Saudi Arabia:

Goodbye Mecca

3 October 2014 | Living

True or False? • The house of the Prophet Mohammed’s first wife Khadijah in Mecca has been demolished and replaced by a block of toilets • The Victoria’s Secret lingerie shop in Riyadh was burnt to the ground by angry matawwa, the Saudi Arabian religious police •...

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Islamabad

27 October 2012 | Places

Before my recent trip up the Karakoram Highway through northern Pakistan to Kashgar in China I spent a day on a side trip to the Murree hill station and looking around Islamabad. On my last visit to Pakistan in early 2006 I went to the ancient Buddhist site at Taxila,...

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Dictator Style – Gaddafi & Others

26 August 2011 | Culture

◄ When I rewrote the intro to Bad Lands for a recent reprint I noted that nothing much had changed, Fidel in Cuba, Kim Jong-il in North Korea, a mess in Iraq, no driving licences for women in Saudi Arabia, the generals in Burma, everywhere you looked it was no change....

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Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad

1 May 2011 | Places

◄ The Faisaliah Tower in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The tower was designed by UK architect Sir Norman Foster and built by the bin Laden family’s construction company. After all the talk about Osama bin Laden hiding out in a cave in the unpoliced badlands along the Pakis...

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London to Australia – Aerial Views

16 November 2010 | Places

Our October trip from London to Australia was long and low so there were plenty of aerial views. Starting with our first stop on Jersey, just over an hour out of London’s Biggin Hill Airport. Jersey is one of the Channel Islands, close to the French coast, but British...

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