I wish the cities were farther apart too. Ideally, it would take two days of HARD riding with no interuptions to get from one gate to another, three days at a decent pace. Yes, this does indeed require rest stops. Hi, settlements, ruins, villages, etc. Yes, it does require either longer RPTs or successive days of travel. Hello, interaction.
Alternately, a stop gap measure is lowering movement points on both PCs and NPCs, including mounts. We can already walk a stupid amount of distance in the desert without stopping. However, this solution would hurt playability, I think.
So the ideal solution would be a remapping of the sections of the world between Nak, Luirs, the Tablelands, and Tuluk. You could leave those areas alone and redo the world mass around them.