Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian
By Nitin Gairola
I have been to every country in West Asia except Iraq and Azerbaijan (but the latter is not really West Asia). I am changing that soon with a visit to Azerbaijan in early April but Iraq can now wait given the volatile situation at present, something not new to the region. But over the past two decades of the 21st century, two separate West Asias have formed – The progressive and the regressive.
A century ago, what used to be called the Middle East used to be the last non-polar region left to explore for westerners and it used to be considered an exotic and lost desert land (think Wilfred Thesiger, TE Lawrence, Gertrude Bell). However, that’s not what you see today when you visit the ultra-progressive places such as Dubai & Abu Dhabi (UAE), Qatar, Bahrain, Israel and Turkey. And it’s not just these big five developed countries, we also have the other five emirates of UAE, Oman, Jordan, Lebanon and many cities in Saudi Arabia which are either modern in terms of infrastructure or non-regressive in their thinking (relatively speaking of course). And over the past two decades of the 21st century, these have been the ones that have been the safest to visit for tourists, but sadly at the moment even they are not.
And if you think of the other nations here such as Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Iran (especially eastern Iran near Afghanistan) and Afghanistan itself – these have always been volatile, restrictive or regressive from time to time. It’s the case since the late 1970s for Iran and Afghanistan or from 2003 for Iraq, 2011 for Syria and 2014 for Yemen. There have been ‘Middle East’ red flags ever since I have been a world traveller and so I ensured that I pressed the travel button whenever I could to visit at least a small portion of these nations before common sense prevailed and got me back home without taking too many risks. Missing Iraq is a regret of course since I came really close to it, but in any case, I will visit as soon as the current situation defuses and I pray it does soon for the good of all people – there and elsewhere.
As part of my current ‘extreme destinations’ and ‘dangerous borderlands’ themes, I will be separately covering country wise experiences from West Asia, Africa and Central America and I am declaring right now that if I have to show you some of the actual scenes that I saw there, I will have to take few images from the internet. This is since in many parts I was not in a position to use my main camera or even my mobile phone. Basically, I didn’t have the courage to use either in such strict and restricted places. While I have taken lots of interesting images in the Middle East, I also have many regrets of not being able to capture certain scenes that are stuck in my mind to this day. In fact, that also tells me that if we really want to retain a memory, it doesn’t need to always be captured in frame for us to recollect it. It just needs to be an impactful moment to be a ‘forever’ memory, with or without a camera capturing the light.
So, while most of the images will be mine as they always are, wherever I will pick one representative image from the net, I will clearly call it out in the subject line. With that declared, let me continue to take you to places that can be called extreme and in some cases downright dangerous – but not if common sense is used. I say this since I have to be careful not to over-sensationalise my travels since everyone can do them. But because my goal is to visit every major desert and forest on earth (every country comes after that), there was no choice but to visit some of these extreme places which can sometimes be avoided by just landing in a country’s capital and ticking off a country (if only country counting is the objective as its for many). You can’t do that relatively easy tick-mark when it comes to a desert or a forest.
With that, let me sign off for today with a silent prayer for peace so that no place can be called dangerous. This ‘dangerous’ tag changes over time in any given geographic location, since Syria and Yemen were (relatively) safe two decades back, Iraq was three decades ago and Afghanistan, five. This ‘dangerous’ bit is also linked to your own background with respect to the country you are visiting i.e. your own nationality and even your economic reality, since the more money you have, the less risks you will need to be forced to take during your travels, in case they are to extreme locations.
I have always said that we need more ‘world travels’ and less ‘world wars’ so that many more could have a larger perspective on life. If only everyone could see how fragile and lonely this planet is and how similar we all really are. If only…
(Nitin Gairola is from Dehradun and is an extreme world traveller who has seen the natural world extensively and is often referred to as the ‘Most Travelled Indian’. He is on a quest to become the first person to travel to every major desert, forest, grassland & tundra on Earth, besides every country. Nitin has set world travel records certified by India Book of Records, has written for Lonely Planet, holds National Geographic conservation certifications and loves Bio-Geography. He is also a senior corporate executive in an MNC and in his early days, used to be a published poet as well. Join him @ www.instagram.com/ MostTravelledIndian/)
