SAUDI WORLD FIRST ON FOOT: British Explorer Alice Morrison completes historic 2,200km crossing of Saudi Arabia

(I will post a blog next week but for now, here is the press release)

15 December 2025 – British explorer Alice Morrison has become the first recorded person to walk the entire length of Saudi Arabia, north to south, entirely on foot. Her world-first expedition, which began on 1 January 2025 and concluded today (15 December 2025), covered 2200km over 112 days.

Accompanied by her camels, Juicy and Lulu, and supported by a small specialist team, Alice, 62, from Edinburgh, completed the final stretch on Monday 15 December in Najran, on the Saudi–Yemen border.

This journey completes the second and final stage of her crossing. Earlier this year, Alice walked the first 930km from the Jordanian border to Madinah. She split the expedition over two winter seasons, as the full route was too long to tackle in a single season due to extreme heat and the month of Ramadan.

Alice averaged half a marathon every day – around 30,000 steps. She crossed six provinces – Tabuk, Medina, Mecca, Al Baha, Aseer and Najran, passing through two UNESCO World Heritage sites, AlUla and Hima, and traversing the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve.

Alice became the first person to reach the border and cross the Kingdom. On her team was Shaya Al Shaya. He arrived shortly after her and became the second person to cross the Kingdom on foot,  the first man and the first Saudi. He decided to join in the attempt during stage one and although he had to miss three days because of sickness, he went back and completed the distance during the summer and then walked the whole of stage two with Alice.

Alice – who left a career as a media CEO to dedicate her life to exploration – says: “Walking every step north to south has been a personal challenge. The goal forced me to keep going when I was exhausted or in pain or just fed up. Walking is a way to see and feel every detail of the path you travel. An exploration but also a meditation.

This expedition has exceeded my expectations in every way. I’ve been challenged mentally and physically and had my preconceptions of Saudi shattered. I’ve walked across a country full of wild landscapes, history ready to be discovered and the most hospitable people in the world. One of the revelations has been the women I’ve met who are instigating a quiet cultural revolution. 

The journey’s been tough at times and then it is the team that keeps you going. From Saudi, Scotland, Sudan, Yemen and Ireland, we’ve pulled through with humour and determination. Our two camels have helped too – endless entertainment as they search out snacks wherever they can.”

Despite meticulous planning, the expedition delivered its fair share of challenges. Temperatures regularly reached 39°C and above, forcing early starts and careful pacing. Deep sand slowed progress and made walking itself a test of endurance.  During the first leg, Alice suffered severe blisters that bled into her shoes; at one-point, camel Lulu also developed blisters, prompting Alice to fashion a protective shoe for her. Other hazards included scorpions, snakes, runaway camels, and constant calculations around water resupply.

Yet alongside these difficulties, Alice found the journey shaped just as much by the warmth of the people she met on the way. In every village and wild-camp stop, the first question offered was always the same: “How can I help you?”  Saudi hospitality, given freely and without hesitation, became an essential part of the expedition’s rhythm: navigation advice from bedu, weather warnings from shepherds, shared tea, the gift of two live sheep, and even a marriage proposal.

The expedition also yielded significant archaeological observations. Alice and the team recorded 4,000-year-old rock carvings, Bronze Age tailed tombs, and Stone Age tools, as well as artefacts from the Hejaz Railway and the faint outlines of former Ottoman military camps. Each site was logged with GPS, photography and field notes, contributing valuable detail to landscapes that remain rarely accessed or documented.

Alice’s route followed some of the Kingdom’s earliest pathways of trade, pilgrimage and settlement. Stage 1 ended in AlUla, an ancient crossroads of civilisations. Stage 2 passed through Hima and the old caravan trails of the Elephant’s Road, and intersected with Darb Zubayda, the Abbasid-era pilgrimage route once travelled by thousands.

The expedition was sponsored by the Royal Commission for AlUla, the Saudi Tourism Authority and Gym Nation.

END

Notes to Editors:

Expedition Route

Alice accomplished the expedition in two halves over two winter seasons, as the journey was too long to accomplish in one season due to hot weather and the month of Ramadan.

The first stage began on 1 January 2025 at the Jordan border near Halat Ammar. It continued through the mountains, hitting points of interest such as Darb al Haj, the Pilgrimage Route, Prince Mohamed Bin Salman Royal Reserve, the volcanic regions of Harrat Ar Raha and AlUla, which was a major highlight.

The final stage of the expedition started on 10 October 2025 in Madinah.  The expedition was completed on 15 December 2025 in Najran, close to the Saudi-Yemen border.  Her entire route has been tracked by Garmin and is available to view via her website link Alice N-2-S Expedition – Stage1 – Trip Stats & GPS Links and Stage 2 here. 

Team

Alice was supported by navigator Alan Morrissey and a specialist team from MAD Adventures:

·       Shaya Al Shaya – Team member

·       Khaled Al Rabiah – Owner & logistics lead

·       Fahd Abdullah Al Qadibi – Camelteer & cook (Stage 1)

·       Maqbool Ali Muajib – Camelteer (Stage 1)

·       Salim Sagheer Al Sagheer – Support vehicle & cook (Stage 2)

·       Hamid Ahmed – Camelteer (Stage 2)

The team had support vehicles with large, fitted water tanks.

About Alice Morrison

Alice Morrison speaks fluent Arabic and has long experience in the Middle East and North Africa. She is a seasoned explorer, best-selling author, travel journalist and TV presenter. Her latest series for the BBC, Arabian Adventures: Secrets of the Nabateans, came out in June 2024. She has walked 4000km with 6 camels and 3 Amazigh guides across Morocco and the Sahara.

That journey took 7 ½ months and during it she found a lost city, documented the effect of climate change on the nomadic peoples of the Sahara and witnessed the reach of Corona into very remote communities. Her book about it is Walking with Nomads.

She has also cycled across Africa from Cairo to Cape Town, run around Everest and walked the length of Jordan. Full bio here.

Media Presence

Alice has her own very active and dedicated social media following of over 400k followers (links below) across Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube.

Her podcast reached Apple’s top 50 and her blog was voted Best Blog in Africa. Her book, Adventures in Morocco, is an Amazon Travel bestseller. She achieved 50 pieces of international press and an audience of +258million for stage one of Crossing Saudi . She is a TikTok star in Arabic – achieving over 3 million views for posts.

Links

Presenter: Arabian Adventures: Secrets of the Nabateans, available on iPlayer

Runner up: Edward Stanford Travel Book of the Year 2023: Walking with Nomads

Bestseller on Amazon Travel: Adventures in Morocco

Morocco to Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure

Dodging Elephants

Web: www.alicemorrison.co.uk 

Podcast: Alice in Wanderland

X: aliceoutthere1

Instagram: aliceoutthere1  

TikTok: aliceoutthere1        

Fbook: Alice Hunter Morrison Adventures

For media enquiries and images please contact:

Sarah Lloyd-Morrison, Magenta PR

Email: sarah@magentapublicrelations.co.uk

Background on Alice Morrison’s North–South Crossing of Saudi Arabia On Foot and World First Claim

Alice Morrison’s 2,220km crossing of Saudi Arabia has been documented with exceptional accuracy, transparency and sequential proof. She completed the journey walking every step on foot from the northern border to the southern frontier in two winter seasons – 1 January to 14 February 2025, and 10 October to 15 December 2025 – because the route is too long to be completed safely in a single season due to extreme heat and the month of Ramadan.

Morrison walked every kilometre on foot in sequence, recording the entire route on her Garmin device. All daily GPS tracks were published on her blog as she progressed, and the full Garmin log archive is now publicly accessible on her website. Comprehensive route data for both stages is available here: Alice N-2-S Expedition – Stage1 – Trip Stats & GPS Links and Stage 2 will be published here.  Her daily blog dispatches and social media posts, posted in real time, provide an additional, timestamped layer of verification that aligns fully with the route data.

In her blog, Morrison sets out why she can credibly claim this journey as a world first. Although nomadic and trade routes have long criss-crossed the Arabian Peninsula, this expedition is a crossing of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which was founded in 1932. No nomadic or merchant group could have followed the exact north–south line she completed without camels or support vehicles as the route includes two significant, waterless stretches. Water scarcity remains the defining challenge of the terrain, making her precise, end-to-end crossing unprecedented.

As she writes: “How do I know it is a world-first? Of course, I cannot be 100% certain. However, here is the reasoning. Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932 and although many people have crossed west to east or east to west and lots of parts of north to south, we can find no records of a complete north to south crossing. It would be extremely difficult to do this on foot unsupported as there is simply not enough water. If you were crossing as a merchant or a Bedu or a soldier or a traveller you would have to have camels or trucks or vehicles with you and so, why would you walk every step? I am walking every step because I am taking it on as a challenge and an exploration.”

Quite simply, it is highly unlikely that anyone before Alice would have walked every step from the border to border completely on foot, but this is the personal challenge that she chose to complete.

Taken together with the continuous GPS evidence, real-time documentation and clear historical context establishes this expedition as genuinely pioneering.

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