After performing the Umrah, a friend and I started around 9 PM from Makkah to Jeddah.We had planned to start at 8.30 PM but things got delayed. The flight was at 10.30 PM and we thought that it would be tight but we would make it around 10 PM. Also, since we had boarding passes issued from our onward journey itself, we thought that we could go straight to the gate. The heavy traffic meant that we could reach the airport around 10.15 PM and rushed to the gate only to find that the flight had left! We checked the Saudi Airlines counters for alternative flights, only to find none as it was the weekend. We then decided to try the bus stand which was half way across the city.
We reached the bus stand around midnight and were tempted by a taxi driver who said that he would drop us in Dammam in 8 hours. As the bus takes 14 hours to Dammam, we got tempted and got in. The distance between Jeddah and Dammam is around 1200 km.
The taxi driver had told us that he would charge SR 220 for two persons till Dammam but after a while 3 more guys got in and we could barely sit. At 220 KM/hr with blaring Saudi music and lots of cigarettes, we reached Riyadh in 6 hours. On the way, at a petrol bunk the filling guy (Indian) warned me not to travel in a taxi driven by a Saudi as his friend was missing since he got into one. Too late, I thought. And the thought only helped ruin whatever little sleep I could have got. We changed taxis at Riyadh and got to Dammam and eventually to Jubail crossing miles and miles of desert. We reached Jubail at around 10.45 AM, 10 hours late and poorer by SR 370 but way richer in experience.
