Hitching a ride to Riyad

Some years back I took a lift with Christer from Varberg to Saudi Arabia and back again to Sweden. Here we are heating up a tin of sausages and making a little Swedish coffee on our way through eastern Europe. We took the ferry from Koper in what was still Yugoslavia to Tartous in Syria. From there our truck headed through Lebanon and Jordan and across 800 miles of Saudi desert. When we arrived in Saudi Arabia in early March, the whole desert was green. Bedouin women were harvesting the grass with sickles, and at night we were frozen. Behind the Volvo’s cabin, we had an extra 2,000 litre diesel tank. In Saudi Arabia diesel cost a couple of cents. Christer hadn’t filled up in Sweden...

We have stopped for a rest in a “wadi”, a dried-out riverbed or perhaps a geological fault, on the road from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in the quivering heat of the Saudi sun. It’s midday and if you stick your hand out the window of the Volvo truck, the wind will burn it. In the summer the heat here can reach 50 (Celsius) in the shade, and unloading the truck is hell on earth. Ahead of us lie Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Islam. We had to make a detour to reach the border post of Hadita on the Jordanian border.