Category: Middle East & Africa 2009

From the Syrian oasis settlement of Palmyra (known locally as Tadmur) I faced 260km of empty desert to Damascus. Resisting the temptation to turn left for Baghdad, I pedalled furiously for two days, with only a couple of French motorbike tourists breaking the monotony, and arrived in the outskirts of Damascus early in the morning on the third day.

I didn’t really feel like getting lost and stressed in a big city so soon after leaving Istanbul. There was nothing of particular interest to me there; I knew I would find another cosmopolitan environment to contrast the simple, conservative living I’d encountered in the countryside, and I am not in the habit of sightseeing for the sake of it, in fact I generally avoid tourist areas like the plague. Maybe when I’m older and my knees have disintegrated I’ll have more reason to follow the well-worn trails, but not right now! 

A while back I posted on the merits of vegetarianism. While not becoming a strict veggie, I decided that drastically cutting down my meat intake was probably a good thing, having the bonus effect of making occasional meaty treats more enjoyable. I said I was looking forward to eating a kebab for 50 pence without feeling guilty afterwards. And I’ve just had that kebab in Aleppo, a historical city in the north of Syria. 

Facebook has managed to almost entirely replace email as a form of electronic communication amongst friends. While I dislike the immense waste of human energy that is poured into it, I decided to use it to conduct a small experiment. I would allow my Facebook friends one chance to directly affect my life in the midst of this enormous virtual shouting match.

Should I: a) Wait 6 days for a guaranteed lift aboard an articulated lorry heading across Europe from Kettering to Istanbul, or b) get up, shoulder my bag, walk out of the door, stick out my thumb, and repeat until Turkey?