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.
913 km from Madīnat Ḩamad to Madīnat Ḩamad, about 16 h 36 of riding. On the way it passes Al Zubarah Archaeological Site and back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. It crosses from Bahrain into Qatar - carry ID and check the toll rules. The line favours views over speed.
In the earliest written records of the Gulf, a land called Dilmun appears again and again. Sumerian tablets from the third millennium BC mention it as a trading partner, a source of copper and a place where certain gods were said to live. Scholars long argued over where it was, until excavations in Bahrain in the 1950s turned up a walled port city, temples and tens of thousands of graves. The match was convincing enough that Dilmun is now generally identified with Bahrain and the nearby coast of eastern Arabia.
Read the complete Dilmun Burial Mounds write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dilmun Burial Mounds is where the day begins. Next is Al Zubarah Archaeological Site.
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 comes up about 460 km into the recorded legs. Next is Hayr Bū-l-Thāmah.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Al Zubarah Archaeological Site write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site, late in the day. Next is Dilmun Burial Mounds.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Dilmun Burial Mounds write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Dilmun Burial Mounds. That is the ride.
Dilmun Burial Mounds → Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 460 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site is 0 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → Dilmun Burial Mounds is 460 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.