A 17-HOUR road trip from Baghdad to Palmyra across the Syrian desert sounds like quite an adventure for any traveller. Incredibly, this journey was taken by my husband’s grandfather, James McManus, in the 1920s when he lived in Iraq with his wife Kathleen and worked as a civil engineer.During the lockdown the family found his firsthand notes on the trip in a cupboard, along with six photos of Palmyra. This article publishes his notes.
Many other posts on Palmyra, its history, the ancient Aramaic dialect spoken there (Palmyrene), and the city's tragic reversals of fortune, which more recently seem to have been trending for the better, are here and links.
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