A ship carrying thick black bitumen, the same stuff found in Canada’s tar sands, sank off the coast of Oman on Sunday and its contents are now floating on the Gulf of Oman – about 40km east of the capital Muscat.
It takes some perseverance to get to Siwa, which lies just east of Libya. Either a long bus or car ride from Cairo, the journey is worth every dust spec, every extra freckle from the sun, and every mile of desert scenery.
When the call went out Mars One might have expected a few dozen people would be willing to accept a suicide mission to a dead planet. Instead, they were overwhelmed with more than 80,000 applicants including at least a dozen from the Middle East.
From a €17 pad in Sharm Sheikh to a €61 room on Gaza Beach and a cave home in Israel, AirBnB is used widely across the Middle East, but the San Francisco-based startup ran into a glitch recently which could mean trouble for the rest of the world.
Ice hotels are fairly commonplace in northern countries where temperatures regularly fall below freezing, but that didn’t stop the Sharaf Group from opening an ice lounge in the middle of the desert.
It’s Earth Day, which means you will see at least 100 stories in your Facebook and Twitter feeds that will list the many ways that you can become a better earthly citizen. And most of them are valid. Yet I yearned to find a more meaningful way to honor the day, so this year I […]
Eating at unique restaurants around the world is just one of the perks of a traveler’s life, but these experiences are always more fun when shared with our readers – especially when it involves subterranean spaces, that brought to mind these 700 year old cave homes in Iran. Thought to be up to 180,000 years […]
At 7am on Tuesday, a frightful explosion rocked Luxor, where ancient Egyptian antiquities draw scores of tourists each year. The blast that engulfed a hot air balloon in mid air was heard and felt several kilometers away. One Egyptian and 18 foreign tourists are said to have died and the Civil Aviation Minister told Reuters […]
A surge of round-the-world cyclists have emerged in the last few years as touring gear has improved and borders have become more fluid (for certain passport holders.) Two South African men cycled to Mecca, and a pair of American women traveled the Silk Road to support trans-boundary conservation efforts. But these adventures are not without […]
Taskurgan is an unforgiving place. Located at 10,140 feet in the Pamir mountain range on the borders of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, close to Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan, this small autonomous Kashgar Prefecture county in Xinjiang, China is cold, the winters are long, and food is hard to come by. But out of such a place emerged a fascinating […]
This is the first time celestial navigation has been seen in insects but the scientists believe it is common.
Just two hour’s drive east of Dubai, the Al Hayl Fort or Palace paints a succinct picture of Emirati life before artificial islands and enormous skyscrapers became “normal.” Located in a wadi among the Hajar mountains, the remarkable earthen compound was built in 1932 by then ruler of Fujairah Sheikh Abdullah Bin Hamdan. It’s a […]
With Christmas just around the corner, hordes of European and English visitors will skip across the Mediterranean for a fast, cheap holiday in beautiful Morocco. Many will fly into Fez to explore one of the oldest medinas in the Arab world, others will ride camels into the desert sunset, while more intrepid travelers will head […]
Take everything you ever learned about Iran and banish it from your mind. Do it. Do it right now. Because this country is far more interesting than mainstream papers would have you believe. Boasting one of the world’s oldest continuing civilizations and a trove of architectural, cultural, historical and natural treasures, not to mention some […]
It might seem like I haven’t picked up an atlas in a while since Green Prophet is devoted to Middle Eastern issues, but this story about a Brazilian beekeeper and his appropriately-suited helper was just too sweet not to share. After all, donkeys are essential to thousands of residents from Morocco to Yemen, and beekeepers from […]