Dacheröden on Tour: Nadine Pungs

Spring in Saudi Arabia. A solo traveler in the kingdom of contrasts

Closed for decades, Saudi Arabia is currently undergoing an epochal change. Nadine Pungs has spent months traveling the Gulf state alone: from the port city of Jeddah to the high-tech metropolis of Riyadh, from the ancient treasury of al-Ula to the holy city of Medina, she gets to know the female side of the country in particular. She gains exclusive insights that are usually denied to male travelers. Nadine Pungs, who has already traveled to all the countries on the Persian-Arabian Gulf, knows Arabia inside out. In Saudi Arabia, she meets a feminist Koran teacher and a lesbian engineer. But she also meets a prince and a young boy who fled from neighboring Yemen. Pung tells clear-sighted and touching stories that would never appear in the news.

"Here is a woman on the move who hides nothing, not even the hardships of being a foreigner, the speechlessness, the restlessness. And who describes them in a tone that swings and reminds us what thirty silent letters can do." Andreas Altmann