Middle East Part 3

In 1999, I crossed the border from Turkey into Syria and spent my first night in Aleppo at a hotel with dirty, blood stained sheets, dormitory style rooms and a filthy communal squat toilet (My travelling companions were keen to pay the absolute minimum for accommodation).

Despite this, travel in Syria was very safe and the people were friendly and hospitable.  We were invited by local Kurds to a wedding celebration at a neighbourhood hall and later explored the Citadel and the Great Mosque (both damaged in the current civil war).

View from the Citadel, Aleppo

From Aleppo, we travelled on to Hama and Homs, cities battered by the horrific ongoing conflict.  From Homs we took a dilapidated 1950's taxi in torrential rain out to Krak Des Chevaliers, a Crusader castle near the Lebanese border.

Krak Des Chevaliers, Syria

Then into the desert to the ruins of Palmyra, a city first established about 4000 years ago, but with artefacts found dating to 7500 BCE.  ISIS took control of Palmyra last year, destroyed many of the sites and looted the museum before the Syrian government recaptured the city in March this year.

Tower of Elahbel, Palmyra.  Destroyed in August 2015.

Palmyra, Syria

At the time (1999) I remember thinking how precarious these ruins were to earthquakes.  Little did I know that people would want to intentionally destroy them.  The physical destruction pales however, when compared to the human.  Palmyra's retired 81 year old antiquities chief Khaled Al-Assad was tortured for a month, then beheaded because he would not reveal the location of antiquities hidden from the conflict.

Palmyra, Syria

Middle East Part 2

While travelling across Turkey towards Syria, we stopped in Cappadocia.  Towns like Goreme and Nevsehir are carved out of the surrounding soft volcanic rock.

The region was a refuge for people fleeing political turmoil right back to Roman times.  Then, it was Christians fleeing Roman persecution.  The area has many churches built into caves.

Currently there are about 2,700,000 Syrian refugees living in Turkey, compared with about 600,000 in Germany and less than 10,000 registered in the United Kingdom.

Middle East Part 1

In 1999 I travelled through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt on busses, boats and trains.  In Turkey, the lira was suffering severe inflation and I became a millionaire for the first time.  

One million Turkish lira was worth about NZ$10, although this had to be re-calculated daily over the month I was there.  It has since been re-denominated by removing six zeros.  Turkey was a pleasant and relatively safe country to travel through, with friendly people and some spectacular scenery.