Sitting with his friends on carpets in a park, in the rain and thick fog, Abdallah Al-Enizi wears a vest over his traditional white robe in the middle of the mountains of Al-Namas, a city in the south of the desert kingdom of the Gulf.
Temperatures are very high in summer in most Saudi cities, sometimes reaching 50 degrees Celsius.
But not in Al-Namas. There, the humid monsoons cause temperatures to drop to no more than 30 degrees and can drop to 15 at night.
And the fog hides the sun with a mountainous and green landscape.
“In Riyadh, it’s 46 degrees and here only 20, the difference is 26 degrees!” Says Abdallah Al-Enizi, who came with his friends to Al-Namas, 850 south-west of the Saudi capital, to pass holidays.
“We flee the heat. It’s cool here and the rain and fog are almost permanent”, rejoices this 45-year-old Saudi Arabian in pre-retirement, who took about 12 hours to arrive by car in “the city of fog “.
Around him and his friends, families enjoy the fresh air and the children play while elsewhere in the country, they must remain confined in air-conditioned interiors.
– “Winter business” –
“Before coming here, we prepare all our winter things!”, laughs Nouf, a mother who refused to give her last name, while she conscientiously closes her daughter’s coat.
For vacationers, the authorities have built a “fog path”, a special passage for hikers and bicycles on a high peak with a view of the mountains and the thick fog.
Khalaf Al-Jouheiri came with his wife and children from Tabouk (north) to take advantage of the “cool weather”.
“We miss this weather as the temperature exceeds 40 degrees Celsius in summer” in Tabouk, explains this 33-year-old civil servant, covering his head to avoid the rain.
In 2020, a study published in the journal Science Advances found that the Gulf region has the hottest and wettest climate on the planet.
With climate change, some towns in the region could become unlivable for part of the year, experts say.
Thanks to its altitude and the strong winds “which cool the air”, Al-Namas still escapes this extreme warming, explains Hassan Abdallah, head of the WASM center, based in Jordan and specialized in meteorological phenomena in the Middle East.
The city of Al-Namas has become a popular destination as authorities seek to encourage domestic tourism, with Saudis generally fleeing to Europe or other cooler countries in the Middle East.
Under Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, Saudi Arabia is seeking to diversify an economy that is overly dependent on oil and has launched the “Visit Saudi” campaign to develop tourism, including domestic tourism.
With Covid-19 and the rise in air transport prices, in 2021 Saudi families spent 80 billion riyals (about 21 billion euros) to travel within the country, an increase of 30% compared to to 2019, according to figures from the Ministry of Tourism.
“Summer is the peak of the tourist season from May to October,” said Abdallah Al-Shehri, owner of a hotel in Al-Namas, where the winter is very harsh, with temperatures sometimes dropping to zero degrees.
At the top of a hill overlooking the fog and a green valley, the pensioner Mchabab Al-Omari enjoys the view, seated next to his wife against a large American 4×4.
“I’ve been here almost three months, and I’m ready to stay four or five more months if the weather stays the same.”
