Those of you who follow me on Instagram would have seen that nine years after driving from Dubai to Romania and back, Ana and I (along with Ethan who was not around last time) are embarking on a new adventure – driving from Dubai to Portugal.
The route will be quite different than last time, going through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Italy, San Marino, France, Andorra, Spain, Portugal and returning via Spain, Algeria (if the visa comes through in time), Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia again. Like always with these trips, there needs to be a certain flexibility when it comes to the route so let’s what the final one would be.
I have already left Dubai and I am writing this from Basra in Iraq after going fairly quickly through Saudi to get to Kuwait. Unfortunately, with the temperatures in the 50 degrees Celsius range there was not much reason to stop in Saudi. After a restful night in a hotel in Kuwait, today I crossed the Kuwait – Iraq border.
The border was much faster than I was expecting and I was through in about 90 minutes, getting to Basra early enough to still have time to out into town, enjoy a nice meal at Bait Al Kul and then have a walk around the Shatt Al Arab corniche (this is the name of the confluence between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers before they end up in the Arabian Gulf). The corniche is a nice place to get a feel for the day to day life in this part of Iraq and although the temperature was still around 40 Celsius in the evening at least it was not humid.
I will leave you with this photograph of the boats waiting for customers to board for trips up and down the river.
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