I Visited MEDINA, SAUDI ARABIA, as a Non Muslim SA المدينة

Hello once again and welcome back to the UK. In this video I'm going to be showing you my experience traveling to Medina, the second holiest city in Islam. I filmed this during the middle of my Saudi Arabia trip at the beginning of 2020, just before the pandemic started, on my GoPro, but in the end I never put this video out because I wasn't sure how people would react to it. I think a lot of people still don't realize that non-Muslim tourists can actually go to the city and walk around. Whether you can go inside the Prophet's Mosque is another thing, I'm still not sure, and absolutely Mecca is out of bounds to non-Muslim tourists, but if you're on your way up to Medina Salah in Al-Ula, which is the most famous or arguably greatest attraction in the country, stop in Medina on the way and take a look at this incredible pilgrimage site for so many Muslims worldwide. I hope you enjoy the footage. What's up? Welcome back to Saudi Arabia. Today I'm leaving Jeddah and I'm taking the train to Medina, one of the holiest cities in Saudi, the second holiest city in Islam, and I'm going to be taking the high-speed rail at the brand new station here, which is behind me, and you can see the brand new airport on the other side of the road there. Pretty impressive, huh? Just finished the security check, very spaced out, not many people, it's all brand new and well organized, and they're all speaking English pretty well. Hi, how are you doing? I'm very good, thank you. Going to Medina Salah? Yeah. Mr. Jason. Okay, coach number 11. Okay. Your seat number is 308. Okay, perfect. First one, is coach number one, and then until you go to like number seven. Okay, thank you very much. Lots of personal staff greeting and helping. I think they're looking out for tourists like myself to make sure we all get on our way. So this is the train, as you can see. Business class, probably quite nice inside, I can imagine. The Saudis know how to do business class. Yeah, thank you. Here we are, coach number 11, seat 308. Heading into the city center. Many of you may know that Medina is the city that has traditionally been off limits to non-Muslims, but I've been told that I'm allowed to transit in the city, and perhaps we might be able to get a slight glimpse of that central square just outside of it, or just get a feel for what the actual outer layers of the city look like, where the real life of Medina is, because it is a, you know, city that still exists here in 2020, with people living there. It's not just a pilgrimage site for the Prophet's Mosque, which is why it's so famous and holy in Islam. Anyway, super modern train station here again, here in Medina, as you can see. Everything's so shiny, modern and new, only built within the last year or two. A lot of this stuff, Starbucks, which is closed over there, huge building. So right now it is 2.45pm in the afternoon, and I picked up my bus ticket, which is at 5.30pm to Al-Ula. I'll arrive in Al-Ula 20 past 10pm tonight, so I have a couple of hours to just walk around here and see what it's all about. All these markets on the road leading towards the Prophet's Mosque. Many pilgrims from other countries coming and picking up different souvenirs from the holy city to take back and give them to their family, their friends. One gift in particular people love to bring back is water from the Zemzem spring in Mecca, not here in Medina. And they bottle this holy water and give it back, and then their relatives, their family, their friends, they can use the holy water to wash themselves or for any activities they like I suppose, I'm not too sure. But I've heard this is quite a common thing to do from Mecca, from Medina of course. It can be anything, it can be clothes I guess, anything that symbolises the value of this city. As you can tell by the clothes of most of the pilgrims, they're all wearing lots of colours. So here in Saudi Arabia, when you see the women wearing all black abayas and veils, and the men wearing usually white thobes, and the red generally headscarf on top, that's because it's a cultural thing, a regional thing, and not a religious thing. That's something people often get confused with Saudi. They think that the women covering themselves completely is to do with Islam. It's not necessarily, it's more something that's been culturally developed over time. Here in particularly the Arabian Peninsula, and that's clear when you look at the sea of people I'm walking towards now, everyone from different countries has different colour clothes. So I'm now in a restaurant which I found on the street. It's pretty local, and there's really a vibe here that just is Muslims only, sort of all over the city. It feels like very few non-Muslims have really walked around here, been in the restaurants and interacted with the people. Very, very few in many years. So it's a very interesting place, and I've got my food right here. I just ordered, I just pointed at a picture, and also what someone else was eating. Take a look, it's this chicken masala type of curry, and also some bread here. You can see the atmosphere of the restaurant, busy streets just outside. Let's tuck in. Floods of pilgrims, some small shops down here, and I'm making my way from the bus station which is just on the other side of the road towards the more central part of Medina. I don't really know how far I'm going to get, let's just see. I want to be respectful at the same time, as well as perhaps get a slight glimpse of the mosque and see what it's all like in the centre there, where it's all happening, where everybody's visiting. Over here you can see the markets and some pilgrims buying different shoes and clothes. A few people just sitting around here relaxing. Over here we have Al-Haram, which is the central part of Medina. The Prophet's Mosque is in the centre of that. To reach it, it says here, towards Al-Haram, you need to go underneath the road and enter that way. This is the part where it's a bit of a grey area for non-Muslims, because I've heard of a few people, Australians and Dutch, from people I've met and word of mouth, who have been here already on their way to Alula. A couple of them, since the new e-visas passed, I don't know if this is new or if this has always been the case, they've been able to go pretty much right up to the Prophet's Mosque and walk around Al-Haram as well, but just not go inside. Whereas Mecca is a different story, it's almost completely off-limits to non-Muslims. So I guess I'm going to try and walk a bit closer and just get to the point where I see security and they're like, okay, this is as far as you can go, because I'm obviously a Westerner. Let's find out. I have a few hours to kill, so why not, right? You can see the sea of hotels around here and look, in the distance, you can see the Prophet's Mosque. A brief glimpse. Let's try and get a little bit closer. For everyone who's Muslim and watching this who hasn't been here before, I guess this is really interesting for you to see what it's like. Looks like this is as close as I'm going to get. Everyone's going in now. This is the main entrance. Now that I'm right here in front of the mosque during the prayer time, I'll just sum up saying why Medina is the second holiest city after Mecca. Mecca is where Muhammad the Prophet was born and here is where he lived, spent his life, fought his battles and built this mosque and this is where he was finally laid to rest and this is why it's the second most holiest site in the Islamic religion and floods of pilgrims come here every single day, no matter if it's January or during the Hajj or any other festivals. It's always going to be a very, very important place for Muslims around the world and to get this close to non-Muslim, considering that I didn't even think I could enter Medina at the start of this trip, well I think that's pretty good to see with my own eyes from over here and see all the pilgrims. That's more than enough and if you're on your way to Al-Ula from Jeddah then it's worth stopping by Medina and just taking a quick look because it really is quite a sight to see. So much history here and yeah, amazing experience. Just beside Al-Haram, the center of the city, there is a large market over here which looks pretty interesting. So I'm gonna have a quick look before my bus journey to Al-Ula. Everything's shut down. I just realized it's prayer time as always in Saudi. Five times a day when it's prayer time, the sheets come up, the curtains get closed and everything shuts for around 15 minutes, half an hour depending on the prayer. In a short while it'll all be open again. It's an interesting phenomenon and part of the life here in Saudi Arabia. Just dead. I bet you moments ago this was flooded with people and pilgrims buying all sorts. Unfortunately I don't have much time before my bus so I'm gonna have to leave it here and make my way back to the Sapco station. What sort of things can you pick up? You can see these bracelets here. I'm sure there's another proper name for them. Different beads and jewelry. Here you have pencils and watches, bags, small purses. The kind of stuff a lot of, I suppose, older people would like to buy because generally it's older people who can afford to make the pilgrimage here to Mecca and Medina. If you're interested in seeing some more content from the country then you can check out my Saudi Arabia playlist on my YouTube channel with all the vlogs that I filmed there. My friend Arabian Trails, his link is in the video description. He has a travel guide if you're looking to rent a car and drive it around the country, perhaps do a little bit of off-roading with some very detailed maps of historical sites and you can also check out his Instagram Arabian Trails as well. As for me I have booked a flight out of the UK which is leaving in just a week's time to a country that I'm going to keep secret for now. Let's see if any of you can guess where I'm heading and I will reveal that in the first video coming within a week very soon. So stay tuned and I look forward to the next adventure. Peace.