I have just been digging into that and right hand drive vehicles are indeed not allowed to be imported nor are motorcycles over five years old. Under 5 years and the bike should be OK. Whether this applies to a transit visa I do not know - more digging to be done.

Yip, RHD vehicles are put on the back of trucks and driven to your destination exit port on any type of visa. Immigration and customs/vehicle issues are not linked.
You get to pay a heavily inflated price for this (bigger the vehicle the more you pay) and the vehicle is security tagged to the truck so you can't just drive off the back of the truck after 10km etc

Thats how is was in 2012 anyway...

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Kiwi, 7 years around Africa. Overlanding channel:https://www.youtube.com/c/roamingyak

I was in contact with a shipping agent yesterday and they have said that they ship motorcycles to Saudi Arabia occassionally and as this is a temporary import that 5 year rule doesn’t apply. I am going to get it confirmed by another agent or two just to be on the safe side. I got the impression that if it had been a permanent import then that would have been treated differently. I forgot to ask about cars etc and RHD.

Be warned - a shipping agent makes his money from shipping your cargo. He doesn't suffer at all if you can't drive it at the other end, in fact he can charge you more to try and sort it out. Worth remembering that in a way he'll tell you anything to get his sale commission.

Unless you know for certain that you can customs clear and ride a motorbike in Saudi then I'd treat his advice along those lines. You may well end up in Saudi with your bike in the port and no way to get it out, or if your successful with that, no way to drive it in Saudi, you need the correct paperwork for all of the checkpoints, so you'll have to stick it on the back of a truck and pay to be drive to your exit point, aka a RHD drive car.

At the Saudi embassy in Khartoum they assured me many times I could drive a RHD in Saudi, but in the port in Jeddah it was very firmly a no go, I spend two nights sleeping on a park bench outside customs politely trying, and but for a slice of bad luck would have wriggled my way into doing it :-)

I know some motorcyclists had snuck through after a similar tactic a few weeks before, but that was on a technicality that was closed afterwards.

So unless you can find some recent blog posts of foreigners (I'd take that as non-Muslims btw) then I'd say it's not possible.... (if you do, please post them here...)

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Kiwi, 7 years around Africa. Overlanding channel:https://www.youtube.com/c/roamingyak

Cynical? Moi? It isn’t just you that has a healthy cynical streak and it is for that reason that I am getting second and third opinions from other sources and am trying to get some information from the Saudi authorities directly. Hopefully, if they line up, then the reality on the ground may emerge.

I realise that you are doing some good research here and sharing it, but as someone who found out a week ago that Saudi Arabia is one of the most difficult countries to tour through, you might want to listen to some of the experience on this board rather than chase 'official' information. It is not really structured, but a bit of a search on here will show you that members have many years of experience, often but not always unsuccessful, of trying to get through Saudi. The idea that the country is opening up has yet to be demonstrated.

Something that one learns when travelling outside of the 'Western' world is that official 'rules' often mean very little; it comes down to the reality on the ground, at the border. And that information comes from the experience of others.

EO

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EurasiaOverland a memoir of one quarter of a million kilometres by road through all of the Former USSR, Western and Southern Asia.

The other shipping agent has come back to me.

Firstly, even though it is a temporary import, the five year rule applies to cars and motorbikes.
Secondly the RHD bit is still there.
Third for those vehicles that are LHD and under five years old there is a 5% charge based on assessed value
Fourth, documents required are:

• Title Certificate / Car Registrations
• Saudi Arabian Standard Organization (SASO) Conformity Certificate from the country of origin
  
  SASO Conformity Certificate may be secured in locally. SASO office may require replacement or conversion to some parts of the car to meet the SASO Standard at owner’s expense. Application for the SASO Conformity Certificate may be rejected and may be required to re-export the car back to origin at owner’s expense.
  
  
• Police Clearance / de-registrations from the country of origin
• Other proofs of ownership i.e. Purchase Invoice

Stuffs my plan of going over there on my airhead.