Turkey, Syria, Jordan - summer 2010 trip

[vrecha]

Another month of LandCruising in the Near East flew past us. As usual it was full of mostly nice experiences and encounters with almost too hospitable locals. Syria was the most surprisingly positive experience as a whole. Some pictures follow ...

Beach sand near Silifke, Turkey:

Ups ...

Fresh local vegetables are being converted to evening meal ...

Crossing a sandy plato, Syria:

A view:

Sand tracks in and around Wadi Rum:

This day I woke up early enough to almost catch a sunrise:

Getting a bit local:

Kapadocia, Turkey. Last stop before 24 hr continuous drive to the place some call our home:

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Our route, red there, green back.

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Roughly 12000 km. 27 days. 3 x 2 nights in hotels (Aleppo, Aqaba, Damascus), other nights out in the wilderness wherever it suited us.

 

[TonyP]

WOW... looks like you guys had a great time

 

[Graham]

Oh my God, you guy's had such a great time.
The pictures, I am sure want all of us reading this, to 'want it to be me'

Well, I will just contend myself with the odd 'green lane' here and there.

But we hopfully will also one day, be able to show such great pictures as you have done.

Thanks for sharing.

Graham

 

[24Seven]

Thanks for showing us the photos, it looks a fantastic trip.

 

[uHu]

Grrreeaat trip. Grrreeaat car. Wonderful pix.
Very happy to hear you had a good trip.

NB
I lived in the middle east for many years, with an 80, but never went for such a trip. Covered Jordan pretty well, and pieces of Lebanon, but now I see what I have missed out on. Do you have more photos?

 

[Crispin]

Very cool pics. Wish I could...

 

[Charlie]

Good pictures. Thanks for the report.

 

[Chris]

Those pics do seem to have a really good quality about them. Very atmospheric. Nice looking cruiser too. Brooding good looks.


Chris

 

[vrecha]

Thank you for your comments. Very uplifting in these days when we try to acclimatize back to our normal routines at work. One month out does make some idealistic mess in your head ... we are following Charlie & Nina's reports and (for now only) dreaming of doing something similar ... But who knows what the time will bring.

More pics? Well, there are a few thousands of them but I'm not intending to publish them on web because even I get bored scanning through them.

There are some more at our blog, but I didn't post the address in the beginning because the articles are in Slovene language. Well, at least the pictures are multilingual ...

 

[Chris]

Speaking of Charlie and Nina, they are having auto transmission issues and have re routed through Europe to be home via a slightly shorter route. They keep losing 4th. Their car chucked all of its ATF out onto the road and we still have no idea where it came from. The main T agent over there looked it over and couldn't find any problems at all. Wouldn't have fancied that in the middle of Mongolia!

Chris

 

[uHu]

Even more good pix. Thanx.
The panoramic one at a lake (the first one in the pile) is fantastic. Where is that?

The Par King etc are nice.

 

[vrecha]

This one? (better resolution)

It's one of the crater lakes of the Nemrut Da?? vulcano above Tatvan, east Turkey.

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At the end, I cannot resist to praise our 18 year old LandCruiser. It performed absolutely marvelously. No overheating, neither from the engine nor from the auto box. There was a lot of slow driving steep uphills or in the sand where TC was doing a lot (a LOT) of work while ambient temperatures were above 45° C. And I must add everything is stock, no additional transmission cooler etc ... Just stock cold climate diesel 80, Jap import.

Though having a switch to manually lock the TC would be handy, very, very handy. Desirable addition, will probably go in that direction ...