Beaches in Saudi Arabia

Eighteen hundred kilometres of Red Sea coast with reef along almost all of it, plus a shorter Gulf coast in the east, and the country did not issue tourist visas until September 2019. The consequence for this register is unusual: these reefs passed through the decades when reefs elsewhere were being dived, anchored on and bleached with almost no recreational pressure at all, and they are among the least studied and least degraded anywhere in the tropics. The Farasan Banks in the south and the reefs off Yanbu are the clearest examples. Two very large state-backed developments are now under construction on the same coast, the Red Sea Project on a group of islands near Umluj and Amaala further north, both of them planned as luxury destinations with their own airports and both changing this shore faster than anything in its history. Umluj itself has the offshore sandbanks that earned the stretch its nickname of the Saudi Maldives. Practically: the country is conservative and public dress codes apply outside private resort beaches, swimwear on a public beach is not appropriate for women in most of the country, and alcohol is prohibited nationwide with no exceptions for visitors. Distances are long and driving is the only practical way along the coast. AlUla and the Nabataean tombs at Hegra, the country's first World Heritage site, lie a day inland from the Red Sea shore and are the usual reason for a trip that reaches these beaches at all.