RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA: Every few metres someone -- a newlywed couple, a group of young girls with balloons -- stops Samar Almogren to cheer her on or flash her a thumbs-up.
It's midnight in Riyadh, and she's making her way across the city she was born and raised in, finally in the driver's seat of her own car.
Saudi Arabia's notorious ban on women driving ended on Sunday. After drinking tea and counting down the minutes, at midnight, Samar -- a TV anchor and mother-of-three -- went upstairs to kiss her four-year-old son Salloum goodnight.
She then put on a flowing white abaya, strode out of her front door, accompanied by her best friend, and walked towards a white GMC parked outside her house in the Narjiss neighbourhood in northern Riyadh.
Across the street, her neighbour had just arrived home with two bags of groceries. He paused, placed his shopping on the hood of his car, and watched her closely.
In her cateye glasses, wedge sandals and nose ring, she did not skip a beat. She smiled, climbed in, started the ignition and pulled out of her parking spot.
"I have goosebumps," she says as she turns onto the King Fahd highway, the main road in the Saudi capital.
She drives in silence for a few minutes, glancing up at the moon, then adds: "I never in my life imagined I would be driving here. On this road. Driving."
'Ready' to drive
The question of whether Saudi Arabian society is "ready" for women to drive has been hotly debated in the kingdom.
In 2013, Sheikh Saleh al-Luhaidan, a notable Saudi cleric, announced driving could damage a woman's ovaries and push the pelvis up, thus leading to birth defects.
Resistance to the end of the driving ban still resonates across some segments of society, with songs titled "You will not drive" and "No woman no drive" popping up on social media in recent weeks.
But as she drives across Riyadh, men and women stopped Samar's SUV to congratulate her and voice their support.
A group of men in their 20s, waiting for the police assessment of a minor accident, spot Samar driving by. They smile and cheer. The policeman, too, looks up and smiles.
A man in a suit, smoking on a sidewalk, applauds her loudly. A young couple walking hand-in-hand -- him in a t-shirt and jeans, her in head-to-toe black abaya and niqab -- stop to flash her a thumbs-up and a victory sign.
"I'm proud, proud, proud," says one man driving by the scene. "It feels like a holiday".
"This is the society they say is not ready for women to drive," Samar says, visibly moved.
Samar, whose youngest son was born with Down's syndrome, has already decided where she will drive the next day.
"My first trip, tomorrow, is to take Salloumi to my mother's house," she says. "And then to take my mother wherever she wants."