Guy in the Sky in Saudi Arabia: from Khaybar to Hegra

This page describes the confirmed adventures in that episode. For films that are already published with a watch link and transcript, start on the Adventure TV shows page.

The confirmed adventures

Camel racing

Camel racing is one of the Arabian Peninsula’s most distinctive sports: fast, technical and deeply rooted in local culture. The Saudi Arabia episode includes camel racing among its adventures. Paris has also explored the sport on screen in the United Arab Emirates, in the Guy in Dubai episode Women’s camel racing. The Saudi sequence belongs to this later country-by-country series rather than to that Dubai film.

A helicopter flight over the ancient volcanoes of Khaybar

Khaybar sits among one of Arabia’s great volcanic fields, a dark harra of ancient cones and lava. The episode includes a helicopter flight over those volcanoes — a way of seeing a landscape that is difficult to grasp from the ground. The flight is one confirmed adventure, not a touring route, and it sits alongside time spent on Khaybar’s history rather than replacing it.

Khaybar’s history and fort

Khaybar is an ancient oasis with a long and layered past, known for its fort and for the stories that have gathered around it. The episode takes in that history and the fort itself, so the volcanic landscape is paired with the human one: who lived here, what the stronghold meant, and how the oasis held its place in the wider region.

Tayma

Tayma is another of northwest Arabia’s historic oasis towns, a name that appears in ancient records and in modern archaeology. The episode includes Tayma among its stops. The confirmed fact is that the adventure is part of the film; this page does not invent what was found in any particular trench or which local voices appear on camera.

Hot air ballooning over Hegra

Hegra, in the AlUla region, is one of Saudi Arabia’s most striking archaeological landscapes: a sandstone plain marked by monumental tombs. The episode includes hot air ballooning over Hegra, seeing that carved horizon from the air. Paris has ballooned over desert landscapes on screen before, in the Guy in Dubai film The Arabian desert by hot air balloon. The Hegra flight belongs to this Saudi episode and to AlUla’s own topography.

The tombs of Hegra

On the ground, the episode takes in the tombs of Hegra — the Nabataean necropolis also known as Al-Hijr, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a counterpart, in the public imagination, to Petra. The façades cut into the rock are the point of the visit: a monumental funerary landscape in the desert, not a backdrop for a keynote. He filmed in AlUla; he has not given a speaking engagement there.

An archaeology lab with AlUla’s ancient artefacts

Away from the tombs, the episode includes work in an archaeology lab with AlUla’s ancient artefacts. That is the close-up counterpart to the landscape sequences: objects cleaned, studied and placed in context by the people who look after them. Again, the confirmed fact is the setting — a lab, and AlUla’s artefacts — not a catalogue of individual pieces invented for this page.

The library of Ikmah

Jabal Ikmah, often described as an open-air library, is a sandstone site in the AlUla area covered with inscriptions left over centuries. The episode includes the library of Ikmah. It is a place you read as much as you walk: names, prayers and records cut into rock, a reminder that this valley has been written on for a very long time.

Dadan

Dadan was an ancient capital in the AlUla valley, the centre of the Dadanite and later Lihyanite kingdoms that controlled this oasis long before later empires arrived. The episode includes Dadan among its archaeological adventures, setting the better-known tombs of Hegra beside an older urban story in the same region.

Picking dates

AlUla is an oasis as well as an archaeological landscape, and date palms are part of how the place has fed itself. The episode includes picking dates — a practical, seasonal piece of oasis life rather than another monument. It keeps the film from treating the region only as a ruin.

Desert horse riding

The last of the confirmed adventures is desert horse riding. After volcanoes, forts, inscriptions and tombs, the episode returns to movement through the landscape itself. It is listed here because it is part of the film, not because a wider activity list has been assumed around it.

From the screen to The Grit Code

Adventures like these feed the keynote. The Grit Code, Paris’s talk on grit and mindset, uses film from his expeditions and television work so a room sees the same storyteller they may already know from Guy in Dubai or from the Pacific row. 39 Days to Paradise is his full-feature documentary about that 2023 crossing with the Brothers N Oars crew — 39 days, 4 hours and 28 minutes, 4,800 km, more than £150,000 raised for marine conservation — and it sits alongside the series work rather than replacing it.

Formats for organisers include a 45 to 60 minute in-person keynote, a 30 to 45 minute virtual session, a Grit Deconstruction workshop of 90 minutes to half a day, and a role as event host or MC. Past speaking clients include Nokia, DHL, Kraft Heinz, IHG, Dubai Airports, Expo 2020, COP28 and the UN Tourism General Assembly.

See also Adventure TV shows · Adventures in Ireland · Pacific Row · The Grit Code · speaking

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