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Abu Al-Waul: Saudi Arabia's Longest Cave Beckons Adventure Seekers

Abu Al-Waul, the Kingdom's longest cave beckons adventure seekers. (SPA)
Abu Al-Waul, the Kingdom's longest cave beckons adventure seekers. (SPA)
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Abu Al-Waul: Saudi Arabia's Longest Cave Beckons Adventure Seekers

Abu Al-Waul, the Kingdom's longest cave beckons adventure seekers. (SPA)
Abu Al-Waul, the Kingdom's longest cave beckons adventure seekers. (SPA)

Situated in the Harrat Khaybar volcanic field, in the Khaybar Governorate of the Madinah region, Abu Al-Waul Cave has become a popular destination for caving enthusiasts, researchers, and adventurers. It is the longest basalt cave in Saudi Arabia, stretching some 5 kilometers, the Saudi Press Agency said.
The Saudi Geological Survey (SGS) is working on projects to improve caves and other tourist sites, focusing on their geological and tourism potential. Cave tourism is attracting visitors to the Kingdom.
An SPA reporter's tour with cave exploration enthusiast Hassan Al-Rashidi revealed that Harrat Khaybar is home to many caves formed thousands of years ago. Recently uncovered by the SGS, Abu Al-Waul Cave derives its name from the abundance of ibex skeletons discovered within (waul being the Arabic plural for ibex).
Al-Rashidi highlighted the tourism potential of Harrat Khaybar, due to its many caves and volcanoes, which offer the opportunity to study their geological formations and rock structure.
Al-Rashidi documents his explorations to provide valuable information for researchers, enthusiasts, and adventurers. This includes detailing cave locations, types, access routes, preservation methods, and organizing trips to these sites.

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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”