The Haramain High-Speed Rail: Stations, Journey Times, Booking

What the line connects

The Haramain High-Speed Railway is an electrified passenger line running along the western corridor of Saudi Arabia. For a pilgrim it removes the single most tiring part of a short trip: the road transfer between the two cities.

• Makkah
• Jeddah (city centre)
• King Abdulaziz International Airport, Jeddah — the arrival point for most international pilgrims
• King Abdullah Economic City
• Madinah

Journey times

The trains are designed for operating speeds up to around 300 km/h. End to end, Makkah to Madinah is a journey of roughly two and a half hours rather than the five or more that the road takes with stops.

The airport-to-Makkah leg is the one that changes a trip most: it turns a long coach transfer after a long flight into a short rail journey.

Treat every figure here as approximate. Timetables and stopping patterns vary by service and by season, and the operator is the only reliable source for the schedule on a given day.

Practical points

Three things regularly catch travellers out, none of them complicated:

• Seats sell out around peak periods. Booking ahead matters far more in Ramadan and around Hajj than at other times.
• Airport station is inside the airport complex, but allow real time to reach it with luggage after a long-haul arrival.
• Ihram is worn by many passengers travelling towards Makkah. If you intend to enter the state of ihram before boarding, plan where you will do so rather than assuming facilities at the station.

Checking before you travel

Schedules, fares and booking channels are published by the operator and change. We have deliberately not reproduced a timetable here, because a stale timetable is worse than none. The official links are below.