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 990 km round trip from Al Muharraq - roughly 17 h 04 in the saddle. The stops in between: 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. The line favours views over speed.
Pearling is the idea behind the whole route, not a single building, and the point on this map marks the heart of the old pearl trade in Muharraq. For centuries, divers set out from here each summer on wooden boats to work the oyster beds in the shallow Gulf, and the season, the long dive, lasted from about June to September. A diver went down with a clip on his nose, a stone to take him to the bottom, and a basket for the oysters, holding his breath for a minute or more and repeating the dive dozens of times a day. A rope hauled by a companion on deck brought him back up. The work was hard, the pay was poor, and many divers were in debt to the boat captain, the nokhada, for the whole of their working lives.
Read the complete Pearling write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Pearling is where the day begins. 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.
Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field comes up about 142 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 495 km into the recorded legs you reach Al Zubarah Archaeological Site. 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.
back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field, late in the day. Next is Pearling.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Pearling write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Pearling. That is the ride.
Pearling → Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field is 142 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 353 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Al Zubarah Archaeological Site → back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field is 353 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Madinat Hamad 3 Burial Mound Field → Pearling is 142 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.