Path: Travel > Travel > Destinations > Middle East 2006
Middle East 2006
Yes, we do like the Middle East:-). Since about five years we had wanted to go to Iran. (Alas, getting Iranian visas is not exactly straightforward: when we tried first in 2003, we gave up after a few weeks after we realised that the Iranian embassy in London was bent on making this as difficult as humanly possible, even for German or French nationals — this time we used an Iran-based agency which made the whole process almost painless. They were definitely worth the small fee we had to pay.)
And then there was of course Vero's urge to visit the famous Lebanese cedars which we had seen neither during our short 2003 trip to Lebanon nor last year (we didn't go to Lebanon in 2005 at all because this was very shortly after Rafik Hariri's assassination).
Anyway, we decided to return to the region for the spring of 2006. Sure, there are so many other beautiful places on Earth but these won't run away… we think. In the event, having been to Lebanon before the troubles with Israel erupted was not a bad idea. The place will be off-limits now for a good while; what's more, during our time in Lebanon we learned quite a few things about the sinister power Hezbollah wields over Lebanese politics and society — and by extension over Israel.
Once again, we sent some emails during the trip: there are two pages with the English and French texts, respectively. We also have photos (1311 of them, to be exact) and it took us quite a while to go through the lot. However, we finally did it and here are some of the highlights, in (hopefully not too large) chronological chunks:
- Turkey 1: the first two weeks from Istanbul to the Iranian border
- Iran 1: Tabriz, Tehran, Kashan
- Iran 2: Isfahan
- Iran 3: Shiraz, Yazd
- Iran 4: the final week
- Turkey 2: the southeast from Van to the Syrian border
- Syria 1: Roman ruins and palms in Palmyra
- Syria 2: Damascus
- Syria 3: The black basalt of Bosra
- Lebanon 1: just one page? Well, it's not a big place:-)
- Syria 4: Hama, Aleppo and on to the Turkish border
- Turkey 3: Antakya, Cappadocia
- Turkey 4: more Cappadocia
- Turkey 5: Istanbul
$updated from: Middle East 2006.htxt Thu 27 Apr 2017 10:06:49 thomasl (By Thomas Lauer)$