About 6 km from the Haram — 15–25 minutes by car, depending on the route and the time of day. Makkah is not a walking city and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What follows is what we tell every guest on the phone.
This is the drop-off you want. Off-peak it is about 15 minutes door to door.
From the tunnel entrance an escalator brings you up onto the main campus.
The escalator comes out very close to Gate 79, already inside the campus.
Return the same way. Save the tunnel entrance on your phone before you set off.
At peak times many drivers will not take the tunnel entrance. They will drop you at a different gate, outside the campus, which leaves you a walk to get in. If you ask why, you will usually be told the road is closed. Sometimes it is. Often it is simply that the tunnel is congested and leaving it costs the driver twenty minutes.
Most drivers speak little English, so there is rarely a way to discuss it in the moment. We would rather you heard this from us now than decided later that we had described the journey dishonestly. The Haram campus is enormous and has many entrances; arriving at a different one is normal, not a sign that anything has gone wrong.
Show the driver this before you set off. It removes the conversation entirely.
Airbnb measures in a straight line. Google Maps measures along the roads, and the roads here do not run straight. The same journey can read as 3 km on one and 6 km on the other. Both are correct; only one of them is a journey you can take. We quote the driving figure.
Roads around the campus close to traffic at prayer times and through the evenings. Journeys that take 15 minutes in an ordinary week can take considerably longer, and drop-off points move without notice. Leave earlier than you think you need to, and message us if you are unsure — we would rather answer at midnight than have you standing at the wrong gate.