a demographic revolution. Populations of young people are ballooning in the GCC, where no country has less than a quarter of its citizens under 25, some have as many as half, and 70% of Saudis are under 30. Recently, several regimes have been passing the baton to younger generations – for example, the leader of the pack, Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, is still in his 30s – and these rulers and citizens are no longer cut off now they are all on the same social media platforms as everyone else in the world. Moreover, with tiny indigenous populations, running these rapidly developing countries now depends heavily on foreign workers, particularly labourers from South Asia and executives from the West. As many as one-third of those in the GCC are migrants.
The biggest disruptor of all is the fact that the oil has gone sour. It is the root of the climate crisis of course, and it is running out, so the Gulf countries that have built their wealth on it now know they have to do something about it. The very fact that an Arab oil producer such as the UAE could host COP28 in 2023 was a landmark statement of awareness, regardless of the diplomatic complexities surrounding the event itself.
Surprisingly – and simply not believed by many foreigners who have not been here – the pace of change is greatest in Saudi Arabia, traditionally the anchor of conservatism. Through his Vision 2030 launched in 2016, MBS, as he is universally known, is overseeing what can reasonably be described as a state-sponsored Islamic reformation, sweeping away the religious police, allowing women not only to uncover and to drive but also set up businesses and fight in the army. The massive Saudi juggernaut is pulling along most of its small neighbours and even the UAE, which has long been a more liberal outlier attracting foreigners, has started going further and faster, recently decriminalising sex outside of marriage and shifting to a Monday-Friday working week.
The record is certainly patchy – for example, homosexuality has been legalised in Bahrain while rainbows have been banned in schools in the UAE – and there is a long way to go from the perspective of Western democratic values. Yet visitors to the region of late rarely leave without a jolt to their preconceptions.
It is said that the simultaneous crackdown on critics and rivals is to prevent these reforms accidentally triggering the kinds of regime change witnessed in countries all around the Middle East; or maybe it is all just a Game of Thrones. Whatever the cause, accusations of imprisoning or murdering opponents, most infamously the courtier and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, has made Mohammed bin Salman toxic in the West, to the extent that tangible social and economic changes across the region have been completely overshadowed.
Yet with their newfound confidence, these countries have started to assert themselves on the world stage for the first time in decades, most showily by splurging on sport, especially football and golf. This has brought them under the critical scrutiny of people not up to date with these social and economic reforms and who are disinclined to give Arabs or Muslims the benefit of the doubt. Hence, the screams of “sportswashing”, made most hysterically during the Qatar World Cup in 2022 when people who struggle to spell Doha became overnight experts on the Kafala System. We must hope that by the Saudi World Cup in 2034 there is more balance.
They are accused of deliberately creating a positive distraction from human rights abuses and other failings they do not want the world to see, though if that is true I must say it is the most counter-productive policy since Brexit since it has had exactly the opposite effect. I have no idea, but it would be surprising if they did not use sport as a tool of soft power given that every other country does. However, what I do know is these are sport-obsessed nations where the culture and entertainment sectors are developing rapidly to build engagement and tourism and to help diversify revenues. I am also aware that Western imperial attitudes die slowly, and it must be hard for them to cede anything to upstarts from the desert. For instance, I feel bad that their football clubs can no longer always jump the queue with the highest bids for players, and I agree this is not how sport should work, but I notice it did not seem to bother them when they were in the boss seat.
The Arab states want respect from the world. They want integration not assimilation, pleading “we are same-same but different”. Their outreach is certainly working among global business and political elites, who now come knocking in droves, and that is helping further realign geopolitics at this turbulent time. As they become stronger, they will inevitably also grow away from historical reliance on the West. Asserting their independence, Saudi Arabia has flirted with China, resisted US pressure from Biden to increase oil flows following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and hosted controversial talks about the future of Ukraine at the start of Trump 2.0, again causing distress to those who prefer the world how it was.
Arabia these days is a collage that looks different close up to far away, and there is truth and fantasies in both perspectives. Everyone has had the chance to voice their view from afar, but now the genuinely curious also have the opportunity to experience it all first hand, much of it for the first time.
The GCC countries are easier than ever to visit, including for women and LGBTQIA2S+. It takes about five minutes to sort visas online, and English is common in the major urban centres while a willing semaphore awaits in most rural areas. Good wifi, credit card machines and British G-type electric sockets are everywhere, alcohol is increasingly available, Arabic coffee and local versions of Levantine foods are photogenic as well as delicious, and you can have sex with whoever you like as long as you don’t do it in public or shout about it from the rooftops (hotels just don’t ask). You simply need to be respectful of a conservative public culture that is different to wherever you come from.
Highlights
I have been pretty much everywhere on this peninsula and just a few of the many things I love include:
- sleeping at the Chedi in Muscat and the Tivoli in Doha
- relaxing at two Six Senses desert resorts (in Musandam and Southern Dunes in Saudi Arabia), and two Anantara resorts (at Qasr Al Sarab and Sir Bani Yas Island, both in the UAE)
- meandering around the three best souqs: Waqif in Doha, Al Balad in Jeddah, and Mubarakiya in Kuwait City
- jumping into the chaos at the Friday goat market at Nizwa in Oman and the afternoon fish market in Kuwait City
- buying Saudi souvenirs: dallah from Souq Al Zall in Riyadh, daggers from Najran, and Al Qatt Al Asiri ceramics from Rijal Alma
- feeling serene at Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat, Al Rahmah Mosque in Jeddah, and Masjid Al Nabawi in Medina
- admiring Shrinathji Krishna Temple in Manama and BAPS Hindu Temple in Abu Dhabi
- bouncing at the Soundstorm Festival, the rave in the desert, outside Riyadh, and relaxing to the chill out beats at Elephant Rock in AlUla, Saudi Arabia
- enjoying performances at the Opera House in Muscat and exhibitions in Maraya in AlUla
- wondering at the Rain Room in Sharjah, the Shadows Travelling On The Sea Of The Day in the desert of Qatar, and the Louvre in Abu Dhabi
- becoming swept along in the ardha traditional sword dance at the Saudi Cup in Riyadh, and keeping an eye on the illegal betting at the Turf Series by the little track in Bahrain
- picnicking at the Polo Gold Cup Final in Dubai
- driving next to camels racing at Shahaniyah in Qatar
- getting caught up in the local crowd’s excitement at the Grand Prix in Jeddah, and of course at the football in the Saudi Pro League, especially at the Al Hilal v Al Nassr Riyadh derby
- goggling at the bull-butting spectacle in Fujairah
- watching turtles burrowing in the sand to lay their eggs on the beach at Ras Al Jinz in Oman
- hiking (and wading) at Wadi Ash Shab and at Wadi Ghul in Oman, and dune bashing on Wahiba Sands in Oman, Sealine Beach in Qatar, and Wadi Nisma in Saudi Arabia
- climbing giant red sand dunes in Rub Al Khali in Saudi Arabia and the UAE
- driving the five-hour ledge route from Al Matabbah to Al Batinah across the Hajar Mountains and through Wadi Bani Awf in Oman
- driving through the Hejaz mountains around Mecca
- driving a race car around the Grand Prix track in Abu Dhabi
- cycling the narrow 50km Al Qudra desert cycle track outside Dubai
- relaxing in the unexpected desert greenlands of Salalah in Oman, and Abha in Saudi Arabia
- strolling the Jeddah Corniche as the sun goes down
- chilling at Nikki beach club in Dubai
- scuba-diving off Khasab in Musandam, and Yanbu and the Farasan Islands in Saudi Arabia
- exploring the Saudi Heritage Sites of AlUla, Diriyah, and Archers’ Hill in Medina, plus the tumbledown fort at Jalan Bani Bu Ali in Oman
- looking up at (and down from) the modern skyscrapers of Downtown Dubai and West Bay in Doha
- breakfasting at Bayt Sharq in Doha, Arabian Tea House in Dubai, and Dar Hamad in Kuwait City
- brunching at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh
- dining at Al Maha in Doha, Bujairi Terrace and Via Riyadh in Riyadh, and Bait Al Luban in Muscat
- drinking at Peaches & Cream in Dubai, Block 338 in Manama, and the Ned in Doha
- smoking shisha at Al Nakheel in Jeddah, and Orange Chameleon on the Palm Jumeirah in Dubai
Despite all this and so much more, I am still caught out by some of the region’s cultural oddities. For starters, indoor smoking is still legal and common. Arabs rank among the most obese people in the world, thanks mostly to heavy foods (machboos, rice and warm bread are everywhere) and limited exercise (the padel tennis courts springing up on every street corner are used mostly by foreigners). Prudishness is endemic to the point that undressing in gym changing rooms is often banned (you are directed to private annexes). And while I understand why there are few urinals (because local men mostly wear thobes, which have to be hiked like dresses), it is beyond me – and I imagine Allah too – why they prefer bum guns to toilet paper and thereby end up leaving even marble and gold leaf bathrooms flooded in dirty water.
Sadly, there is one iconic location I have not been. The Masjid al Haram at Mecca, the most important mosque in the world, remains off limits to non-Muslims. I for one will be there the minute we are allowed. Meanwhile, there are plenty of other places to go and things to see. Yalla.
For detailed reviews of each of the six countries of the Arabian Peninsula that outsiders are able to enter, see: