#2: [10-Feb-08]

#1: [21-Sep-02]

11-Dec-2019 -- As long as I can look back, Saudi Arabia had never issued tourist visa. Suddenly the Saudi State announced that it is from now on possible to obtain visa for touristic travel. Even individual travel was supposed to be possible. Therefore, we spontaneously changed our plan of visiting the Caribbean and bought flights to Bahrain. From Bahrain, we entered Saudi Arabia on land (actually on the King Fahd's Bridge) and rented a car in the city of Dammam.

This is the first out of 21 successful revisits plus 2 unsuccessful attempts on unvisited confluences.

This confluence point is an easy catch. When driving towards the confluence point, we only made one mistake: at one intersection, we took the wrong exit and since there was no U-turn ahead, we had an additional driving distance of 32 km, until we reached that intersection again.

Finaly, we parked our car in 350 m distance to the confluence at a gas station, where we anyway had to stop for gasoline.

We walked around the gas station. On its backside was another compound with barking dogs. We made a big circle around that compound, but the dogs kept on barking. Even when we reached the confluence, we could hear these guarding dogs.

The confluence is now located in an area that could hardly be called desert due to the garbage and infrastructure around it.

CP Visit Details:

• Distance to a road: 350 m
• Distance to a track: 250 m
• Distance of car parking: 350 m
• Time to reach the confluence from the car: 10 min
• Time at the confluence: 11:36 AM
• Measured height: 158 m
• Minimal distance according to GPS: 1
• Position accuracy: 2 m
• Topography: flat
• Vegetation: none
• Weather: sunny, 23° C (felt temperature)
• Given Name: The 32-KM U-Turn Confluence

The story continues at 27°N 47°E.

More pictures of the trip can be found here.