EXPLORE KSA
SAUDI ARABIA’S NATURAL WONDER JABAL QARA By Mohammed Mirza
The eastern province of the country is replete with nature’s marvels and tales of bygone times. To experience them for ourselves we decided to visit the most conspicuous of them all – Ali Baba’s mysterious caves at Jabal Qara. Whenever I see photos of Petra, I always find myself awestruck by the auburn mountains rather than the rock cut dwellings. I recently came across similarly colored mountains in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and wait, it doesn’t end here. It even has a labyrinth of caves and caverns running through it! Jabal Qara (Cave Mountain) is made up of calcareous sandstone, marl, clay and sedimentary rocks. The intricate cave network consists of long passages, spacious 78 DESTINATION RIYADH MARCH 2015
chambers and exquisite rock formations. To visit Jabal Qara, I traveled over 1,400 kilometers from Jeddah to the palm oasis of Al Ahsa. The region is a major agricultural hub which boasts of over 3 million date palms that produce a half million tons of some of the best dates in the world each year. The mountain, which is home to the cave network, sits at around 20 kilometers from Al Ahsa’s capital, Hofuf. The provincial capital is well connected by national highways to major cities such as Dammam and