Hitchhiking in Saudi Arabia is pretty common. In the cities such as Riyadh where public transport is nearly non existent and few people hitchhike inside the city. A friend traveler Nico Pasquali said he hitchhiked many times and longest waiting time was 20 minutes. Usually he would also be invited for meals and tea, since local hospitality is pretty strong.
On this link I share an entire one week itinerary in Saudi Arabia.
I haven’t tried in the city but I tried from Al Ula to Medina an in this article I will share my experience.
Budget transport between Riyadh and Jeddah cost about 60 USD (Bus Saptco), Saudi Arabia is not inviting for the budget traveler. But hitchhiking is possible.
I went to the highway in Al Ula with a Taiwanese traveler Lyla, we had signs but was not necessary because only with the thumb many people were stopping to us. We haven’t even waited 5 minutes, the first car stopped and said he was going other direction, after 3 minutes a truck stopped and offered a ride for a few kilometers but we were aiming a trip straight to Medina, so he left.
Then another passenger car stopped, it was two Indians working in the medical industry that rented a car to go to the airport in Medina, jackpot!
We went with them on a smooth 3 hour ride, free of charge. They dropped us 40 minutes walk form the main mosque in Medina, we did some sightseeing and tried to hitchhike to Jeddah, the next city.
Unfortunately several cars were stopping and offering taxi services to take us to the bus station and some gave non sense prices such as 200 USD to bring us straight to Jeddah.
We ended up giving up and heading by walk to the bus station until we discovered an informal system of transportation by shared taxis and we paid same price as bus to have a faster ride.
Since I also had only 9 days in Saudi Arabia, I haven’t tried much hitchhiking but for the budget traveler is totally doable to travel the entire countries catching rides.