Middle East - Anthony Ham [569]
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César Soriano Iraq
As a career journalist and former USA Today staff writer, César has worked and travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, from Beirut to Bahrain. His love affair with Iraq began in April 2003 when he took a taxi from Kuwait City to Baghdad to witness the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. He’s since returned repeatedly to cover the war and soak up the country’s legendary culture and hospitality over countless cups of sweet tea and plates of masgoof (grilled fish). His previous Lonely Planet titles include Mexico, Flightless and Colombia. When he’s not collecting passport stamps (50 countries and counting), the Washington DC native lives in London with his lovely wife, Marsha.
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LONELY PLANET AUTHORS
Why is our travel information the best in the world? It’s simple: our authors are passionate, dedicated travellers. They don’t take freebies in exchange for positive coverage so you can be sure the advice you’re given is impartial. They travel widely to all the popular spots, and off the beaten track. They don’t research using just the internet or phone. They discover new places not included in any other guidebook. They personally visit thousands of hotels, restaurants, palaces, trails, galleries, temples and more. They speak with dozens of locals every day to make sure you get the kind of insider knowledge only a local could tell you. They take pride in getting all the details right, and in telling it how it is. Think you can do it? Find out how at lonelyplanet.com.
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AMELIA THOMAS Israel & the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon
Amelia Thomas is a writer and journalist working in the Middle East, India and beyond. She has worked on numerous Lonely Planet titles, especially loves spending atmospheric nights in the Middle East’s old Victorian hotel relics, and writes regularly about the region for CNN Traveller. She has four children – aged four, three, two and six months – who enjoy tagging along on far-flung jaunts. Her book The Zoo on the Road to Nablus tells the story of the last Palestinian zoo, and she is currently working on two new books, involving a Beiruti magician, an American medicine show and a Pakistani circus.
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JENNY WALKER Jordan
Jenny Walker’s first involvement with the Middle East was as a student, collecting butterflies for her father’s book on entomology in Saudi Arabia. Convinced her mother and she were the first Western women to brew tea in the desolate interior, she returned to university to see if that were true. Her studies resulted in a dissertation on Doughty and TE Lawrence (Stirling University) and a thesis entitled Perception of the Arabic Orient (Oxford University). She has written extensively on the Middle East for Lonely Planet and, with her husband, authored Off-Road in the Sultanate of Oman. Although deeply attached to the Middle East, Jenny has travelled in 94 countries from Panama to Mongolia.
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RAFAEL WLODARKSI Egypt
After completing degrees in Marketing and Psychology in Melbourne, Rafael vowed never to use either of them and set off on a six-month around-the-world trip. Eight years and five passports later and he is yet to come home. Rafael spent most of his twenties travelling overland through the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and North and South America. He has returned to Egypt several times and has managed to cover every inch of that dusty land – from Abu Simbel to the tip of the Sinai desert. He’s currently based somewhere between San Francisco, London and Zanzibar.
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CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS
Dr Alon Talwrote the boxed text, The Dead Sea is Dying, Click here. He founded the Israel Union for Environmental Defense and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and has served as chair of Life and Environment, Israel’s umbrella group for green organisations. Professor of the Desert Ecology Department at Ben-Gurion University, he heads the Jewish National Fund’s sustainable development committee and still finds time to hike and bike around Israel