Hel icopter tours that rock

Experience AlUla ( experiencealula.com) has launched twice-daily helicopter tours of what is arguably one of Saudi Arabia’s most stunning inland destinations. The 30-minute flights, priced SAR 750 per person, take in seven major sites of significance including the monumental Jabal AlFil (Elephant Rock), AlUla’s most famous natural geological rock formation; Hegra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the southern capital of Nabataean civilisation; The Hijaz Railway; and Maraya, the world’s largest mirrored building, which sparkles like a diamond in the desert dunes. The tour also takes in Jabal Ikmah (the open-air library) and Dadan, the capital of the Dadan and Lihyan kingdoms, as well as AlUla Old Town – the 12th-century medieval city – before landing back at Fursan Village. Geologist Don Boyer says visitors will be “blown away”, by what they experience. “The landscape we see today is more or less the same landscape those guys saw 7,000 years ago. The pleasure of flying over this part of Arabia, as opposed to, for example, heritage sites in Europe, is that there is no clutter. In AlUla, it’s vast; you see things in their raw state and the state of preservation is generally very good indeed.”