Saudi Arabia: Buraidah – Date Market
Besides the world’s largest camel market, Buraidah also is home to the world’s largest date market (note the “date” you get in match.com, but the “date” you get from palm trees and eat with the Arabic coffee). Know as the Date City, it’s here where the farmers from all over the region come for the seasonal market in August-September – the region has more than 7 million date palm trees, the highest concentration among all the regions in Saudi Arabia. As a whole, the country produces 1.3 million tons of dates per year from 28 million palm trees of over 40 varieties, accounting for over 15% of the global production. And while November wasn’t a high season when the entire Date City area just explodes with dates, we still got to see and sample a lot of dates and chat with farmers pushing their sweet produce.
