About this Site

OVERVIEW
Carolyn McIntyre will travel from the Moroccan City of Tangiers through 46 countries as she attempts to recreate an epic journey made 700 years ago by the famed Islamic scholar and traveler Ibn Battuta.

Along the way she will visit:
Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Palestinian Territories, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Oman, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Russia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Italy, Spain, Mali, Mauritania, Niger.

Carolyn McIntyre

Arabist, Middle East political analyst and award-winning expedition creator to Asia, Carolyn McIntyre has over three decades of living, working and traveling in the Middle East. A native of Scotland, she headed the Middle Eastern and South-East Asian program for San Francisco-based Geographic Expeditions for eight years, but in 2006 exchanged her desk for the open road as a tour leader and professional nomad as she fulfills a long-held dream of retracing the epic journey of the great 14th century Arab traveler Ibn Battuta. A Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society, she has traveled extensively worldwide, and her interests besides pouring over old maps and reading travel journals, are Islamic architecture and medieval Islam. When not on the trail of Ibn Battuta or leading trips for GeoEx, Carolyn lives in Sana'a in Yemen in a tower house in the Old City.

Ibn Battuta
Born in Tangier, Morocco in 1304, Ibn Battuta began his 29-year epic journey in 1325. He originally set out to perform the Haj in Mecca, but when he arrived at the Red Sea he found all boats had been sunk as the result of a local insurrection and he was unable to travel further. Unwilling to return home without completing the Haj, he traveled back to Cairo and then crossed the northern Sinai to join the Haj caravan in Damascus the following year. This completed, innate curiosity and insatiable wanderlust took over (he had by now confessed to wishing "to travel through the earth"), and instead of returning home, he traveled 75,000 miles throughout the Islamic World. In today's world this covers 44 countries. His desire to traverse its entirety never wavered and despite occasional and sometimes severe adversity, he succeeded. On his eventual return to Morocco in 1354, where he became a jurist, he dictated his rihla, or travels, to a scribe. His writings languished until 1839, when the French found a manuscript in Algeria. Hailed as the 'Marco Polo of the East', his record of life in 14th century Turkey, East Africa and the Malabar Coast of India remain the most extensive on record.

Join Me

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 2009. Click on the links to learn more about each amazing trip or contact Geographic Expeditions 1-800-777-8183

Upcoming trips

September 16-October 8, 2009 - 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 10-31, 2009 – Treasures of Persia (Iran)

November 9-25 Mali and Ghana

Dec 5-17 Vietnam and Cambodia

My Mission

The Mission
Using the journey of a 14th century Moroccan who traveled throughout
the entire Islamic world of his time as the inspiration and starting
point, I will set out alone through the Islamic world of the
21st century. Meeting and talking to people who live there and using
each region's history, culture, art, architecture, food, music, and
traditions, I will emphasize the commonality we share as humans
regardless of race, color or religion. I will present an honest and
insightful look at the lives and role(s) of women and will establish
myself as a source of information for those wishing to learn more
about the region.