Temple of Artemis, Jerash Jerash and Umm Qais, in the north of Jordan, were one of 10 regional centers for the Roman empire during the first centuries AD. As such, under the names of Gerasa…
Anyone who was raised in an Abrahamic religion or has some familiarity with Western literature knows the stories… Stories in the Bible or Koran about such places and peoples as Jericho, Bethany where Jesus was…
Amman, the capital of Jordan is both ancient and new. The site was occupied back to the Neolithic age, some 10,000 years ago, then flourished under the biblical era Ammonites some 2 to 3000 years…
Just a two-hour ferry ride from Djibouti City across the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea is the coastal fishing village of Obock. This was the old capital of Djibouti, when the French occupied…
After the remarkable landscape of Lac Abbe (see post), we figured we could not add much surprising to our Djibouti trip. Not so, due to the country’s remarkable highs (at the Foret du Day) and…
After Ethiopia, we shifted to diminutive Djibouti. After visiting the capital for a while (see post), our first trip within the country was Lac Abbe. At the Petites Cheminees, Lac Abbe We drove through a…
Djibouti City, the country’s capital, occupies a long peninsula with a history of split personalities. When the French made it their capital at the end of the 19th century (as French Somaliland), the town maintained…
Of the 80 or so tribes that live in the Ethiopian countryside, those in the far south - the Oromia region that overlaps Kenya – are both distant from the highlands capital and often remote…
With a surprising altitude range of 2500 to 4300 meters (8300 to 14000 feet) in the south of Ethiopia, the circular assemblage of Bale Mountains encompasses diverse ecologies and wildlife. Along its sprawling lower valleys,…
The highlands of northern Ethiopia were the seat of empire in the Horn of Africa for nearly 3000 years, a crossroads for many cultures and far-flung trade routes. And the reputed home of the Ark…