In February this year I went to Libya to write about the calm (as it was then), beautiful city of Tripoli. A week after I returned the uprising began, and the hotel I was staying in, the al-Nasr Rixos, became the home – and later the focus – of the world’s media. When the journalists trapped inside had been safely freed, I wrote a story for al-Jazeera on hotels which have become synonymous with the wars, which has just been published.
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).
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