A 38-year-old father from Izmir has just shown what a family trip can look like when you ditch the airport entirely. Onur Şafak Çelik and his seven-year-old son, Özgür Ulaş, rode a motorcycle roughly 7,000 kilometres (about 4,350 miles) from the Kemalpaşa district of Izmir in western Türkiye all the way to Saudi Arabia — to perform Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage to Mecca.

They left home on Oct. 3 and rolled into Saudi Arabia on Oct. 18, a fortnight on the road that took them through Syria and Jordan. Rather than treating the ride as pure transit, the pair built in sightseeing stops: in Syria they visited the Umayyad Mosque and the tomb of Saladin, and in Jordan they explored the ancient rock-cut city of Petra — places, Çelik noted, the pair had only previously read about in books.

The point of the trip, he says, was never speed. He wanted his son to encounter different cultures firsthand, and to pick up lessons in patience, trust and human solidarity that a flight to Jeddah simply couldn't teach. His son agreed with the spirit of it, describing the journey as full of adventure.

Travelling with a young child on a motorbike across three countries demands some serious logistics, and Çelik was upfront about that. His son's safety came first — the pair stopped for extra breaks whenever the boy got sleepy — and they had already done long-distance motorcycle trips together before attempting this one. Despite crossing regions often assumed to be risky, they reported no security problems anywhere along the route.

The father's hope was that visiting Islam's holy sites, especially the Kaaba in Mecca and the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, would plant a lasting affection in his son. By that measure, the trip seems to have worked: when Özgür Ulaş returned to Izmir, his schoolmates greeted him like a returning explorer.

It's a reminder for travellers that overland routes between Türkiye and the Arabian Peninsula are not only passable but rich — Damascus's Umayyad Mosque and Petra sit along the corridor, and the road itself becomes part of the pilgrimage. For anyone considering something similar, the takeaway from this pair is simple: build in rest, know your child's limits, and let the stops along the way carry as much meaning as the destination.

Story via Daily Sabah Travel.