"Arabian transit visa" a Saudi Arabia Travel Page by jorgejuansanchez

It took me almost one month to get my Arabian visa. Fortunately I had time to wait. I was in Cairo during the New Year 2000, enjoying the musical and laser show of Jean Michel Jarre, and decided to visit all the Arabian Peninsula countries in a row (except Yemen, where I had already been in the past): Arabia, Oman, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrein.
In the Arabian Consulate I was told that they only issue visas to enter their country under the three following conditions: if you are a pilgrim, if you are a businessman with invitation from a commercial company in Arabia, and if you are in transit.
Immediately I requested a transit visa. First I had to go to my Embassy to request a letter stating that I had no pending trials in my country, and therefore was a bona fide citizen. Then I got my Kuwait visa (which took me one week to obtain), and then finally the Arabs gave me a three days transit visa.
From Cairo I travelled to Nweiba, in the Sinai Peninsula, then by boat I reached Aqaba, in Jordan, and the next day I boarded a bus to Kuwait together with emigrants from Turkey, Sudan, Syria and Egypt.
The bus journey was very exotic and we crossed the town Tabuk. Five times a day we stopped for the muslim prayers (except me, being a christian). We crossed the desert and had lunch and teas in some small restaurants in the oasis, where the waiters were from India or Philippines, and the Arabs, dressed in clean white clothes, where sitting indolently, smoking in their nargils, and only raised from their cushions when they had to cash the consumptions.
We stopped for a full day in a restaurant open 24 hours a day, called Almuhaya, in the town of Hafar al Baten, and some of my companions invited me to go with them to Ryad and then to Mecca and Medina. But although I dreamed to visit these holy places, I knew that it was not possible because of the controls of the Religious Police along the way (these policemen watch that you observe the Sharia, with the Ramadan and all the muslim rules, otherwise they can punish you or expel you from Arabia), where they ask for the muslim documents to visit these places.
The third day in the evening I arrived to Kuwait.

This is the brochure that I was given in Cairo when I bought the ticket for the Jean Michel Jarre show.