If any city serves to illustrate the Arab world's juggling of religious beliefs, sternly held reverence for the past and oil-boom big business, it is Riyadh. A gleaming oasis of glass and girders, of world class hotels next to state-of-the-art hospitals, serviced 24-hours a day by one of the biggest and busiest airports in the world.
All this side by side with the reconstructed ruins of the ornate palaces and mosques of ancient Dir'aiyah, and just a short four-wheel drive journey to the largest and smelliest camel market in the Middle East.
The authorities have chosen to make tourism in Saudi Arabia as difficult as possible unless you're one of the millions of Moslims making the hajj to Islam's holiest city and the birthplace of the religion, Mecca.
Daily life revolves almost entirely around an Islam and Bedouin heritage, from the serving of gahwa - Arabian coffee - to the chewing of miswak, a natural toothbrush-cum-toothpaste.
This is rugged country. Towering mountains dominate Western Saudi Arabia, while the two vast deserts, the lonely Rub' al-Khali, or Empty Quarter, the largest sand desert in the world, and the Nafud, keep each other company next to salt flats and gravelly wind swept plains.
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