All the essentials have already been covered by the previous 6 reviewers, but as things change quickly in Saudi Arabia I’d like to add some specifics from the perspective of my November 2023 visit.

What’s in a name

The site was inscribed as “Mada'in Saleh”, but is now known as Hegra. There was an official name change to the WHS in 2021, and also on the ground you will see the signposting call it ‘Hegra’. Hegra is the Ancient Greek name of the site, while Mada'in Saleh goes back to the Ancient Arabs. Why did the Saudis change it? Was it to make it more attractive to an international audience? Or did they want to get rid of the association with the Quranic story where this was seen as a cursed area?

The standard tour

There seems to be only one standard tour available nowadays, which takes 2 hours and can be done either on a big bus or by jeep. The latter is much more expensive but the itinerary seems the same.

We (on the big bus) visited four components in the following order:

1. Jabal AlAhmar: a pretty rock with carved tombs all around.
2. Qasr AlFarid: this is the biggest, a stand-alone tomb. It’s also the only one which would benefit from a visit in the late afternoon because of the position of the sun.
3. Qasr AlBint: the complex with the ‘best’ decorated facades. Only here you may enter one of the caves.
4. Jabal Ithlib: not a tomb, but a Diwan, plus a mini-Siq. The latter even is prone to flash floods in the winter, the guide showed us a video he took of it. This is also the area with many niches that held statues of goddesses, a pagan ritual that disturbed the later Islamic passers-by.

Getting to Hegra on public transport

It is not necessary to rent a car here, although many visitors do and its rural setting and good roads seem suited even to less adventurous drivers.  I did Hegra WHS and AlUla’s two TWHS fully on public transport, which proved to be easy. The small AlUla airport is well-connected to Jeddah, Riyadh and a couple of international destinations. At the airport, there are official AlUla taxis (a recently added feature, don’t know about the cost) but I only used rideshare apps, of which Kaiian is the most popular in AlUla. To be able to use this app, you need to have a Saudi phone number (so buy a real sim card and not one of those e-sims with only data) and have cash. AlUla is a small town and there aren’t tons of drivers, so you may have to wait 10 minutes for one to show up. But they all proved to be reliable (I did some 8 individual rides), against low cost (10-20 riyal) and they even handed me change til the last coin. They also drove me to and from Winter Park, which is the parking lot from where the tour buses to Hegra start.