“Someone has planted a row of date palms along the median of Abdulrahman Al Ghafiqi Street, and every single one leans slightly east, like they're all eavesdropping on the same conversation.”

The driver pulls off the highway and the GPS loses its mind. For the last forty minutes it's been nothing but dark basalt flats and the occasional road sign in Arabic, and now we're threading through a canyon that has no business being this narrow for a paved road. The headlights catch the rock walls — ochre, rust, the color of dried blood — and they're close enough to touch from the passenger window. AlUla announces itself not with a skyline but with geology. The town itself, when you finally reach it, is low and quiet, a scattering of lights against a valley floor that was settled by the Dadanites and Nabataeans thousands of years before anyone thought to put an infinity pool here. The old souk is shuttered at this hour, but you can smell charcoal smoke from somewhere, and a cat watches you from the top of a crumbling mudbrick wall with the confidence of something that's been here longer than you.

The Banyan Tree sits a few kilometers outside the old town, tucked into a stretch of desert that feels deliberately remote. You don't stumble onto this place. You drive past sandstone outcrops that look like half-finished sculptures, park, and then walk through a landscape that the resort has been careful not to argue with. The architecture is low-slung, earth-toned, built to disappear into the terrain rather than compete with it. Which is wise, because the terrain would win.

Living between the rocks

The villas are the thing here. Each one is a standalone structure with its own pool, walled off from its neighbors by the landscape itself — actual rock formations serve as privacy screens, which is a design choice you can't replicate in Bali. The interiors lean into warm neutrals and woven textiles, and the bed is good — genuinely good, the kind where you sink in and immediately regret every alarm you've ever set. But the room isn't why you're here. The terrace is why you're here. You step outside and the valley opens up in every direction, sandstone towers catching the first light like they're being slowly set on fire. I make coffee from the in-room setup (decent, not great — bring your own if you're particular) and sit outside for an hour watching the shadows change. No one bothers you. Nothing beeps.

The infinity pool — and yes, there's an infinity pool, because this is 2024 and the law apparently requires it — is genuinely striking. Not because of the pool itself, which is a pool, but because of what it faces. The edge drops off visually into a wall of Cambrian-era rock that's been weathering for 500 million years, and the contrast between the still water and the ancient stone is the kind of thing that makes you hold your phone at seventeen different angles before giving up and just looking at it. I watched a French couple try to take the same photo for twenty minutes. They never got it right. Nobody does. The scale defeats the lens.

Mornings are cool enough to hike, and the staff will arrange a guide to Hegra — Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site — which is about twenty minutes by car. The Nabataean tombs there are carved directly into the cliff faces, and they're less crowded than Petra and arguably more atmospheric. Go early. By 10 AM the heat starts pressing down like a hand on your chest. Back at the resort, the restaurant Harrat does a lamb shank with dates and cardamom that's worth ordering twice, though dinner service runs slow — budget ninety minutes minimum, and don't fight it. This isn't a place that rewards impatience.

“The scale defeats the lens — 500 million years of sandstone versus your phone screen, and the rock doesn't even notice.”

The honest thing: connectivity is unreliable. Wi-Fi works in the main building and stutters in the villas, and mobile signal depends on your carrier and the particular alignment of the canyon walls around your terrace. If you need to be reachable, tell people before you come. If you don't, this is a feature, not a bug. Also, the walk from some villas to the main restaurant is longer than you'd expect — maybe ten minutes on an uneven path — and at night, with minimal lighting, it requires the kind of attention you don't usually associate with getting dinner. Wear closed shoes. I learned this in sandals, in the dark, on gravel, and I have the stubbed toe to show for it.

One detail that has no practical value: there's a maintenance worker who waters the courtyard plants every evening at exactly 6:15. He carries a green watering can that looks like it belongs in a Sussex garden, not a Saudi Arabian desert resort. He hums while he works. I never caught the song. It bothered me for three days.

Walking out into the valley

On the last morning I drive into old AlUla before checkout. The town is different in daylight — the mudbrick ruins of the old town glow amber, and a kid on a bicycle rides past a wall covered in jasmine that has no right growing in this climate. The heritage village is being restored in stages, and the cafés along the main drag are filling up with a strange mix of Saudi weekenders and European archaeology tourists comparing hiking boots. At a place called Zaytuna I order a thick Arabic coffee and a date pastry that costs 4 US$ and is better than anything at the resort.

The canyon walls are still there on the drive out, but they look different now — softer, maybe, or just familiar. The cat on the mudbrick wall is gone. The date palms still lean east. AlUla doesn't wave goodbye. It just keeps being old.

Villas at the Banyan Tree AlUla start around 1 199 US$ a night, which buys you a private pool, a terrace facing deep time, unreliable Wi-Fi, and the kind of silence that takes a full day to stop noticing.