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Leaving Lebanon (part two)
Returning back to Beirut under a heavy cloud of defeat, the cold, stark reality of my predicament set in. The road to Jordan was now firmly closed and any glimmer of hope in hopping onto a container ship to Egypt had faded days ago after going on a wild goose chase from one shipping company to the next to see if any of them would accept me and the bike as ‘cargo’, all to no avail. My situation was such that I was effectively blackaded by land and sea. The irony of it all was that it was self-imposed. Robert Burns was spot on when he wrote that ‘the best…
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Leaving Lebanon (part one)
Book a taxi to Jordan; check. Reserve one night’s stay in advance at the International Youth Hostel in Amman; check. Inform British Embassy and close friends of travel plans; check. Withdraw enough dollars to pay for car, visas and a little extra to oil the wheels of officialdom (if required); check. Register with the Foreign Office’s LOCATE service and consult latest travel advice; check. Discount official travel advice and get the latest perspective from a range of trusted local sources; check. Stock up on enough food and water to keep the taxi driver watered and fed for the journey; check. Purchase some Lebanese Cafe Najjar (with ground cardamom) for a…
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Bowed but Never Broken
There are about 4m citizens living in Lebanon (the last census was conducted in 1932 but hasn’t been revisited due to sectarian sensitivities) and a sizeable diaspora approximating 15-20m depending on who you ask. Largely as a result of the Lebanese tradition of traveling and its geographical position as a ‘gateway’ between the Middle East and Europe, Lebanon has one of the largest expatriate communities in the world per capita with more citizens living outside the country than are resident. But for those that do decide to stay (or have no choice), the majority choose to live in Beirut. The city is chic, beautiful, dirty, noisy, ugly, fragrant, fast, and…
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Air Travel Killed the Shipping Star
Okay, I admit it. I’ve reached a regional impasse. And I’ll continue to remain in this geographical cul-de-sac until I work out an exit strategy that doesn’t involve cycling straight into a popular uprising on the one side and a brutal state apparatus crackdown on the other. Whilst I stand in solidarity with Syrians everywhere who are striving (often with their lives) to throw off the yoke of forty years of dictatorship; the fact that the UK have been helping to train military personnel loyal to the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad does not help my cause in securing a safe passage to the Jordanian border, a mere 160km away. Falling…
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Fast and Furious
Negotiating the chaotic bumper-to-bumper traffic of Tripoli in a vain search for a hostel shocked me into the feeling that I had been grabbed by the scruff of my neck and pulled through a proverbial Lebanese bush backwards. I must have had the stunned look of a rabbit caught between the headlights because a Swedish chap of Lebanese descent called Nasser – who had recognised the EU ‘halo’ of stars on my mudguard – pulled up in his 4×4 to insist on subsidising my night’s accommodation. This was followed shortly by a pit stop of fresh carrot juice prepared by a kindly roadside vendor who refused payment. Yet again, random…
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A Lebanese Welcome
Reverse parking a 10,000 tonne vessel is clearly not for the feint-heated when it comes to docking in the industrial Port of Tripoli (not to be confused with Libya!). Think more Camel Lairds shipping yard in Birkenhead cum-fishing jetty bristling with vast cranes and pulley systems than your average looking ferry terminal. It took a good hour for the captain to turn the boat round and slowly manoeuvre it to within a lifebuoys throw of the dockside. Finally, two tugboats – freshly painted in the colours of the Lebanese flag (green, white and red) – came to the captain’s aid and gently nudged the ferry between two huge container ships…