We arrived at night in a small Arab state (population 1,6 mil) situated in a bay on the southwestern coast of the Persian Gulf. It is an archipelago consisting of Bahrain Island and some 30 smaller islands. Bahrain has only small petroleum stores in one of the world’s top oil...
It is a group of more than 170 coral islands in the Red Sea located 40 kilometers off the coast of Jazan. The climate in the Farasan archipelago is characterized by a long hot season (April–October) and a short, mild one (November–March). We had a bearable average temperature of 36°C with...
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...
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 border in Kalar is located just behind the city. At the first Kurdish border on Road 4, they told us that they would not allow us to cross, and they sent us over the bridge to another border checkpoint. They just controlled passports there (with our Federal Iraq visa) and warned us...
Our next stop was Al-Sulaymāniyyah, a city in northeastern Iraq in the Kurdistan region close to the Iranian border. The town lies on the Tānjarō River and the lower slopes of the Azmar Dāgh range. It experiences severe temperature extremes in summer and winter. While economic and...
In Erbil, we exchanged money (500 EUR / 803000 IQD) and took a diesel at our favorite North Light Oil station (1350 IQD / liter). Then we started our long scenic drive through one of the most beautiful regions of Kurdistan. We drove around Koya, surrounded by the Bawaji and Haibat Sultan...
After some research and heavy thinking, we drove to Mosul in northwestern Iraq. From its original site on the western bank of the Tigris River, the modern city expanded to the eastern bank and now encircles the ruins of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. Probably built on the site of...
We spent a few days in Erbil, one of the most ancient cities in the world, dating back at least to 2300 BC. Erbil has long been an important trade center, and It has been inhabited, over the millennia, by the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Mongols, and Ottoman Turks. It was already an ancient...