Born and raised in Dhahran, I thought I had seen most of the natural wonders of the Eastern kingdom from the towering dunes of the Rub’ Al Khali to the pristine reefs of the Gulf, so it was a true surprise to read the manuscript for John Pint’s Underground in Arabia. I had visited the Jabal Al Qara caves in Hofuf and knew of a few shallow holes in the jabals around Dhahran but I never suspected the scope and beauty of the caverns that existed beneath the desert, nor did anyone else.
In 1983, John Pint, an American teaching English at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM), was wandering around the flat, featureless desert north of Riyadh when he discovered a hole the size of a serving platter. Air was blowing out of the hole, the sign of a cave below. With the aid of a chisel, he and his friend Dave Peters enlarged it enough to squeeze into. Lowering themselves on a rope tied to the bumper of a truck they descended into an underground labyrinth that had never been seen before by any human. Even the Bedouin didn’t know of its existence. Thus began John’s twenty-five year quest to discover the deepest, darkest passages underground in Arabia.
