Traditionally, the Bedouin livelihood primarily involved the herding of sheep, goats, and camels that provided meat, milk products, and wool. We did not know that Saudis traditionally import camels from North Africa. And because of the combination of disease, drought, and political...
We spent a few days in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, the capital and largest city of Saudi Arabia, located in the center of the an-Nafud desert. It is home to Saudi Arabia’s best museum, a World Heritage Site related to the Kingdom’s Genesis story, and some of the...
Today morning, we refilled our fresh water tank with the great help of Bangladeshi workers taking care of the park at Qaryat Al Ulya. After that, we drove nearly a whole day on a much shorter road, 550, to Riyadh. Unfortunately, there was not much to see except some lovely landscapes...
Ras al-Khafji is a town on the border between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It lies in what was, before 1970, the Saudi Arabian–Kuwaiti neutral zone. It was pretty easy to cross the border. On the Kuwaiti side, we just stamped the passport and CPD and left the border within minutes. On Saudi...
After lengthy procedures at the border (see below), we arrived in the capital of Kuwait. The city lies on the southern shore of Kuwait Bay of the Persian Gulf. City was founded at the beginning of the 18th century by a group of families who migrated to the coast from the interior of the...
The Imam Ali Mosque, also called the Old Mosque, is the first mosque built in Basra. It was founded around 635 during the era of the second Caliph Umar at Basra’s outskirt right before the city’s conquest. Initially, the building was built from palm canes, but a fire later...
One of our last stops in Iraq, because the immigration refused to extend our 30 days visa, was the principal port of Iraq – Basra. The city is situated on the western bank of the Shaṭṭ Al-ʿArab (the waterway formed by the union of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) at its exit from...
The Mesopotamian marshes, also called the Iraqi marshlands, are one of the most famous wetlands in the world and one of the most beautiful places in Iraq. It’s a huge swamp area located on the floodplains of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, bound by the cities of Basra, Nasiriyah, Amarah...
The police escort brought us to Ur – an important city of ancient southern Mesopotamia, situated about 225 kilometers southeast of the site of Babylon and about 16 kilometers west of the present bed of the Euphrates River. In antiquity, the river ran much closer to the city; the...
Today we drove through the countryside from Najaf to Uruk. The road was not so bad, and many parts were newly paved. There were also fewer checkpoints than usual, so we drove a bit faster than expected. After the visit to Uruk, we stopped at a little village on the banks of the Eufrat...