I arranged a car and driver for a trip from Beirut up into the Chouf mountains. The road from the coast quickly entered low, but steep, mountains, heavily wooded and very green. Higher up, the hills became more mixed, sometime still green and wooded, sometimes rocky and barren. At the Chouf Cedar Reserve at Maaser […]
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The Chouf Mountains
March 13, 2010
Baalbek: Roman Grandeur
March 10, 2010
I took a shared taxi over the border from Homs to Baalbek. There was some minor confusion at Syrian passport control: I hadn’t been issued an Entry Card when I entered Syria from Turkey and the Syrian immigration officer was duly aggrieved. But I mumbled some confused apologies, my taxi driver protested on my behalf […]
Antioch
March 4, 2010
Ah, Antioch, Queen of the East! The famed Western terminus of the Silk Road! The greatest city of Roman Syria! I’ve wanted to visit it for many years. Alas, the modern city of Antakya (aka Hatay) is a pleasant provincial Turkish city, but with only glimmers of its great past. I kept a wary eye […]
STS-129 Atlantis Launch
November 7, 2009
I had bought my “Launch Transportation Ticket” for the STS-129 Space Shuttle launch within seconds of them becoming available (at 8:59:40 EST on October 20th). This ticket gets you out to the NASA Causeway, which at six miles away is as close as the general public is allowed to a shuttle launch. I got up […]
Afghanistan's Panjshir Valley
October 8, 2009
We came down through the Salang Pass from Mazar, and then drove up a surprisingly good road to the Panjshir valley. The entry to the valley is an extremely defensible narrow gorge between steep cliffs. The Panjshir Valley was the great stronghold of the mujahideen in their battle against the Soviets, and there are frequent […]
Uzbek Customs: That Personal Touch
October 4, 2009
I crossed from Tajikistan into Uzbekistan at the Tursanzade-Denau crossing, on the road from Dushanbe to Termez. The Tajik exit formalities were straightforward, taking only about 25 minutes. On the Uzbek side, the immigration formalities were easy, but customs was a little ugly. Uzbekistan has tight currency controls. If you are carrying undeclared currency, the […]
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