Not always solo.
When I'm not going solo I lead a number of trips to Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, below are the trips I have planned for 2010. Click on the links to learn more about each amazing trip or contact Geographic Expeditions 1-800-777-8183
Planned Departures for 2010
Dates are 'in country' and do not reflect traveling times to and from.
March 22-April 7 - Libya
Libya is a heart- and eyeful of a country. Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Arabs, and nature itself all did their bit for posterity, gracing this happily reopened land with five UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
The Mediterranean coastal sites of Sabratha and Leptis Magna are undoubtedly among the finest Roman ruins in world, while the Greek-founded cities of Apollonia and Cyrene are magnificent in haunting ruin. The adobe border town of Ghadames, long an important stop astride the great trans-Saharan caravan routes, provides a charming and intriguing glimpse of how traditional architecture effectively tamed the relentless desert heat. But the mighty Sahara also reveals tantalizing, movie-set perfect, palm-fringed oases, and the stunning, striated limestone escarpments and cliffs of the Jebel Akakus, sandblasted for eons into fantastical shapes.
April 11-30 - Khanates of Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan)
Before the Bolsheviks dragooned them into the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the khanates of Central Asia were some of the most despotic, hidden, and utterly fascinating parts of the planet. People were driven half mad with desire to see places like Samarkand and Bukhara, which still reverberate to the harsh but compelling drumbeat of their
history.
In its just-under three weeks Khanates packs in a tremendous lot of old-fashioned travel romance. We’re reminded once more of William Hazlitt’s insight: “In traveling we visit names as well as places.” So, suffice for the moment—before you call us for our detailed and expansive itinerary—names that raise the pulse and race the brain: Ashkhabad, Khiva, Tashkent, Ferghana, Osh, and on and on. But this writer can’t forgo short tributes to two of his favorite earthly spots: Samarkand—whose Registan Lord Curzon called “the noblest public square in the world,” and to which we travel, in the words of James
Elroy Flecker, “on a golden road . . . for lust of knowing what should not be known”—and glorious Bukhara, from which, the old saying goes, “the light ascends to heaven.”
September 16-October 6 The Silk Road Across the Turugart Pass (China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan)
We take great joy in creating thematically booming trips like this. The Great Silk Road Across the Turugart Pass ties together whole passels of civilizations, epochs, and sceneries. And it tells a story, the grand tale of one of humankind’s great arteries of trade and culture. Anchored at its ends by Beijing and Tashkent, capital of what used to be Soviet (and before that, Russian) Central Asia (at least three major themes right there, from the Mongols to the Great Game to Marx), this epic journey traverses the heart of Asia, following one of the Road’s major branches. It skirts deserts (New Frontier Province’s Taklamakan is perhaps the world’s fiercest), lopes over great mountains (cutting the Pamir Knot’s northern strand, the Tien Shan Mountains), and crosses rare borders (the Sino-Kyrgyz frontier at 12,300-foot Turugart Pass, which GeoEx pioneered some years ago).
The roster of cities and sights we visit is bracingly exotic: Dunhuang’s Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, Urumchi (the most landlocked place on earth), Kashgar, Samarkand, Bukhara, Uzbekistan, and Kristina’s still-little-visited Kyrgyz Republic. As one of our leading Silk Roaders, Kristina Tuohey, notes, “Much has been said of the history- laden mystique of China’s west and the jewels of Uzbekistan, but Kyrgyzstan is an unexpected highlight. Its grand landscapes, its broad valleys, its impressive mountains, its deep red canyons, and its welcoming folks are a great travel secret.”
October 8-21 - Syria
Still off the beaten track for most world travelers, Syria is rich in exquisite ancient wonders, extraordinary scenery, and a people renowned for friendly and open hospitality.
Our travelers roam Damascus, the oldest continuously inhabited city on earth, a great metropolis bountifully bequeathed with exquisite mosques and mausoleums. We explore Krak de Chevaliers, an imposing Crusader fortress that T.E. Lawrence considered “the finest castle in the world” and one of the most perfect examples of medieval defensive architecture (Peter Wilshire of the Times of London had a less pragmatic take. He called it the “model for every sandcastle ever built.”) We meander in the suq at Aleppo (where Murder on the Orient Express begins), one of the greatest marketplaces in the Middle East. We admire the Roman and Byzantine wonders of Apamea and the walled city of Resafa (favorite stomping grounds of Harun al-Rashid of The Thousand and One Nights). And we’re awestruck by one of the grandest ancient sites in the world, the forest of colonnades at Palmyra, which led the great Arabist Gertrude Bell to “wonder if the wide world
presents a more singular landscape.”
October 31-November 11 - Oman
Our trips explore Oman’s capital Muscat, surely the Persian Gulf’s most delightful city (its famed gold suq is perhaps the best in the Middle East.) We explore the turtle nesting sands of Ras al Hadd on the Arabian Sea and the intriguing walled town of Sur. We drive through forest-clad gorges nestled in the foothills of Jebel Akhdar (the Green Mountains) and wander its ancient cliff-top villages. And we go for a rollicking and grand drive to Wahiba Sands, whose majestic dunes form the eastern edge of the fabled Empty Quarter—a scene that feels conjured by Scheherazade herself.
December 3-19 - Saudi Arabia
n 1916 the British Arabist Gertrude Bell paid tribute to Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud. “He is splendid to look at,” she wrote, “one of the most striking personalities I have ever encountered…he combines his qualities as a soldier with a grasp of statehood which is yet more highly prized.”
And such a statehood ibn Saud grasped—and boldly gave his name to! (It is, after all, the only country in the world named for a family - a family still very much in charge.) As pivotal and intriguing as it is, Saudi Arabia has been until recently very carefully closed to non-business and civilian travel. As that changes, we’re able to take a look at the realities of a country which offers far more than oceans of sand (as heart strikingly wondrous as they are). Saudi Arabia’s unexpected green highlands, its sometimes bustling and sometimes sleepy ports, and its glass-sheathed modern buildings, rising “in optimistic thrust” from the desert, are all eye-opening facets of an important and intriguing travel destination.
