Wait, Where?

This is Saudi Arabia? Where are the camels, the endless stretches of empty desert, the religious orthodoxy?

I just returned from a weekend camping trip in the southern province of Abha, a couple hundred kilometers from the Yemen border, and it feels like a whole different country down there. People dress quite differently, houses are built in a different style and they have the tallest peak in the country, Jabal Sawda.

At a little over 10,000 feet high, you can imagine that the weather was cooler and there was a significantly different climate than what I've been living in.