Syrian bazaar      Esfahan

Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Iran are in the news for all the wrong reasons. Starting in Beirut, I unravelled a picture quite different from the news stories as I followed a winding route via the Euphrates, the Caucasus and the Valleys of the Assassins to finish eventually on the Persian Gulf. I met a spectacular variety of people – Druze, Maronites, Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Azeris and both Shi’ite and Sunni Iranians – and to my surprise I found families and whole communities working together to survive the harsh climate and political strife.

     Kurdish separatist      City of Qom

Iraq was fascinating of course, but it was the people of Iran who made the trip unforgettable. They must be the most warm and generous in the world – for days on end I was hardly allowed to buy any food or drink. Worryingly I managed to get arrested in the holy city of Qom, but was let off and continued south through the desert to Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf, a rocky no-man’s-land that hasn’t changed much since Marco Polo was there in 1271. Marco Polo had been intending to take a local boat to India, but the boats looked so unseaworthy that he turned north and went overland to China instead. Have Qeshm Islanders got to grips with boatbuilding since then? Come to a talk and find out!

                      Gulf coast woman      Qeshm Island boatyard