CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: planning record, not independently verified geometry.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distances and riding times are planning figures. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 1015 km round trip from Manama - roughly 18 h 25 in the saddle. On the way it passes Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field, Al Zubarah Archaeological Site and back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field. It crosses from Bahrain into Qatar - carry ID and check the toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
An afternoon in Manama begins with a lesson in geography that the map sometimes hides: the Al Zubarah of the ride's name is not in Bahrain. It is a ruined pearling and trading town on the north-west coast of Qatar, a short sea crossing away but with no road between the two countries, so no rider will get there from here. What links them is a family. In 1783 the Al Khalifa, who had built up Zubarah, moved across the water and took Bahrain, and their descendants still rule. So the afternoon in Manama is best spent seeing where that move led.
Read the complete Manama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Manama is where the day begins. Next is Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Flat, pale and apparently empty, the central plain of Bahrain hides one of the oldest cemeteries on earth. Some four thousand years ago the island of Dilmun, as it was known to the Sumerians, buried its dead under thousands upon thousands of low stone mounds, and in places like Madinat Hamad and A'ali the mounds still stand in dense, grey fields. At one time there may have been several hundred thousand of them, which would have made Dilmun a famous necropolis in its day, and many have since been flattened by roads, housing and quarrying.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field comes up about 94 km into the recorded legs. Next is Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field.
Bahrain was once covered with burial mounds. Over thousands of years, between roughly 2200 BC and the early centuries AD, the people of Dilmun, an ancient civilisation that controlled trade in the Gulf between Mesopotamia and the Indus valley, built tens of thousands of tombs across the northern part of the island. Many have been lost to modern development, but some fields survive, and in 2019 a selection of them, including the Madinat Hamad mound fields, was inscribed as the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the Dilmun Burial Mounds.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 127 km into the recorded legs you reach Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field. Next is Hayr Shtayyah.
Out on the north-west coast of Qatar, where the desert slides into a shallow turquoise sea, stand the low ruins of Al Zubarah, once one of the busiest pearling and trading towns in the Gulf. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the town thrived on pearls dived from the oyster beds offshore, traded on to India, Persia and beyond. Then it declined, was abandoned in the early twentieth century, and the sand covered it. Archaeologists have since uncovered streets, houses, a souk, mosques and a long town wall running in an arc around the old harbour. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2013.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site sits at 1029 km, about halfway. Next is back through Hayr Shtayyah.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Manama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Hayr Shtayyah comes up about 779 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 897 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field. Next is back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field, late in the day. Next is Manama.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Manama write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 2054 km.
Manama → Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 94 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 330 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → Back to Manama is 321 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field → back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Madinat Hamad 2 Burial Mound Field → Manama is 94 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.