October 16th - Travel to the Middle East
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 16 October 2023
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Judging from my inbox, there are growing concern about visits to Jordan, Egypt and other locations in the Arab and wider Islamic world. My view: if the Foreign Office says it is safe enough to go there, then there is no reason to cancel.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Monday the 16th of October. |
| 0:09.1 | And like everyone, I guess, I'm looking at the unfolding humanitarian crisis in the Middle East with grave concern. |
| 0:18.9 | This, of course, began with the Hamas assault on Israel nine days ago. |
| 0:24.6 | It also raises a lot of questions about travel to the whole region, not to Israel, which is on the foreign office no-go list, and any visit for touristic purposes would be completely inappropriate at the |
| 0:41.0 | moment but on nearby countries and even countries which aren't particularly nearby and |
| 0:47.1 | I've had a whole series of questions over the weekend with people concerned about this and therefore |
| 0:52.6 | I wanted to tackle that. Let's start with Jordan, |
| 0:58.1 | which shares a long border with Israel. Question here, we are planning to travel, cancel our |
| 1:06.0 | trip to Jordan for three weeks time. How likely is that the Foreign Office will issue a warning about |
| 1:12.8 | going there? Well, at present, the Foreign Office warns against travelling to within three |
| 1:18.8 | kilometres of the border with Syria. You're not going to be there. The main tourist sites are a long |
| 1:25.4 | way away from that. |
| 1:33.6 | And the Foreign Office believes that Jordan is sufficiently safe for British visitors. |
| 1:35.5 | I would not hesitate to go there. |
| 1:37.9 | I've been there, I'm glad to say many times. |
| 1:48.7 | To the capital Amman, to the tourists at sites of Jorash, north of Amman the Dead Sea to Petra the extraordinary rock cut city to Wadi Rum in the desert and to the seaside resort of Akaba Jordan is fascinating |
| 1:55.8 | welcoming and my only concern there is road safety. Jordan has a fatality rate four to five times |
| 2:05.6 | worse than the UK. My most recent journey between Amman and Akaba, which is the only route with |
| 2:11.7 | domestic flights, I flew rather than trust to the roads. So at the moment, there is no reason not to travel there. |
| 2:22.4 | And if you cancel now, while the Foreign Office says it's safe enough to visit Jordan, |
| 2:28.1 | you will lose most or all of your money. |
| 2:31.3 | And that applies even if the Foreign office subsequently advises against travel. |
... |
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