Abha: a hill resort about one hour down south from Jeddah. Abha, as history claims it, was originally a part of Yemen. The original inhabitants of Abha were the Bedouin people from Yemen.
I had never been to Abha in my entire life. Of the 26 years that I have lived in Saudi Arabia, Abha was never on my travel plans. I had been to other places, like Taif and Baha, but never Abha. I was not prepared for what I saw there.
For one, the temperature dropped by a significant 20 degrees. While it was 40 degrees here in Jeddah, it was below 20 degrees. At night, the temperature even dropped down further. I had only wished I had brought my sweater along with me. And to think, it was this cold in the month of August in Saudi.
I stayed at the Abha Palace Hotel < www.abhapalace.com >, which was really nice, comfortable and kind of fun to be in. I got to Abha Thursday afternoon, the 26th of August. On my way to the hotel from the airport, I could see how much more green the city was. The weather was obviously nicer, and the city itself was a small one, in comparison to a city like Jeddah. I kept on referring to Abha as a town. There were lots of mountains and hills as well.
The hotel was situated on a hill and overlooked the lake and the Abha city. Just below, in front of the hotel, was a magical musical fountain, where fountains danced to the lights and music. On the right side of the hotel were two other hills. One was decorated with neon lights that gave it a very cool effect at night. The other was called Green Hill Top, which was a restaurant right at the top of the hill. The entire hill was surrounded with green light, and as corny as it sounds, I thought it gave such a dramatic effect to the city.
The rest of the day I spent at the health club, swimming, hot tub, Jacuzzi, steam room, sauna, bowling and watching TV. I also went out for a drive, and got a good idea of the city.
Most of the architecture was mud brick architecture, and the houses were mostly white in color. However there were two things that made Abha stand out from a city like Jeddah. One was the use of bold plain colors to decorate the houses from the exterior. Colors mostly were red, blue, green, yellow and orange, but bold colors they were! The colors were often decorated within geometric shapes, like squares and triangles. There were no circles or any round object seen on any walls anywhere. The other thing was that the traditional architectural landmark of Abha was a building with four walls, which were splayed inwards, pretty much like a lower half a pyramid.
I have included some pictures of Abha and I don’t think mere words can do justice to a beautiful city like Abha. I could not take any pictures of any people nor of any buildings. For the whole of my trip, I had forgotten I was in Saudi Arabia and thought I was pretty much in Europe!
Yours from-having-just-returned-from-Abha,
Mansur
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