J O R D A N

Country number 4 on the trip was the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan – a large patch of desert claimed in the scramble for territory in the Middle East, and relatively politically and economically stable given its lack of resources and small population. We arrived by air into King Hussain Airport in Amman, ready for the next part of the adventure.

L E B A N O N (part 2 – Tripoli & Baalbek)

I have directly funded political terrorism (but we’ll get to that later). Our first adventure in Lebanon outside Beirut was the ruins of Baalbek, in the Bekka valley of Eastern Lebanon. The diminutive size of Lebanon means that whilst nothing is particularly far away from anything else, even the smallest difference can offer a dramatic change in both environment, scenery and culture. Apparently in Lebanon you can wake up in the east and go skiing, then have your afternoon nap by the pool overlooking the sea in 30 degree heat, the same day.

L E B A N O N (part 1 – Beirut)

Lebanon was a bit of a weird one for me, as it is a country I knew relatively little about. For my parents and their generation, ‘Lebanon’ would always be preceded by ‘war torn’ and ‘Beiruit’ always by ‘besieged’. The only comparable I guess we have nowadays is news reports of ‘war torn Syria’, and the shelling, bombing and urban warfare shown in special correspondent reports on the BBC. Yet in 2010 (and broadly speaking now) Lebanon was a safe country to visit, and we were excited to leave Syria and experience country number 3.

S Y R I A (part 2 – Damascus)

The distance between Aleppo and Damascus is relatively short, yet the train’s estimated arrival time of 8pm suddenly, without warning or reason, became 10:30pm. The city planners were clearly on an off day when they planned Damascus train station, which is situated 15 miles from the city centre. We ended up getting in a taxi and asking to be taken to the city centre where we would work out where to sleep that night. If we thought the driving in Aleppo was bad, the driving in Damascus is something else altogether. Nothing makes your life flash before your eyes like being in the back of a Syrian taxi, in the dark, not wearing a seatbelt, doing about 70 miles per hour on the wrong side of the road, the wrong way round a roundabout, being driven by a man who is simultaneously on the phone and fiddling with the radio.

S Y R I A (part 1 – Aleppo)

Now in all honesty, our journey so far hadn’t been particularly adventurous. I mean, 2.5m British tourists visit Turkey each year, and the country is not usually referred to as a niche travel destination. It wasn’t until the 4th day of the trip that things really got interesting, as we headed toward the Turkey/Syria border. Looking back, this is now one of the most thought provoking parts of the trip. The border crossing we used has gone on to become one of the most symbolic parts of the Syrian refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of Syrians attempting to cross into Turkey to escape the civil war. Nowadays it seems impossible that two people would be able to cross over in the opposite direction, but in July 2010 we were happily in the back of a taxi waiting to cross into our second country.

T U R K E Y

Turkey was never supposed to be part of the trip itself, merely a means to an end in the global battle against flight costs. As with all journeys, it is impossible before the event itself to realise how convoluted, exhausting and thoroughly annoying any journey of any length of time can be. Sat in your bedroom at home pouring over maps and flight and train timetables it is frankly impossible to imagine the potential for trauma, especially if the kind of travel inconveniences you’re most accustomed to are rush hour on the A417 and train delays due to the British weather. Put it this way, ‘let’s fly to Istanbul and catch an overnight train to Syria’ sounds simple enough in principle, yet offers a world of unplanned adventure.

An introduction

I begin this afternoon by stating that I am not a blogger. I am, at best, a reluctant emailer, serial tweeter and regular critic of the usual uncontrolled narrative people tend to write on these sites. But I am an ardent holidaymaker and dark-tourism fanatic, so why not construct some kind of travel stream of consciousness under the umbrella of blogging? The idea behind this site is to capture some of the more interesting places I have been and things I have seen – both to resurrect them in my memory and hopefully stimulate some interest. Thus I shall begin with Syria.

In July 2010, following completion of my A-Level examinations, I decided to go traveling. However, whilst friends were excitedly planning backpacking through Thailand, Interrailing through Southern Europe or embarking on Camp America, I decided I would like to go to Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Israel. I am aware that I am writing about an event, a trip, that took place 6 years ago – that, at the time, didn’t seem like anything particularly poignant. Yet only 6 months later a series of events would unfold in the Middle East and result in a fundamental shift in regional politics still making headlines today. As such, I have decided to turn my journal/diary/plan from July 2010 into this series of blogs about my trip, and hopefully give the countries visited the credit they deserve, in light of the current political situation in the region.