My father had been transferred to Turkey and they decided to drive from Zomba to Ankara, taking a boat from Dar to Suez and then another boat to Beirut before continuing the journey by car. It was as good a way as any to get their trusty Peugeot to their new home – and Dad decided that it would be educational for me. I can’t remember agreeing with him as I do recall finding the journey incredibly boring – hours and hours spent in the back seat of the car. The only good part was the boat trip to Suez!
We left at 8:30 yesterday morning and drove 360 miles to Mzimba when I started this letter. Today we have visited two scenic beautiful places, the Vipa and the Nyika plateaux where we are now, both areas of rolling high grass-covered hills quite unique in their ways.
Today we had a horribly long trip over bad roads reaching Mbeya at 5:30 also so it is nice to be in Tanganyika again tomorrow Iringa then Mikumi for game, then we will stay for the weekend in Dar. The car has to be serviced and have a heater fixed and we catch the Africa for Port Said on Tuesday the 26th – four days in Egypt then boat to Beirut and drive from Beirut to Ankara.
From the Africa:
Well we got off on Tuesday at about 5 pm and had a good send-off as the German ambassador and wife were on board also and threw a champagne party. We are sitting with them and another very nice German wife from the Nairobi embassy but they will talk German and I get left out.
The boat is very nice but I prefer the Europa. I think certainly had a more gay trip last year. We have Abdalla with us and he is on the boat deck with three other dogs. He’s not too happy but anyway he doesn’t complain. We had the crossing on the line ceremony this morning and Tom was King Neptune which he did very well. Vicky was one of the victims and had an egg broken on her head which she loved and was thrown in the swimming pool. She spends most of the time there anyway and is having a lovely trip.
Monday we’re at Aiden and Friday Port Said, where we get off to go to Cairo. I’m not sure when we catch the ship to Beirut, but we hope to be an anchor in the middle of November. We’re both very sad to leave East Africa but I certainly hope we should be back.
We are just about to leave Port Said and I don’t know if I shall catch the mail but anyway we shall be at Beirut tomorrow morning which will probably be quicker. A truly lovely ship of about 6000 tonnes, Adriatica line built in 1959, the food is excellent also.
We had two days in Cairo and managed to see quite a lot in a short time. We have with us a young German girl from the embassy in Kampala wished on us by Mrs Schroeder, wife of Dar ambassador. The idea was we should take her to Cairo and dump her, but she’s stuck. Was flying to Beirut anyway but decided to go with us by boat and has invited herself to accompany us to Ankara. I’m amazed and amused at her temerity. We shall see if we have room – Tom not averse as you can imagine. She’s really quite something and good with V which is something.
It was really quite a nervewracking seen the car lifted on board but no mishap. Abdalla is quite at home and sleeps in our cabin.
There are about 40 passengers out of a possibility of 80. The weather in Egypt has been delightful, cool and sunny, today less sunny but pleasant. Vicky has a bad cough I think caused by too much swimming and the air-conditioned coolness. We’re both beautifully tanned but peeling gently in this dry atmosphere.
In Beirut I had a bad bout of bronchial pneumonia and was taken to the doctor. I remember feeling awful, but also buying my first pair of skis there – turquoise blue, with cable bindings and lace up boots. My father was determined to teach me to ski in Turkey – which he did!
My mother’s diary doesn’t seem to cover all the stops on our journey from Beirut to Ankara. The photos from Baalbek on the Syrian border are proof that we stopped off en route to Damascus, as I distinctly remember being told about St Paul’s conversion on that very same road (!). I cannot ever forget spending almost uncomfortable night in Krak in our hosts’ own bed – hardly a ‘room to let’ as my other euphemistically put it (see below)! It was filthy and at the age of 7, the outside long-drop loo was a challenge!
It was in the suq in Damascus that my mother bought a pair of very old Kashan carpets which were to prove a great bone of contention in my parents’ divorce and were the only things I inherited from my father, who refused to let her have them… so quite a lot of of history there. I’m looking at them both as I write this…she would be pleased that I have them at last.
On our way north we visited Byblos [up the cost from Beirut] where there are old things to see – it’s the place from which the Bible takes its name, and Tripoli [a little further north], whose bazaars are really wonderful. I wandered into a Turkish bath and was taken through various chambers to the hottest all steam and almost unbearable; the attendant most disappointed I didn’t want a bath or a massage.
After crossing the border with Syria we next made for Krak de Chevaliers, the most perfect medieval castle in existence built by the Crusaders in about the 11th or 12th centuries; but it grew late and we didn’t get there until sunset which was a frightful disappointment to me as I wanted to go there – I had waited over 20 years to visit the castle. It is high on a hill dominating the countryside and miles and miles around and visible from a vast distance.
Luckily Tom wanted to see it too so we found a nice old man who had a room to let and stayed the night, three in a bed, and eating the local food of flat uneven bread, cheese, olives, sardines and sticky dates washed down with sweet black tea in the company of the local secondary school teacher, who was bored and wanted to air his English.
Next day we visited the castle early, really splendid and in excellent presentation, vast vaults and passages, halls and storerooms, some still containing huge pots for storing grain, all bricked up together so that only the mouths could be seen.
The chapel contained a Muslim pulpit and the room used by the Grand Master was gracefully vaulted and decorated with stone roses and oak leaves. The Crusaders held out there for ages and the place was finally conquered by Saladin.
From Krak we drove to Homs and thence on to Palmyra, over 100 miles into the desert in an easterly direction. By the roadside we saw our first black Bedouin tents and herds of camel grazing. Palmyra itself suddenly appears as the road twists through rocky and sandy hills – spans of colonnades among the date palms. It is an oasis.
It was too late to do the ruins that evening so we just drove around and visited a picturesque Arab castle of the 16th century on a hill behind, which dominates the acres and acres of temples, archways, pillars and tumbled stones.
Also near is a place with numbers of tombs which are built into massive towers with several stories, each tower capable of containing several hundred bodies. We were taken around the city the next day – the Baal temple is very fine and in good condition, considering earthquakes; the semi-circular theatre also. Palmyra is surrounded on all sides by desert, though Tom says in its heyday 2000 years ago most of it was much greener.
From Palmyra we had to return to Homs and from there through Hama where there are old-style water wheels first used by the Romans for letting the water out of the Orontes to be carried away in water channels and onto Aleppo, another place I’d always wanted to visit, but it seemed like a little Cairo and though renowned for its Muslim buildings, suqs and citadel, we were rather disappointed though the suqs (markets) are really wonderful, 11 acres so they say, and all covered over by Stone vaulting. Unfortunately we had very little time to see very much, perhaps one day I’ll be able to go again.
Driving to the Turkish Frontier we turned off to visit the church built in the place where St Simon Stylities sat on a pillar for a varying number of years – I’ve heard it said between 10 and 40 and don’t know which is right. The church is in a ruined basilica, marvellously situated on rocky cliffs overlooking a wide and fertile valley – in the centre of a domed area, now taken in the plinth and part of the pillar.
It was a glorious clear day pale blue sky and the arches and walls looked simply lovely, creamy ochre in colour against the blue. We carried on across the border to spend our first night in Turkey in Antakya, the old Antioch, and on today some 350 km to Konya, passing through the Cilesian Gates on the way, now wide enough for lorries and buses to pass but in Alexander’s Day only broad enough for four soldiers abreast.
The weather cleared from drizzle and cloud thereafter and we got our first view of snow on the Taurus mountains and so on through flat plains all ploughed up and brown, almost desert in parts to Konya which is the place where the Whirling Dervishes were devised about 700 years ago. They don’t exist anymore but their mosque and monastery, now a museum, still exist and we shall go to see these tomorrow together with other sites before we leave for Ankara. I must say I shall be pleased to get there and I hope we can get accommodated quickly.
Travels with my mother 