🇸🇦 New country: fly over Saudi Arabia!

Toponauts is flying to the Arabian Peninsula for the first time: welcome, Saudi Arabia! 🇸🇦✈️ It's a huge country of deserts, mountains and ancient cities, split into 13 regions called manatiq. And it has one geography secret that makes it very different from almost every other country in Toponauts: it has no rivers at all. Let's go find out why!

🏜️ No rivers — but wadis instead!

Saudi Arabia is one of the driest countries on Earth (less than 100 mm of rain a year in most places), so it has zero permanent rivers — nothing like the Nile or the Rhine. Instead, it has wadis: dry riverbeds that only fill up with water after a rare, heavy rainstorm, sometimes only once every few decades! The two most famous are Wadi al-Rummah (about 600 km long, the longest wadi in the country) and Wadi Hanifah, which winds right through the capital, Riyadh. You can fly along both of them in Toponauts, drawn as real lines on the map — just like rivers, except they're usually bone dry!

🏙️ Riyadh: capital AND biggest city

In many countries the capital isn't the biggest city (think of Australia's Canberra, or Morocco's Rabat). Not here! Riyadh is both the capital of Saudi Arabia and its largest city, sitting right in the middle of the country on the Najd plateau. Close by is Jeddah, on the Red Sea coast — the country's biggest port and busiest gateway for travellers.

🕋 Two of the world's most visited cities

Two Saudi cities, Mecca and Medina, are among the most important religious cities in the world for Muslims, who travel there from every continent for pilgrimage. Millions of visitors arrive every year — it's one of the largest yearly gatherings of people anywhere on Earth!

🏖️ The world's biggest sand desert

In the southeast lies Rub' al Khali, which means "the Empty Quarter" — at about 650,000 km², it's the largest continuous sand desert on the planet, bigger than the whole of France! In the north you'll find An-Nafud, famous for its giant red dunes, connected to Rub' al Khali by a long, narrow strip of red sand called Ad-Dahna that runs almost 1,200 km through the middle of the country.

⛰️ Mountains, lava fields and a hidden oasis

Along the Red Sea coast runs the Sarawat mountain range, the biggest mountain range on the whole Arabian Peninsula. Its highest peak, Jabal Sawda, reaches about 3,015 metres — the highest point in Saudi Arabia! Nearby you can also find harrat: huge fields of black volcanic rock left behind by ancient lava flows — one of them, Harrat Rahat near Medina, last erupted in the year 1256! And in the east lies Al-Ahsa, the biggest oasis in the world, with over 2.5 million palm trees fed by hundreds of natural springs.

🏛️ 8 UNESCO World Heritage treasures

Saudi Arabia is home to 8 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, including the ancient rock-cut tombs of Al-Hijr (Madain Saleh), the historic old town of Jeddah, the mud-brick palaces of At-Turaif in Diriyah, and thousands-of-years-old rock art carved into cliffs near Ha'il. Fly to every one of them and discover what makes each so special.

🎉 Fun facts

• Saudi Arabia's 13 regions were all set up together by one royal decree in 1992 — no region was added or changed since.
• The country borders 7 other countries: Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen — plus a causeway bridge (not a land border!) connecting it to the island nation of Bahrain.
• Saudi Arabia has coastlines on two different seas: the Red Sea in the west and the Gulf in the east (in Arabic, often called the "Arabian Gulf" — its English map name is the "Persian Gulf").
• Arabic is written from right to left — a good reason to keep the town names on your map close by while you fly!

▶️ How to play

Switch your country to Saudi Arabia with the "change your country" button, then pick a map — regions, capitals, big cities, wadis, mountains, deserts or UNESCO sites. Zoom into a single region to practise its towns and villages. Safe flight! 🚁