Nick Smith’s feature ‘The Roads from Damascus’ – from the Daily Telegraph, 23rd January 2010

The Roads from Damascus

With its crusader citadels, exquisite mosques and desolate ruins, all of Syria worth is well worth a visit. Nick Smith takes to the highways

Bedouin women selling taditional woven textiles among the ruins of the ancient desert caravan city of Palmyra, Syria. Photo: Nick Smith

As the sun sets over Damascus, its last rays shine their golden light along the Street Called Straight. Lined with coffee bars, trendy boutiques and antique shops, in the early evening this part of the Old Town exudes a metropolitan air. But it’s also steeped in Syria’s religious history. At every junction there’s a mosque or a church, and as the Old Town starts to come to life, my guide tells me that this Roman road – the Via Recta – is the only thoroughfare mentioned by name in the Bible. Bound up in the story of the conversion of St Paul, the Street Called Straight is where pilgrims, travelers and the curious congregate to start exploring this exhilarating city.

By the time night has fallen, I’m sitting in a restaurant high on Mount Qasioun tucking into a mezze of humus, grilled aubergines, olives and flat bread all sloshed down with Syrian sweet white wine. I’ve been given a table at a panoramic window, where the view of the world’s oldest city is breathtaking. With no modern skyscrapers or financial district to get in the way, Damascus is an unbroken sea of green lights, each denoting one of the city’s 2,000 mosques.

The most lovely of all is the Umayyad mosque, the fourth holiest site in Islam and understandably known as the Grand Mosque of Damascus. At one time the largest building in the world, it’s famous for being the resting place of John the Baptist’s head (three other sites contest this) and the place where Jesus Christ will reappear at the end of the world. There’s the tomb of Saladin, and there are exquisite golden mosaics. But for all this grandeur, as the clouds of pigeons circulate around the great open courtyard, it’s a functioning mosque, where you can walk among hundreds of Damascenes going about their normal daily prayer.

Guiding me through Syria is Amelia Stewart, who runs a desert adventure and cultural travel company, Simoon. What with all the Christian architecture, Roman ruins and other archaeological sites, she tells me there’s plenty to keep you busy. ‘But you’ve also got to take time to soak up the landscapes, try out the fabulous Syrian restaurants and sample the local wine.’ One of the best reasons for visiting Syria, Amelia explains, is because you’re often literally tumbling over ruins, even in a fortnight ‘you can really get the flavour of the place.’

From Damascus we head for the Krac des Chevaliers, a mediaeval crusader fortress once described by T E Lawrence – Lawrence of Arabia – as ‘perhaps the best preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world.’ It’s easy to see why he was so impressed. This imposing edifice once controlled the road from Antioch to Beirut, standing as sentinel to the eastern Mediterranean, from which the occupying Christians could scour the landscape for Muslim armies mustering in the valleys below.

All too quickly, we’re heading north across broken, stony terrain deep into northern Syria, where the highlight is the Church of St Simeon Stylites. Simeon was an early Christian aesthete, who in order to remove himself from the conventions of the material world sat on top of a pillar for 37 years. Not much of the pillar remains today, but the ruins of the church, set in a pine wood in these ancient rocky hillsides is one of the more important diversions en route to Aleppo. At Syria’s second city a gargantuan citadel presides over the old town, protected by ‘murder holes’, vents above the gateways through which boiling oil was poured on to its attackers.

Almost a century ago T.E. Lawrence travelled through Syria on foot, pausing to take part in archaeological digs. He stayed in Aleppo at Baron’s before famously leaving this ‘beautiful hotel’ without paying his bill. Today, with its threadbare Turkish carpets, leather club chairs and elegantly rotating brass fans, it looks as though it’s hardly changed since Lawrence’s day. But it worked its faded charm upon Agatha Christie who wrote Murder on the Orient Express while staying here, accompanying her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan on his expeditions.

No visit to Syria can be complete without visiting the desolate, haunting ruins of the ancient caravan city of Palmyra. Only partially restored, it has an apocalyptic ‘cities in dust’ atmosphere that only increases as you wander through the broken stones at night. A Unesco-listed World Heritage Site, it’s probably unique in that you can walk among the ruins unhindered. There are no fences, guards or ‘keep out’ signs – only a photographer’s paradise as the tower tombs and arcades of pillars cast their long shadows in the pale desert sunrise.

After Palmyra it’s time to complete the circle and return to Damascus, back to the Street Called Straight, the rooftop restaurants and the atmospheric late-night bars. I decide to pay a final visit to the House of Saint Ananias, where it’s claimed, St Paul was baptized. But on my way I’m stopped by a man who asks me into his trinket shop for tea. He tells me he once played the part of St Paul in a movie version of the saint’s life. We drink glasses of sweet tea and he tells me the his story and lists the places I should visit – the Armenian Church, the Jewish quarter, the shrine of Saint George. As we say goodbye, I look ruefully at the ‘traditional damascene dagger’ he’s sold me, and wonder how much of his story is true.

Way to go

1) Simoon Travel offers an 11-day ‘Highlights of Syria’ tour. Departing 5th March 2010, starting at £2695 pp. Includes flights, transfers, accommodation, guides. For further information phone +44 207 622 6263, or www.simoontravel.com

2) bmi offers daily flights from Heathrow to Damascus. Return flights are from just £353 (economy) and £1168 (Business) including taxes. For further information visit www.flybmi.com

Nick Smith’s feature on Iran in Geographical magazine, June 2009 (full text)

A new dawn for Iran?

Ever since the Islamic Revolution in the 1970s Iran has been something of a closed book to the west. But as the election of Barack Obama as U.S. President heralds a softening of attitude towards Iran, travellers are starting to rediscover a country radically different from the image presented by the media. By Nick Smith

Sitting in a teahouse in Esfahan smoking an apple-scented ghalyan, Hassan tells me he is quietly optimistic about Iran’s future. ‘For us Persians it has been a confusing time. When America invaded Iraq, we were happy.’ Hassan seems to use the words ‘Iran’ and ‘Persia’ interchangeably, but as I get to know him better it becomes just about distinguishable that the former refers to the modern political state, and the latter to the geographical region and cultural empire he still lives in.

Hassan regards himself as informed on international issues. He’s been a shop assistant in London, a taxi driver in California, and fought in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. These days he is retired, and prefers to spend his time drinking tea and talking with the increasing numbers of foreigners who travel to see the most splendid city in Islamic Iran. At the end of the 16^th Century, Shah Abbas – the greatest influence in the creation of modern Iran – made the remote desert town of Esfahan his capital, commissioning beautiful works of art and grand architecture. Esfahan has been described for centuries by the people who live there as ‘half of the world’, and it is easy to see why.

For several mornings Hassan and I listened to news reports of the run-up to the Presidential election on an old valve radio in the teahouse in a side-street running off the Royal Square. On more than one occasion, he confided in me that his only real worry was that once America withdrew from its occupation of Iraq, it would turn the spotlight on his homeland. ‘I always believed that my enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ he said, crunching his way through a plate of saffron-flavoured sugar crystals. But for Hassan, this simplistic expression of ‘realist statecraft’ might at last be coming true, because with the subsequent inauguration of Barack Obama as America’s 44^th President, the pressure, for the moment at least, is off.

In his inaugural address in January, Obama made it clear that his foreign policy in respect of the Middle East would differ radically from that of his predecessor George W Bush. ‘To the Muslim world,’ said Obama, ‘we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.’ Less than a week later, he elaborated on this, saying: ‘My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy.’ Not so much as a whiff of the ‘axis of evil’. The Wild West rhetoric of Bush’s post 9/11 pronouncements – ‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists’ – now seems to belong to a different age.

Meanwhile, former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix has said that Obama’s inauguration raises hopes for a peaceful solution to the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme through diplomatic engagement. According to Blix: ‘Bush was the worst for treating people without respect. The policy was that the US was the good guy and they would keep order among the unruly children of the world.’ While back in February 2008, Bush was steadfastly refusing to rule out any ‘options’, his replacement will, as Blix says, ‘be more ready to enter into direct talks. We should get a much more creative and positive attitude.’ During my recent visit to Iran, I only saw one piece of evidence to suggest international relations are strained. As I drove past a heavily guarded power station on the highway between Yazd and Kashan, I saw clusters of mobile rocket launchers and gun emplacements with their sights trained north, scanning for incoming air raids from Israel.

***

Iran’s image is changing. This is happening because of the popularity of films such as ‘Persepolis’ and the trendy contemporary books such as Reading Lolita in Tehran. And although you can’t easily read Reading Lolita in Tehran in Tehran (much less Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita), the rules are starting to relax. The increasing ease with which you can travel here means that it’s becoming popular again. In the late 1960s and 1970s, Iran was the Middle East’s top tourist destination, but numbers dwindled following the overthrow of the Shah. Three decades on and the tourism industry is booming again. Statistics released by the Iranian tourism office show that the number of foreign tourists has doubled in the past three years.

‘Roughly one million tourists visited Iran in 2004,’ says Esfandiar Rahim-Mashaei, Chief of the Iran Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts and Tourism Organization (ICHHTO). Mashaei highlights the improved facilities provided to tourists and recognises the contribution electronic visas are making in simplifying the immigration procedure. To date, 250,000 e-visas have been issued, while reports of visa applications quadrupling from territories such as South Korea are becoming the norm. Iran’s ‘20-Year Vision’ document projects investment of over $32 billion in the country’s tourism sector. The document also predicts that Iran will account for two per cent of all international tourists by 2025.

One of the reasons for this is the success of the touring exhibition The Glory of Persia, which recently moved from Japan to South Korea. A dazzling exhibit of artifacts dating back to the 6th century BCE, the exhibition introduces Iranian history, culture and art to other nations. The ICHHTO, which has also recently taken major Iranian cultural exhibitions to Germany, Switzerland, Italy, France, Britain and Mexico, is now planning to set up camp in the Louvre Museum in Paris, where it is scheduled to host an exhibition in 2013.

More immediately, currently running at the British Museum is Shah Abbas: the remaking of Iran, the first major exhibition to explore the rule and legacy of Shah Abbas, Shah of Iran from 1587–1629. According to Sheila Canby, the exhibition’s curator: ‘Shah Abbas was restless, decisive, ruthless and intelligent. This exhibition will provide a rare opportunity to learn about this important ruler. Shah Abbas was a critical figure in the development of Iran and his legacy is still with us today.’

But it’s not just a question of Iran touring the world. Although independent travel in Persia is still difficult, travel companies at the more adventurous end of the spectrum are starting to turn their attention towards offering Iran as a destination for escorted travel. One such operator is Simoon Travel. Managing Director Amelia Stewart explains: ‘the reason we wanted to move into Iran was that we knew it would be so different from the much-maligned portrait painted by the Western media. We wanted to see for ourselves, and we weren’t disappointed.’

Simoon’s itinerary is based on a classic journey along an old Silk Road trading route from Shiraz north to Tehran. Enthusiasts for Robert Byron’s classic The Road to Oxiana will be familiar with the names of many of the places of archaeological and architectural interest… Persepolis, Pasargadae, Esfahan and Yazd. Those with a wider-ranging knowledge of Persian travel literature will recognise the trip as an almost exact replica of one of the legs of Michael Carroll’s ‘Travels in Old Iran’ from the 1960s, which he describes in his largely forgotten classic From a Persian Tea House. Travellers expecting a literary, cultural and archaeological feast won’t come away empty-handed: ‘One of the great things about travelling in Iran,’ says Stewart, ‘is that the people make it. They are so warm and welcoming, charming and funny. They will go out of their way to ensure your time in Iran is memorable.’

***

Many writers have tried to capture the magic of Persia. Isabella Bird, Vita Sackville-West and Freya Stark have all chipped in with their observations on subjects as diverse as the beauty of Persian gardens, traditional village weddings and descriptions of the qanats or ancient underground irrigation tunnels that deliver water from the mountains to the desert cities. Lord Curzon, the great imperialist and President of the Royal Geographical Society immediately prior to the outbreak of the Great War, wrote perhaps the most important book on the subject, Persia and the Persian Question (1892). This had such a penetrative influence that even two decades later, writers daring to comment on Persia were openly apologetic to Curzon for encroaching on his territory.

One such was W P Cresson (a fellow of the RGS) who, writing in 1908 in Persia: The Awakening East, describes his arrival in Tehran in such wonderful prose it’s worth quoting at length: ‘since daybreak we had been hoping, at every moment, to catch our first glimpse of the towers and minarets of the Persian capital. From time to time, in answer to repeated questioning, our sleepy driver would wave his whip in a comprehensive sweep that took in the whole sky-line ahead, empty of any sign of habitation except the occasional distant village of high-walled garden, and muttering a reassuring “Tahran Anja” would lapse once more into a state of blissful unconsciousness.’

Arriving in modern Tehran today is nothing like that, although the reasons for wishing to go there in the first place are probably identical. Iran ranks 7^th in the world in terms of number of UNESCO heritage sites, and knocks spots off the overcrowded commercialised mega-archaeology of Egypt, Greece and even Turkey… When you go to Persepolis today, or for that matter Pasargadae or any other of the wonderful sites of ancient archaeology, you’ll most likely find yourself on your own. As you wander around these old rocks and stones you can mentally reconstruct the scenes of Darius’s palatial splendour in his summer palaces. British-naturalised Iranian photographer and explorer Henry Dallal tells me: ‘when we were kids we all went to Persepolis on a school trip – it’s the greatest place on earth.’  

The more I traveled through Iran, the more I realised that every preconception I’d based on television news bulletins and the foreign pages of the broadsheets was almost entirely wrong. Our media insists on bombarding us with absurd clichés of rogue nuclear power reactors, public executions and starving, oppressed masses forced to eat the bark off the trees to survive. On the other hand, if you believe the romantic fiction of most guidebooks published today, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that modern Iran is awash with nightingales, pomegranates and poetry. ‘I don’t understand any of this,’ says Hassan as we embark on yet another glass of sweet tea. ‘We’ve only got one nuclear power station, and we use it for generating our domestic power. And I haven’t seen a nightingale in years. When you go home tell your friends to come and see Persia for themselves.’

 

Iran – Travel co-ordinates

Nick Smith travelled to Iran with desert and cultural specialists Simoon Travel who organise tailor-made and group tours to Persia as well as Libya, Algeria and Oman. Experienced guest lecturers often accompany the tours and groups do not exceed 15 in number. The company also works closely with schools to offer educational trips to these destinations. For a brochure call Amelia or Clare on 020 7622 6263 or visit

www.simoontravel.com

Nick Smith’s recent Daily Telegraph article on traveling through Iran (full text)

Priceless Persia

Modern Iran can provide a desert adventure with a real difference. Nick Smith spent a fortnight driving across old Persia, soaking up the ruins, mosques and bazaars

My first encounter with Iran was reading Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana, a classic that for many still defines the romance of Persia. Byron travelled to that most famous of ruined desert cities – Persepolis – and described in minute architectural detail the splendours of Iran’s great mosques in Esfahan and Yazd. Oxiana has proved so enduringly popular that Iran has become an imperative for the adventurous traveller. Anyone wishing to sample the splendours that await should pay a visit to the British Museum’s current exhibition Shah ‘Abbas: The Remaking of Iran.

As a destination Iran can match the grand scale archaeology of ancient Egypt or Jordan, the souks and bazaars of Morocco or Tunisia, or the deserts of northern Africa. And yet, unlike these tried and tested destinations, Iran is blissfully free of package tourists. You will often find that you have archaeological sites all to yourself. Sadly too many people are put off travelling through this exquisite country because of concerns over safety.

My tour of Iran started before I even got to Heathrow. As I packed I listened to Radio 4’s Excess Baggage where John McCarthy discussed Iran with Amelia Stewart of Simoon Travel, a specialist in the region. We’ve all got the wrong idea, said Amelia. These days Iran is safe for everyone. Even women? Especially women. It’s always a good idea to check the Foreign Office ‘travel advisories’ before going anywhere further afield than Spain, but there’s hardly ever any need for special caution when it comes to Iran.

By pure coincidence Amelia was to be my guide for my fortnight in Iran. We met at Tehran before flying south to Shiraz to begin our winding journey across the high salt deserts of old Persia. This ancient Iranian capital city, despite its name, no longer exports fruity red wines, but is now famous for its serene rose gardens, the imposing architecture of the Regent’s Mosque and for being home to the tombs of the great Persian poets Hafiz and Sa’di. Most tours of Iran start in Shiraz because of its proximity to Persepolis, the ruined summer capital of Darius the Great. The bas-reliefs of the procession of the tributary nations on the stairway of the Apandana are a glorious reminder of the achievements of the ancient world.

After Persepolis my tour moved to the tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam, one of the most important Achaemenian and Sasanian sites in the country. Four immense royal tombs have been hewn out of a sheer cliff face in a feat of civil engineering to rival the Pyramids at Giza. Opposite lies the Cube of Zoroaster, thought by archaeologists to be another royal tomb or fire temple. We visited more Zoroastrian sites in Yazd where a sacred flame has burned uninterrupted for 1,500 years. Just outside today’s modern city are the gruesome Towers of Silence where bodies of the dead were, until the 1970s, left exposed to the sky to be picked clean by vultures and crows.

Threading our way through the great mountainous expanse of the Dasht-e Lut desert we stopped for the night at a restored Silk Road caravanserai at Zeinoddin. Here we drank cups of tea sweetened with saffron sugar before experiencing Iranian cuisine in all its glory. A local dish called fesenjan, a type of bitter stew made with pomegranates and walnuts, is served with rice and slices of watermelon, dates, cherries, peaches and dried apples. It’s all washed down with doogh, a refreshing mint flavoured yoghurt drink.

All roads it seems lead to Isfahan, one of the great cities of the Islamic world and the capital of the founding father of modern Iran, Shah ‘Abbas. Isfahan’s Royal Square boasts the two most glorious mosques in Iran – those of Shaykh Lutfallah and Masjid-i Shah – as well as the magnificent Ali Qapu palace. For the souvenir hunter the labyrinthine bazaar sell carpets, silverware and antiques. Horse-drawn carriages take tourists on trips around the city, while side roads dotted with comfortable teahouses drift down to the river where herons and egrets fish at sunset by Isfahan’s famous bridges.

Travelling in the Islamic world requires some knowledge of the basic etiquette, but you might be surprised by how liberal day-to-day Iran can be. Iran – or Persia as you will end up calling it – is relaxed to the point of being laid back, and the people are the friendliest you will meet anywhere. Complete strangers will ply you with tea and invitations to their houses. The only thing a Westerner could ever possibly feel uncomfortable about is the feeling of being overwhelmed by the generosity of the local people.