2017 - Insideotherplaces

2017

My Top Travel Skills (that are completely useless back home)

If you are not picking up skills on your adventures, it means you are only on holiday and not pushing the experience envelope. Hopefully, somewhere along the way you will have developed supreme self-confidence, an acute sense of direction and astute bargaining skills, all of which should come in useful once in a while when you are back home, fending off the suicidal urges of your day job. Along with these, if you have been properly immersing yourself in all…

Nine Glimpses of Lebanon

Things aren’t always what you might think they would be in Lebanon 1. The Chevrolet Camaro is a man’s car, a real man’s car. Its muscular solidity just shouts America! at you. There’s no mistaking its form for some limp wristed, feminine, European design. But this is Lebanon, not Buttfuck Tenessee and the driver isn’t a hooch swilling redneck but an immaculately dressed Muslim lady, her head a mass of impossibly elegant hijab folds, a dazzle of shimmering colour. Her…

Divided by similarities in Kurdistan

The people of Iraqi Kurdistan show us that just as much divides Kurdish people as unites them. Trying to decipher the goings on in the Kurdish regions spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran is confusing battle of acronyms: PKK, PYG, PUKD, YPG, KNC etc etc. Each region has its own jumbles of letters representing political parties and military groups, some of whose interests cross borders to link with other groups of capital letters. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they…

Annoying travel personalities No.2: The Country Counter

More shameless insults hurled at travel personalities. Given my lowly place in the nether regions of the travel blogging world I haven’t got much to lose by slagging off some of the popular heroes of the travel world, as well as some of the targets more worthy of derision. But lets start with the type of country counter most of us will probably agree are totally tedious aresewipes. Thankfully this breed is relatively rare but if you’ve spent a bit…

Who are the Yazidis?

Visiting Lalesh in Iraqi Kurdistan Some people make the headlines for all the wrong reasons, usually for doing something awful to a nice bunch of people. For others it’s only because the awful things are being done to them. Such is the fate of the Yazidis for whom persecution is so much part of their history that a list of 72 persecutions, principally carried out by the Ottomans, is an established aspect of the faith, though presumably it’s now 73…

A Syrian in Kurdistan

A brief encounter with a Syrian refugee in Kurdistan

Finding Allah in the ceilings and doors of Tunisia

If you forget to look up in Tunisian buildings you could be missing out on some spectacular craftsmanship and even the humble door often has as much, or of not more merit than what lies behind it. In these days of mass production and ruthless efficiency it’s easy to forget that once, people put love and pride into everyday things in a way that is often, now lost, even for many who can afford it. For Muslim craftsmen there is…

Travel blogger or Israeli assassin?

As a middle-aged white man it’s not often that I get the honour of a spot of racial profiling but one of the joys of travel is that you get to stand out from the crowd and at times attract a lot of unwarranted attention, instead of being only notable as just another lanky, speccy git back home. Possessing the aforementioned profile of middle-aged white man in Tunisia is altogether quite a different proposition to any Arab in the reverse…

Forgotten dreams in Tunisia

The hopes born of the Tunisian revolution seem distant memories now You’ll struggle to find many Tunisians with a good word to say about their government these days. In fact, in five weeks in the country I found precisely none. Students, taxi drivers, businessmen, builders, beggars and more, all had varying tales of dissatisfaction, often bordering on despair of their leaders. Corrupt and self-serving was the general theme of the complaints that have left many in a slump, resigned to…

Bored shitless in Morocco

How can you be bored with Morocco? I hear you say. It’s got ancient medinas pulsing with a myriad of sights, sounds and smells; mountain peaks and precipitous canyons; sweeping desert dunes and sun drenched surf; ancient history and modern nightlife; you can even get a beer if you really want one. Many people would quite justifiably demand far less of an ideal holiday destination, but I am not really an ideal holiday destination kind of guy, as regular readers…

Year: 2017

My Top Travel Skills (that are completely useless back home)

Like this:

Nine Glimpses of Lebanon

Like this:

Divided by similarities in Kurdistan

Like this:

Annoying travel personalities No.2: The Country Counter

Like this:

Who are the Yazidis?

Like this:

A Syrian in Kurdistan

Like this:

Finding Allah in the ceilings and doors of Tunisia

Like this:

Travel blogger or Israeli assassin?

Like this:

Forgotten dreams in Tunisia

Like this:

Bored shitless in Morocco

Like this:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Like Us On Facebook

Follow me on Twitter

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Like Us On Facebook

Follow me on Twitter