Middle East

Choose your country of interest.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The Middle East has historically been a very exotic destination for travel. The Persian Empire, and in particular the city of Baghdad, is the stuff of lore and fables such as Aladdin, Arabian Nights, and the Prince of Persia, which are as much a part of our popular culture as Robin Hood, Gladiator, and The King’s Speech.

From Yemen to Turkey, eastward to Iran, and westward through Northern Africa, the Middle East offers many exciting destinations…some more dangerously exciting (Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan in 2012) than pleasantly exciting (Turkey, Lebanon, U.A.E.). The borders of this region have changed over the years and in some cases are debatable (Turkey, Egypt and other Northern African countries) and the general rule of thumb has been to consider those countries where Arabic is a major language to be part of the Middle East, but this is misleading, and the general consensus is that predominant Middle Eastern languages include Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Aramaic, Kurdish, Turkish, Azerbaijani, French, and Greek. So those are the languages you may want to brush up on prior to a trip to this land of one thousand nights. سفر بی خطر !