A year on the road

Today, March 2, but one year ago, I flew from Mexico to China and started this second round-the-world trip. I crossed Asia from East to West following the Silk Road, perceived the growing anger in China’s Uyghur inhabitants, resisted repeated police abuse in Kyrgyzstan, climbed ships stranded on dunes in the dissapeared Aral sea in Uzbekistan, witnessed a Green Revolution in Iran, sneaked into a closed military zone in a thoroughly destroyed city in Nagorno-Karabakh, survived a car race on a narrow mountain road in the Greater Caucasus, wrote a book in Barcelona, talked to a former Kurdish fighter in Turkey, got a Muslim name in Şanlıurfa (just the name), attended Friday noon prayers in Damascus’ Umayyad mosque, listened to foreign female domestic workers who had been enslaved in Lebanon, enjoyed tea with Bedouins in Palmyra, walked the ghostly buffer zone in Cyprus, sensed the hopeless hatred in Jerusalem, interviewed Palestinian hiphoppers in Ramallah, got lost in Petra, watched a solar eclipse and a volcanic eruption, and met great men and gorillas in the Heart of Darkness (Congo), felt the sadness of the genocide in Rwanda, spoke to a pious Christian pastor who wants to kill gay people in Uganda, and came to Kenya to visit old friends.

12 months on the road…

Wadi Rum’s Bedouins

I was happy to find that Bedouins from (stunning!) Wadi Rum, in Jordan’s desert, run the tourism business themselves, efficiently and keeping their good manners, kindness and hospitality tradition. The only “but” is that a few of them are starting to replicate the hostile/predating attitude towards Western women that show men elsewhere in the region. Luckily, it seems that the majority are as nice as we’d all heard.

Petra

I spent from dawn ’till dusk wandering by the ancient Nabatean city of Petra (Jordan), looking for the carvers of the mountain’s traces. Tomorrow, I’ll go there again. And later, the Bedouin desert of Wadi Rum!