Mt Ararat and the Mad Scot

The Middle East is not exactly a common tourist destination, but Rotorua man SEAN GILLESPIE ventured there for a glimpse of life among the guards and landmines.

In Turkey on the border with Iran and at the foot of Mt Ararat is the village Dogubayazit, otherwise known to people who can't remember such foreign names as Doggy biscuit.

Most people come here for one of two reasons; they're either on their way to or from Iran, or they're about to climb the more than 5000m Mt Ararat (twice the height of Ruapehu and about five times taller than Tarawera).

Ararat is in a military zone, so an expensive, accredited guide the government trusts is mandatory.

The steep fees ruled out this option for me and my thoughts on risking going independently were quashed when I met the Mad Scotsman.

He had just been released from jail after having been caught on the mountain illegally ... for the third time.

A resident of the village for a couple of years, he had climbed Ararat regularly.

I asked him what the view from the peak was like and he replied that he had not actually reached that far.

I was a little dumbfounded as this is supposed to be an easy climb.

"I'm on a quest!" he explained.

"Jesus! What for?" - though I could guess.

"You blasphemed three times in the last three minutes you know!"

"God, really? Oops ... sorry."

"I'm a Protestant missionary on a mission from God to find the Ark."

Mt Ararat is, of course, according to the Bible, Torah and

Koran, the final resting place for Noah's Ark.

He was quite serious but after he went into an offensive rant about Islamic deficiencies in front of some Kurdish Muslims, I doubted his mental stability.

He also told me a large earthquake was expected, pointing out that many of the locals were currently living in tents because they considered their buildings to be unsafe.

I had noticed this but had come to the conclusion that it had more to do with refugees and the proximity to Iran and Iraq.

I wrote him off as a crackpot but a couple of months later I read about him in a New Zealand newspaper article about modern investigations into the mysteries of Ararat.

There was actually an earthquake nearby shortly after.



I ran (known as Persia before 1935) is a strict Islamic State, which means alcohol, premarital sex and a bunch of other things most of us take for granted are illegal.

Dancing and having a good time are also often frowned upon.

Iran became this way in 1979 after the Shah (King of Iran 1941-1979) was overthrown and the religious leader Ayatollah Khomeini came to power after 14 years in exile.

Things were incredibly hardline. Women were not allowed to work and had very few rights.

Perhaps you've seen the movie Not Without My Daughter with Sally Field. I don't believe things were so bad, even now you can paint a pretty bad picture by being selective, but the reality isn't so glum.

Women still sit at the back of the bus, must wear a headscarf and cannot socialise as freely as men, but they also account for 60 per cent of the students at Tehran University and work as freely as they wish.

The females I met were confident and flirtatious.

A Malaysian man working with the government to promote tourism told me about how when he needed to hire an office assistant, one woman came in told him when she would work and how much he would pay her in no uncertain terms.

Sex is a different matter.

One German businessman was sentenced to death for adultery with an Iranian woman.

I just smelled the flowers without picking them.

The Government is becoming more liberal but it is not even close to keeping up with its more secular citizens.

Although it is strictly illegal, there is a thriving underground trade in alcohol and drugs. Near Tehran there is a teahouse under a bridge that is accessed only by stairwell from above.

They serve a good range of imported spirits and beers alongside the local moonshine. Should the authorities arrive, or some other "trouble makers", a warning light will change from green to red and everyone knows to throw their drinks in the river.

In Isfahan, a ten-hour train ride from Tehran, the locals' local is the petrol station.

After filling your tank with petrol, which incidentally costs 14c a litre (5c for

diesel), the guard will ask if you want water. You provide the container and he fills it up with a white spirit somewhere between vodka and wine.

Although most of the people I met were leaning Westwards, many were also very proud of their strongly Islamic state and way of being.

When flying out to Beirut in Lebanon I had the pleasure of sitting next to a Lebanese Christian woman.

While we were conversing in English the Iranian man next to her shifted away from us with an almost frightened look on his face.

He spoke in Farsi to the man next to him and hadn't expected the woman to understand him. She explained to me that he was frightened of accidentally touching her as this was against Islamic code.

Unlike on the public buses, woman may sit where they wish on the Metro train system but there are always two carriages that are reserved for women only.

Usually, most females choose to use the single sex carriages. I couldn't figure out whether it was due to the fact that they were less crowded or for religious reasons.





I arrived in Lebanon with a cold and figured I would spend my 48-hour transit visa in bed recuperating. I had already spent a week there earlier in my travels and just needed to cross the border to renew my Syrian visa.

I found myself a cosy, well-heated, four-bed dorm and made myself comfortable. I wasn't going anywhere.

However, the three other people in my room had other ideas and convinced me to venture around the corner to a jazz bar for 'just one drink'. Beirut is famous for its nightlife and despite my condition, I wanted to experience it.

Instead of jazz (unfortunately), an old guy with a white beard was playing Kenny Rogers covers. Bllaaggghhhh ... I couldn't say no when another venue was suggested.

The club we went to was in an interestingly decorated underground car park. The dark red and black interior was well complemented with open coffins converted into seats. The roof of the club was on rollers and could open for the steamier nights.

It was 1.30am and not very busy. I asked when things would get going. I was told 2am, so we settled into some coffins with our drinks and watched as at 1.55, people started coming in. At 2am the place was full. At 2.05 the dance floor was busy and at 2.15 the coffins had been closed and people, including myself, were dancing on top of them.

One of the trance tracks played had a Muslim prayer call mixed in.

I couldn't help feeling contentedly odd dancing to it on top of a coffin in the middle of the Middle East and being the only person there who looked remotely like a hippy (I hadn't shaved for a while and my clothes were getting ragged).

My head was spinning more due to illness than alcohol but it was a great night!

We got back to the hostel at dawn and I was feeling so crappy the next day that instead of getting the six-hour bus, I hired a taxi to take me all the way to Aleppo in Syria.



Q uneitra was the capital of the Syrian region bordering Israel until the 1967 war when the Israelis forced the 20,000-plus population to flee.

The Israelis systematically bulldozed all the houses and stripped the remaining mosques, churches and larger buildings of anything with the slightest value (windows, screws, doors etc).

It is now in a UN controlled zone and visiting requires a permit from the Damascus headquarters. Ghost towns fascinate me and I was eagerly anticipating seeing this place.

My travelling companion (a photographer from Slovenia) had got his permit the day before and offered to show me where the office was.

It was a Friday, and Friday is the Muslim Sunday, and to make things worse, my visa ran out that day so I had to leave the country by midnight.

The Slovene had met some UN staff the night before who gave him the name of the head staff member in Quneitra just in case he had any problems.

He suggested I just come anyway and use the head staff member's name at the checkpoints. It worked!

Three checkpoints later we were in the heart of the ghost town. The checkpoint guards were most accommodating and helpful. Unfortunately the police in the town were not so friendly.

It is required that you have an armed guard with you at all times to make sure you don't stand on any land mines or go too close to the Israeli border (and yes the Israelis have been known to shoot!).

It was apparent that they were not okay with my lack of a permit and also refused to contact the border guards who authorised my being there, so we slipped around a corner and went exploring.

The cold weather wasn't so bad in itself but the wind drilling the hail into my face was a little much - an utterly miserable day for an utterly miserable place.

A lot of the town was still standing devoid of anything that could be removed. We climbed up to the roof of a three-storey building which gave us a view of Israel, a mosque, a Christian church and miles of rubble with a few buildings still standing.

After about 10 minutes we reappeared to avoid any serious trouble with the police and after a few minutes of "debating" I was forced into the police car and driven away.

The border guards who let me through earlier gave their heartfelt apologies for their colleagues' behaviour (they should have radioed to check but just assumed I was lying) but I was so happy that I managed to get there and see it without a permit that I just didn't care.



I srael is not exactly a well-touristed country anymore. Most non-Jewish Westerners going there are activists and volunteers working with the Palestinian communities.

Typical jobs are walking kids to school when army checkpoints are involved.

Maybe you heard of the 13-year-old girl last year that got shot 22 times because her bag was falsely suspected to be carrying explosives.

Another job is to help pick fruit and olives on land that is close to Israeli settlements. The volunteer is there to stop the settlers from shooting at the Palestinians.

Most people entering the country who fit the stereotype of the volunteers have a difficult time at the Israeli-controlled borders.

Diaries get read, packs get searched thoroughly, entrance is denied or usually you just get detained for an excessive amount of time.

My experience was a lot more pleasant. While waiting for my bag, under the watchful eye of a pimply teenager with ill fitting clothes and a high powered assault rifle forever pointing in our direction, I met a Finnish man who claimed to be working for the European Commission as a funds allocator for NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations).

He was on his way to a meeting with a Palestinian group and I believed him, although I found it strange he didn't have a diplomatic passport.

He asked me where I had been and what I was doing in Israel. After we talked for five minutes, my bag was ready and we said goodbye.

At the border crossing, there were no exchange facilities and the bus driver (the only transport) would only take my US$50 note with 20 per cent commission. No thanks!

I waited for the Finnish man to come out hoping for a little help. He didn't come out.

I traded my US dollars with a Palestinian man at a more favourable rate.

A few weeks later, I met a Belgian girl who did work for the EC and was currently living in Palestine.

She said that someone in his position should have had a diplomatic passport and she hadn't heard of him. She suggested that he was probably border security subtly finding out what I was there for.

Apparently the Israelis are very paranoid (justifiably so perhaps).

When leaving the country I again requested my passport not to be stamped (you cannot enter Syria, Lebanon or Libya carrying evidence of having visited Israel and all of these places were on my list). I was made to wait for five minutes before an attractive young female approached and pleasantly interrogated me. This was certainly conducive for co-operation.



W hile in Jerusalem, I met a German doctor working with the volunteer organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). He was attending an exposition at the University of Ram Allah on the Frontiers of Citizenship for the Palestinian people. I invited myself and tagged along, going through various checkpoints and past the infamous wall being built separating Israel and the Palestinian Territories.

Although it was a very small exposition, it was informative. One screen showed a satellite map and the progressive Israeli expansion into Palestine since the 1967 war and where the wall is being built. It swallows up a huge amount of Palestinian land.

Another display had two screens and timelines showing the difference between an Israeli and a Palestinian travelling from Hebron to Nablus. The Israeli took one hour, the Palestinian five-and-a-half. The screens showed the journeys, one on a motorway and the other a succession of buses, taxis, walking over roads closed by bulldozers and dirt mounds and countless checkpoints.

The title of the exposition was Citizenship. Palestinians don't have any due to the fact that their country isn't officially a country nor is it a part of Israel.

Afterwards we tried to visit Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ram Allah. After 10 minutes of discussion with the guards we were denied entry as it was the day he was flown to France where he died two weeks later.

From the gate we had a clear view of where missiles had hit the building.

The people I met and talked to, whether Israeli or Palestinian, were interested in peace and didn't appear to suffer from hatred. It seemed to me the high level of turmoil was due to extremists on both sides.