Riyadh Travel Forum

Hi VT'ers,

I'm doing a road trip next week from Riyadh to Kuwait. I'm therefore looking for member comments to the following questions:

Route: Riyadh - Dammam - Jubail - Khafji - Kuwait
Is this the most sensible route or is there another?

Borders: Open 24 Hrs? Closed for prayer?

Time: How long would this trip take @ 120 kmph?

Look forward to member comments from those who might have done this trip in the recent past.

Thanks

hi there,

sorry for the late answer , I just red your question .

The Route you have mentioned is correct and its the best way.

Borders are open 24 Hrs, even during prayer times.

from Riyadh to Dammam = 400 km + from Dammam to Khafji (Borders) = abt 280 km + from Khafji to Kuwait city = 100 km, make the collecolations :) specially that most of the road are high way.

good luck

Thanks for your response, though I'd already commenced my outbound trip on 03Oct'07; returned to Riyadh on 15Oct'07.

As for Time: We took precisely 7 Hours Riyadh - Kuwait Border and another
hour thereon to downtown.

The road is a fairly good track upto Dammam, but thereon remains 'work in progress'. Once all done (perhaps in 6 months), I'm of the view that you could save about 30 mins @ 120kmph.

Cheers

The route after dammam has been like that for the last two years, or more actually. Done the trip 3 or 4 times by road.

A better route than the one mentioned, if travelling by day, would have been to go via route 65 heading north. This is a three lane motorway.

Take exit 15 heading east (after approx 195 km from Riyadh)

Follow sign to Kuwait, on what is now a dual carriage way.

At approx 500 km, you will get an un-signed intersection at the start of a city on which you need to turn right. This city is Hafar Al-Batin, I think.

Just keep going till you get to the Saudi-Kuwaiti border. This is the least used part of the road. From about 515 km to the Saudi-Kuwaiti border, the route is single carriage way. But in good repair.

You get to Kuwait city at 770 km.

Driving time is actually a bit less, as the route is shorter by about 100 - 150 km. Route is also less busy.

The borders are open 24 hours. They don't close for prayers (Kuwaiti side), but you have to wait for officers to have their breakfast, lunch, dinner, nap, etc... The Kuwaiti borders are the slowest I have come across in the whole region. They make the Saudi borders look like miracle workers. I was the only person there and they still managed to make the visa process take an hour. That is also with a previous visiting visa to Kuwait. Highly in-efficient. They have almost made it into an art. Unfortunately for me, I'm not into that type of art.