Meet up with the tribes of Saudi Arabia: how Tamashee is spending vacationers off the kingdom's beaten track
01 February, 2021
A few months before Saudi Arabia built the historic decision to throw wide open its doorways to foreign tourists in 2019, two entrepreneurs were previously putting the finishing touches to a organization program that they hoped would take their high-end footwear manufacturer to new heights.
Muneera Al Tamimi from Saudi Arabia and Mohammed Kazim from the UAE launched Tamashee Knowledge in 2018, a good venture that gives guided tours to spots found in the Arabian Peninsula.
The plan was to showcase little-known but culturally rich elements of the region, and hyperlink it back again to their traditionally rooted footwear brand, Tamashee.
“We created our company by redeveloping the original sandals of Arabia and reintroducing them found in a contemporary context. Therefore every collection was themed on principles around the Arabian Peninsula that were forgotten or was not highlighted enough,” Kazim explains.
“As we were creating these collections and researching and traveling, people started out asking us where we were from the pictures we posted, and wanted to be a part of us. That’s how Tamashee Experience was born.”
Taif Rose Event and beyond
Their first trip was to the Taif Rose Festival in the city of Taif in the Makkah Province of Saudi Arabia in April 2018. Known for its rose farms and year-round moderate weather, Taif is the country’s unofficial summer months capital and proudly described by locals as “the town of roses”.
Kazim says their tours are deliberately curated to vary from typical tourist trails. “We take good thing about the contacts we produce whenever we do our analysis. When we go visit a tribe and spend period with them and live with them, they begin trusting us and available their doors to us.
"That offers us an advantage over most guiding companies who conduct sightseeing,” he says. “We actually take persons into the households, and our site visitors learn first-hand from their website.”
Another essential requirement of the tours is making sure the locals reap the huge benefits, as well, says Al Tamimi. “We wished to create a sustainable source of income for these villages. So when they realised we weren't there to take advantage of them, they were even more welcoming,” she says.
“In the beginning, it was a bit strange to allow them to possess outsiders hear their stories, see what they do and how they live. But after they exposed, their faces simply glowed if they saw people hence interested and intrigued with their life-style.”
Al Jawf goes back to the Stone Age
The pair have conducted a lot more than 14 trips with Tamashee Experience, including tours in Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE. Their subsequent one, to Al Jawf in the north of Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, February 3, will be their third in the province.
On the border of Jordan, Al Jawf is usually believed to be one of the oldest inhabited places in the Arabian Peninsula and is well known for its olive farms and historic archaeological sites dating back to the Stone Age.
“Think lavender fields and essential olive oil. It’s seriously interesting to start to see the relationship between the tribes there because it’s so near to Jordan. You’ll satisfy a Saudi, but you’ll listen to Jordanian,” Al Tamimi says.
While their initially trip in 2018, with 15 people, was composed mainly of GCC visitors, the group has become more diverse because the lifting of visa limitations in Saudi Arabia, says Kazim. And the numbers are steadily growing.
For discerning travellers only
“We've Americans, Romanians and all sorts of nationalities on our trips, besides those from the GCC,” he says. “There are no nationality constraints, so long as they happen to be allowed to travel to the regions we’re travelling to. And we've translators if indeed they don’t speak Arabic.”
One of the biggest factors in the victory of these excursions is their strict vetting process for participants, says Al Tamimi. “It’s rare, but we filter people if we get out they’re not really arriving for the cultural knowledge,” she says.
“We also do a background check only to make certain they are aligned with the rest of the people found in the group. This creates the trip extra rewarding.”
Kazim says: “Our orientation is essential. We interview persons and give them rigid dos and don’ts, how exactly to act and what things to declare, because each tribe could have unique cultures and norms.
“For example, there is one place we visited very near to Makkah, a place called Bilad Tuareg. There, it’s deemed rude if a female shows her face. Thus when women include us, we tell them the same thing and desire them to participate the experience.
“When the tribes find that people only bring persons who respect their recommendations and culture, and abide by it, then they are even even more open to welcoming us. Generally, Arabs are known for their hospitality. Once they perceive respect from you, they open up everything they possess for you.”
Source: www.thenationalnews.com
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