“There’s no room here for you! Go!” the Syrian hotel clerk pointed at the door. We stood, frozen, looking through the glass-paned door at the dark streets of Damascus.

We were two women, weary about the prospect of wandering around downtown Damascus in the middle of the night. But we were also weary of price gouging. It was 1:30 AM and we’d just arrived to the city. We’d spent five hours on the Lebanese-Syrian border as one mustached, cigarette-smoking Syrian border guard after another told us our visas would be ready in an hour. Then another hour. Finally our visas were granted. After the short ride from the border, we went straight to a hotel that our Lonely Planet highly recommended… only to find that the clerk was quoting us double the price listed in the guidebook.

When we’d walked in, he’d eyed us—up and down—taking in all the signs of travel fatigue. We’d asked for a double. He quoted us 60 dollars and offered to show us the room. “This had better be an amazing room,” my travel mate, Sarah, whispered to me as we followed him up the stairs.

It wasn’t. A handful of tiny roaches were scurrying across the walls. Sarah flicked an unfamiliar bug off of a bed. “For 60 dollars a night? No way,” she said to the clerk. He shrugged, indifferent, what did he care if we were two women alone on the street?

Back downstairs, I tried to haggle with the clerk, but he repeated the same price over and over.

“But it says 30 in the guidebook,” I insisted.

“That’s an old book. Prices change,” he said with a sniff.

A European couple walked in. “Wait,” I said to them. “Are you guys staying in a double?”

“Yes,” they said hesitantly, looking at each other.

“How much are you paying?” I asked.

“Thirty,” they said.

I threw my hands up in the air and turned to the clerk.

“They’re paying in Euros,” he said.

Sarah, who speaks and reads a little bit of Arabic, spied a framed government document—an approved price list—on the wall behind him.

“Just a second,” she said. She pointed to the sign. “That says 30.”

And that’s when he kicked us out.

We went from one hotel to the next, only to be told that there were no rooms left. One clerk explained to us that October is high season in Damascus and that the hotels were full of Iranians and Europeans. She wished us luck and sent us back into the night.

(To be continued…)

It was my last day in India, and I’d just had lunch with an Indian friend. As I was walking back towards my hostel, I noticed a foreigner standing in the middle of the sidewalk—a rock in a river of pedestrian traffic. He wore raggedy khaki shorts, a green t-shirt with the collar cut out, and brown sandals. His dark curly hair was messy and the shirt was askew—one side of the collar all the way against his neck, the other falling off his shoulder. He was glistening with sweat and he looked obviously distressed.

For whatever reason, his eyes were pinned on me.

I should stop and tell you here that I have a bit of an unwritten traveler’s code I live by:
1) Whenever I’m in a group, if I see a traveler who isn’t, I invite them to join me/us.
2) If I ever see a traveler in distress, I approach them to see if they’re OK or if I can help.
3) If someone approaches me, I always try to be as friendly and helpful as possible.

But seeing this guy on the street made me hesitate. He looked like he was crazy or on drugs, or both. And I had a plane to catch that night… what if he dragged me into some sort of bizarre situation I couldn’t extricate myself from and I missed my flight?

As I approached him, I thought to myself that I had two simple choices in this situation: I can avoid him or I can be Buddha-like and karma-minded and stick to my traveler’s code.

Not that he gave me much of a choice. As I passed, he grabbed my arm and launched into his story, babbling away at me in Hebrew. I stopped him, telling him I don’t speak Hebrew and the story came in a gush of English instead: he needed to find a cheaper place to stay than the one he was in because he was almost out of money and he was sick and his girlfriend had left the day before and they’d been traveling together in India for a year and he didn’t know what to do without her and…

You get the idea.

So I took the poor guy, Amit was his name, and lead him to the Salvation Army Hostel. When we arrived there, Amit stood, wordless at the check-in counter. The clerk looked at us expectantly. I looked at Amit expectantly. Nothing.

“Do you have any beds left in the dorm?” I asked the clerk.
The clerk wobbled his head in response, a gesture that can mean a hundred different things.
“For him,” I added, pointing to Amit.
The clerk wobbled his head again and asked for Amit’s passport.

We both waited while Amit watched the air around him.

Finally, I said, “Amit, your passport, please.”
“Oh!” he snapped to attention and fished through his money belt, producing a beaten looking passport and some tattered rupees.
“Where’s your stuff?” I asked him as the clerk took down Amit’s information.
“Gone.”
“Just gone?”
“Gone,” he repeated.

I thought maybe he was gone, too.

Once Amit checked into his room, I never saw him again. But I like to think that I helped him in some way, however small. It was my duty as a fellow traveler.

What about you? Got some stories about a time you helped a traveler or a traveler helped you? I’d love to hear them…

And if you ran into Amit, let me know how he’s doing!

I recently took a two week trip to Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria.

No trip to Jordan is complete, of course, without a stop at Petra. One of the most interesting and beautiful sites in a region that is absolutely overflowing with historical sites, Petra is also one of the most picturesque. Shutterbug that I am, I got up extra early to head to Petra before the crowds did. I was in luck– the place was nearly empty and the lighting was beautiful.

And I had an “on” day with the camera– it seemed like I could do no wrong, each shot was coming out perfect. I was surprised with myself, but thankful as well, and I said a silent prayer of gratitude to the Camera Gods.

When I arrived in Beirut and started click-click-clicking away again, my memory card hit its capacity. I went into a copy place that, amongst other services, burns photos to CD. I surrendered my full memory card to them, went to breakfast with a friend, and returned an hour or so later.

“We couldn’t put all your pictures on one CD,” the guy behind the counter said, “so we burned it to DVD instead.” He handed me the full DVD and the empty memory card. No problem, right?

Apparently, there was. When I got home, I found a DVD full of blank files– the sizes were there, the names were there, but the pictures were empty. I passed the DVD to several friends– you know, tech types– and they all scratched their heads and said they’d never seen anything like it. One of them asked me if I’d taken more pictures on that same memory card. Indeed, I had. “Ooo, that’s too bad,” he said. “If you hadn’t, there is a way to recover deleted photos.”

Sigh.

As I have been mourning the loss of my pictures– and the memories they captured– I have vowed to never let this happen again. Learn from my lesson and:

1) Carry extra memory cards with you. They’re small, they’re portable. They’re relatively inexpensive. Yes, burning to CD is cheaper, but it’s better to spend a little extra on backup memory cards then to take a chance that what happened to me will happen to you.

2) Find an internet cafe and burn them to CD yourself– cutting out the middleman reduces the margin of error.

3) If you have someone burn them for you, ask to check the CD (or DVD) before you leave. Chances are, they still have your photos on their computer… and if you check the CD and find there is something wrong, you can ask them to burn it again.

4) The best bet? Don’t delete your photos from your memory cards until you get home and see them safe and sound on your computer. Fill memory card after memory card while you’re traveling AND burn to CD as a backup (double-checking the CD after you do so). This way, if anything happens to the memory card, you’re set– and if anything happens to the CD, you’re still set.

However, if both the memory card and CD fails… well, you must have offended the Camera Gods. In which case, you must appease them (and I don’t have any tips for that).

This might seem like a lot of unnecessary precautions, but it’s worth it. It’s not always possible to recover deleted photos. It’s better to be extra careful… better safe than sorry.