#3: [15-Dec-19]

#2: [19-Jul-07]

06-Apr-2004 -- We were on a 9-day trip to the northern area of the Kingdom. We had already visited five other confluence points. In the afternoon we had travelled from our last confluence point 28N 38E up the main north road past the small village of al-Qalība, and then turned northeast on the Sakākā road.

We had camped in the barren sand stones hills just off the road after searching for sometime to find somewhere protected from the very strong winds. As there was no vegetation, there were few tracks leading from the highway, as there were no Bedouin camps in the area. Another glorious sunset followed by a cool, clear night.

There was an early morning chill and it took us until departure time to remove a few layers of clothing. After 15 minutes of driving across the gravel plains, we were back on the paved road and soon were near the confluence point.

The general area had been pretty flat but it looked as though the point was behind a mobile phone mast located on some sandstone jabals. There were no good tracks leading directly from the road and it looked pretty rocky terrain close to the road, so we continued on until we came to the main track into the mast, which we used to get through the initial rocky area. We then wound our way through the jabals and crossed over a few soft sandy patches before reaching the flat plains and continued for another 2 km in a western direction.

The confluence point was on a sandy gravel plain with low sandstone rocks. We made our usual cross to mark the spot and enjoyed the wide-open view in all directions. We drove out on a different track around the other side of the jabal and we came across some ancient graves sites, which appeared to have circles around the upright centre stones. It was a change to have a relatively easy journey, after having had some difficult and bumpy travels into some of the recent confluence points we had visited in recent days.

Continued at 30N 39E.