In May I travelled to Palestine to walk on a new hiking trail there, Abraham’s Path (Masar Ibrahim al-Khalil), and to find out about opportunities for tourists to experience a Palestine not seen on the conventional Holy Land tour bus circuit. One of my stories on the trip was published today by the al-Jazeera English website.
Category: Published articles
After trips to Libya, Tunisia and Palestine this year I decided to escape the Arab uprisings and visit Norway. My grandmother was Norwegian, and we’d enjoyed family holidays there, but I hadn’t been to Bergen since I was a child. In an age of increasing homogeneity it was good to visit a place that is so distinctly – well – Norwegian. The Telegraph published my cultural guide to the city.
Jordan is the first country in the Middle East I visited, and for a number of years I led hiking trips there. So when the editor of The Spectator’s new travel supplement asked me to write a piece on adventure travel, I was happy to oblige her with a piece on walking through Jordan.
I’ve recently come back from a trip to Palestine where I was walking on a new hiking trail, Abraham’s Path, and where I stayed with a Palestinian family in the village of Kufr Malek. I was very struck by how the village women were striving to get themselves educated and into the workplace, often earning more than the men. Tourism projects, such as Abraham’s Path, were playing an important part in this.
I spoke about this rise of women in Palestinian society on the BBC World Service programme ‘From Our Own Correspondent‘ (04.40 min into the podcast) on Thursday 26 May. If you’d like to read it, the full text of my piece will shortly be available under this photo of the Bedouin sheikh (in whose tent I also stayed in Palestine).
And if you are based in the UK and want to walk on Abraham’s Path in Palestine, this company can arrange it for you. If you are not in the UK contact this organisation.
I was one of the first British travel journalists to visit Tunisia after the Jasmine Revolution. I travelled to the capital, Tunis, and to the island of Djerba off the Mediterranean coast. This is what I found.
When I was in Tunisia last week I travelled to the Libyan border at Ras Jedir, where I met some of the Tunisian volunteers helping the refugees at the vast camp there. This is the story I wrote for the Al Jazeera English website. Photos by Rama Knight.
A couple of months ago I had the unexpected opportunity to visit Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, for a couple of days. It wasn’t a city I’d ever thought of writing about before but was pleasantly surprised by what I found. Read about it in the Sunday Telegraph, and it you’re interested in going yourself, here are my recommendations for hotels, restaurants etc.
The recent unrest in the Middle East/North Africa has prompted many of the travel supplements to question whether or not it’s advisable to travel to the region. On Saturday 5th March the Guardian ran a round-up on Middle Eastern destinations, asking just that. I was asked to comment on Libya, where I’d recently travelled (a week before the uprisings there).
All material is copyright © Gail Simmons. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without the written consent of the copyright holder.
I must have written more on Aleppo than any other city. Here’s my latest, a short piece in the Sunday Telegraph (6 Feb 2011).
“On every visit, like the archaeologists before me, I discover another layer in Aleppo’s rich seam of history. This time I learn the legend of Abraham, who stopped to milk his cattle here, distributing the milk (halib) to Aleppo’s citizens, so giving the city its Arabic name: Haleb.”
All material is copyright © Gail Simmons. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without the written consent of the copyright holder.
My latest piece on the Silk Road in Syria has appeared in the Jan/Feb 2011 edition of CNN Traveller. Here’s the e-magazine (it’s on page 60).
“A deep silence settles over the city, broken only by the barking of wild dogs and the call to prayer from the minarets of Tadmor, the modern village that grew up after the Bedouin were turfed out of the ruins when the archaeologists moved in.
Like that other great desert city, Petra, Palmyra made her fortune by charging levies on the goods that passed through her gates. But the Silk Road was much more than a trade route where money changed hands. It was a meeting place where ideas were exchanged, cultures mixed and artistic influences spread.”
All material is copyright © Gail Simmons. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, by any means, is forbidden without the written consent of the copyright holder.