Blog
-
March14
The Uan Muhuggia Mummy
The mysteries of the ancients has always fascinated us – from the logic-defying Stone Henge to the grand mystery of the Pyramids. The Egyptian mummies were once thought to be the oldest preserved mummies in the world – until the Black Mummy was found in Libya, a mummy so well preserved, it amazed scientists and archaelogists.
Uan Muhuggiag is a place in central libyan Sahara, and the name of the mummy of a small boy found there in 1958 by Professor Fabrizio Mori. The mummy displays a highly sophisticated mummification technique, and at around 5,500 years old is older than any comparable Ancient Egyptian mummy.
The culture that produced the mummy were cattle herders, and occupied much of North Africa, at a time when the Sahara was a savannah. Possible links with later Egyptian culture have also been found, including the representation in rock art of dog-headed human figures (resembling Anubis), and a type of pottery decoration later found in the southern Nile valley.
The mummy is currently on display at the Assaraya Alhamra Museum (gallery 4) in Tripoli.
Read More -
March5
White Bride of the Mediterranean
TRIPOLI – The White Bride of the Mediterranean
Tripoli, a city of 2,5 million, is a pleasant port in North Africa also known as the White Bride of the Mediterranean with a walled medieval Medina. Ottoman houses stand shoulder to shoulder with faded Italian colonial buildings. Easily the most dominant feature of Tripoli is the Red Castle, Assai al-Hamra, which sits on the northern promontory. Next to the Castle is Green Square, an area cleared for political rallies during World War ll. All the main shopping and business streets radiate from here.
Explore the souks and alleyways of the old city (Medina) on foot. Visitors will find the best shopping around here and also historical mosques, khans (inns) houses and hammams. Bus and taxi stations are south west of the old city.
What else to do when staying in Tripoli
Tripoli’s National Jamahiriya Museum (entrance on Green Square) houses the best collection of classical art in North Africa.
Citadel -Tripoli Castle
Visit a Hammam – there are two Hammams in the old City – Hammam Draghut next door to the Draghut Mosque and Hammam al-Heygha, near Souk al-Attara. (They operate a rota for men and women).
Beaches – The beaches are on the Western side of the city with changing facilities and cafes.
There is plenty more to do in Tripoli depending on what the visitor prefers to do.
Read More -
February26
The Timeless Desert
“And all around is the Desert; a corner of the mournful Kingdom of Sand.”
Pierre Loti, French Novelist and Naval Officer
The desert has a strong relationship with spiritual quests. The desert itself invokes images of a vast expanse, where man may be alone to commune with the higher power and forces of nature. For the Sufi poet Rumi, poetry about the desert was an allegory for a spiritual quest of the Soul journeying into the infinite.
The Libyan Desert (Arabic: الصحراء الليبية) is located in the northern and eastern part of the Sahara Desert. It occupies Egypt west of the Nile (the Egyptian portion is thus called the Western Desert), eastern Libya and northwestern Sudan alongside the Nubian Desert. Covering an area of approximately 1,100,000 square kilometers, it extends approximately 1100 km from east to west, and 1,000 km from north to south, in about the shape of a rectangle. Like most of the Sahara, this desert is primarily sand and hamada or stony plain.The desert features a striking diversity of landscapes including mountains like Jebel Uweinat (1980m, the Gilf Kebir plateau, and sand seas as detailed below. The Libyan Desert is barely populated apart from the modern settlements in eastern Libya.
Read More -
February13
Al-Athar Restaurant
Al-Athar Restaurant ( “The Ruins”) is one of Tripoli’s most famous restaurants, and popular with tourists. It is located right behind the Marcus Aurelius arch and has a unique vibe all it’s own. The restaurant has a summer embankment surrounding Marcus Aurelius arch from three sides, and often has musical bands playing on most nights.
Eat here at least once, depending on the days you intend to spend in Tripoli. A very ambient experience,best time is the evening when the Arch is illuminated.
Menu: A classical Libyan menu. Libyan soup, small salad dish, couscous with fish or chicken, or a traditional “Tajeen”
- Specialty: popular meals (fish & meat) made on the Libyan kitchen style.
- Seating Capacity: 150 seating capacity in winter, expanded to 350 al fresco in summer.
Read More -
February5
Libyan Cuisine
Libyan cuisine culture is a mixture of Arabic and Mediterranean, with a strong Italian influence. Italy’s legacy from the days when Libya was an Italian colony can be seen in the popularity of pasta on its menus, particularly macaroni.
A famous local dish is couscous (kuskisee in Arabic), which is a boiled cereal (traditionally millet, now fairly often wheat) used as a base for meat and potatoes. The meat is usually lamb, but chicken is served occasionally. Sharba is a highly-spiced Libyan soup. Bazin, a local speciality is a hard paste, made from barley, salt and water.
Fish is in abundance in Libya, and fresh fish is available every day and night. Therefore it is no surprise that fish dishes are also very popular with Libyans and foreigners alike.
An evening’s visit to one of the great number of restaurants at the so-called Il-Hofra, is an experience no visitor to Libya should miss.
Each and every restaurant at Il-Hof-ra displays a great variety of fish on large trays in front of the restaurant. The customer picks out the fish he fancies, checks the price and then sits at a table inside the restaurant to be served the mouth-watering savoury fish dishes grilled on charcoal normally at the entrance to the restaurant.
Libyans also seem to have a sweet tooth. Everybody seems to like desert, not just after meals. Libyans have all sorts of traditional desert dishes, one of the most popular being the Asida, usually eaten on Eid day. It consists of a dough eaten with melted butter and honey.
Fruit, mostly oranges, is also in abundance in Libya and foreigners are usually impressed by its large size, juiciness and deliciousness.
Libyans prefer to eat at home, except on Fridays, when they enjoy family beachside picnics, or go to restaurants. Many of the eating places have sections specially reserved for family parties.
For the most part, foreigners use restaurants and cafes during the other days of the week. Menus have become more sophisticated and foreigners eating out can find a great variety of mainly Libyan and Middle Eastern cuisine.
International cuisine is also available in the newly opened restaurants and large hotels.
I accordance with the laws of Islam all alcoholic drink is banned in Libya. Bottled mineral wat-er is however widely consumed, as are various soft drinks and international brands of non-alcoholic beer.
Fruit juices, particularly orange, can be bought in season from street stalls. Then there’s Libyan tea, which is a thick beverage served in a small glass, often accompanied by mint or peanuts.
Coffee is also very popular and high-quality brands from Europe and South America are easily accessible. A cup of tea or coffee is normally followed by a glass of water, again, influenced by years of Italian occupation of Libya in the last century.
This article originally appeared in The Tripoli Post.
Read More -
January29
Tripoli’s Gurgi Mosque
Named for Youssef Gurgi, a Georgian captive who rose to become a naval commander of Tripoli, the heavily Turkish-influenced Gurgi Mosque was built by the Ottomans in 1833 and its delightful and unique floral design motifs and unusual design makes it a popular attraction for tourists.
Although quite small compared to other mosques, the Gurgi Mosque stands out for its interior – the most beautiful in the city. Intricate stone carvings imported from Morocco, marble from Italy, and ceramic work from Tunisia and exquisite adornments and attention to detail make this mosque a very fascinating place to visit.
It has an octagonal minaret, which is unusual for Tripoli. Although the mosque is quite small in size, it still has a large number of domes – 16 to be exact.Gurgi and his family are interred in the antechamber of the mosque.
Read More -
January27
Libya Interactive Map – COMING SOON
You’ve asked for it, and we listened. An interactive, detailed, Libya Map based on Google Maps API. It will be added to the site in the “Discover Libya” section very soon – likely within the end of next week, we’ll keep everyone updated and update the post once it’s up.
Google Maps is one of the best open solutions and offers unrivaled versatility – The API provides a number of utilities for manipulating maps and adding content to the map through a variety of services ( like Panoramio and Wikipedia), resulting in a robust and useful map application.
All major Libyan cities and towns can be easily located and will be marked, as well as archaeological sites and points of interest. Panoramio and Wikipedia links will also be available, as well as the useful GPS Coordinates feature, so any point can be pinpointed and GPS coordinates gathered.
Read More -
January21
Tripoli Fish Market
The Libyan capital, Tripoli, is famous among many Mediterranean cities for the high quality of various species of fish and the low price to buy it. For those who are always seeking the right fish dish and enjoy buying a just-out-of-the Mediterranean water fish a new market, right at the edge of the water near the Old City, has just been opened. It is just across the road from the Arch of Marcus Aurelius, a great tourist site.
On September 6, the sixth day of the holy month of Ramadan a number of Libyan top officials and a large crowd of people gathered on the site for the official opening of the building housing the new fish market. As it turns out, the building is very modern, equipped with equipped with new facilities that make it very attractive for the customers and visitors. The place is also air-conditioned and represents a treat to all those who buy and sell fish.
The market has a total of 48 vendors behind neatly arranged stalls lined up and divided into two halls to serve the public. A number of vendors line the place leaving enough space for fish buyers to easily move around and to pick the fresh fish from any one of the stalls or just to enjoy walking around breathing in the smell of fresh Mediterranean fish.
During the early hours of the morning, fishermen pour in with their catch of the day. Then the fish is neatly displayed and a bargain can always be had, not just at a reasonable, but even better, at a rather cheap price, particularly as each and every vendor tries his best to sell his stock before the end of the day.
Having bought your favourite fish, you can step forward to the fishing cleaning area where a number of young Libyans will be waiting to professionally clean and cut them out for you at just one dinar per kilo.
If one is interested in the fish wholesale market, this is only a few metres away. The wholesale market, also part of the newly established fish market complex. It opens its doors as early as 4.30 a.m. and if stock is still available, it won’t close until 9.00 p.m.
The new fish market is equipped with three huge icemakers that provide ice to vendors on demand and free of charge. It also has eight large cooling containers that are used as storage along with a water desalination station especially built for the fish market.
The fish market also has a medical observation unit with a laboratory so tests could be run to run on fish being sold in the market at different times of the day.
According to the manager of the market Mr. Ali Embarak, the Tripoli fish market is the first of its kind in Libya. It is also the first in serious that are to be established in major Libyan costal cities in the near future.
The setting up of the Tripoli fish market is part of a public policy that pays attention to the maritime economic sector and its development in a way it can attract thousands of Libyan workers.
Mr. Sadiq Azzouz, Director of Projects at the General Authority of Maritime Wealth, said his institution is focusing on establishing a modern infrastructure for the fishing sector. He said that a number of projects are soon to commence in a number of cities on the Libyan coast.
He mentioned the rather big project for fishing industry which is being constructed in Tajoura area in the suburbs of Tripoli. The project includes a marina large enough for 400 small-sized fishing boats, 50 large fishing trawlers and 15 overseas fishing boats. He said that the objective would be able to produce 10,000 tones of fish every year and provide 4000 job opportunities for Libyan citizens.
The project also includes a training centre for potential fishermen, shopping areas, fish restaurants, coffee shops and entertainment facilities.
The founding stone for this new project to cost approximately 90 million Libyan dinars is to be laid in the next few days.
A similar project is located in Zawia, 40 km west of Tripoli. It is a part of the maritime wealth projects set up at a cost of 39 million dinars (over $30m). This project is estimated to provide more than 1000 job opportunities. It will also provide berthing places for 200 fishing units and 15 cranes.
This in addition to new fishing harbours to be constructed in Susa and Darna in the eastern part of Libya.
This article was originally published in the Tripoli Post.
Read More -
January13
Libyan Currency, Banks, and ATMS
Libyan currency is called the Libyan Dinar and is subdivided into 1,000 dirham (often abbreviated LD or LYD). It is issued by the Central Bank of Libya. Libya paper denominations are 50, 20, 10, 5, 1, 1/2, and 1/4 notes, and depict Qaddafi, Omar Mukhtar, and Libyan themes. Coin denominations (dirham) are 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 dirham and have a horseman design, and 1/2 and 1/4 dinar coins were issued in 2004 – but for practical purposes, coins are rarely used in Libya, most people using the 1/4 banknote.
In Libya, cash is definitely king — Libya is the quintessential cash society. From buying groceries to buying cars and homes with suitcases stuffed with Libyan Dinars, this is a country where plastic and credit is viewed as a curiosity. Libyans call their currency “jnii” (”jneh” in the East), and similarly to how 1,000 is called “1 G”, one thousand dinars is called a “kilo.” The currency exchange rate with the dollar is roughly one 1.23 Libyan Dinars for every U.S. Dollar. ( as of Jan.2010)
ATMS are sparsely found in Libya, most being concentrated in Tripoli in a few banks, and some hotels and upscale shops and restaurants. Visa and Mastercard are accepted cards. It would be wise to bring cash with you when traveling to Libya (EUROS or U.S. Dollars) and converting them at the airport/hotel/bank, as some ATMS may not work properly with international credit/debit cards. If you do bring your card, don’t forget to contact your credit card company beforehand and let them know you’re traveling to Libya as it may be considered unusual by your credit card company to see statements from Libya and it may be denied.
Major banks include Jamahiriya Bank, Umma Bank, Sahara Bank, and the private Bank of Commerce and Development. We recommend the latter, they seem to be the most progressive and “modern” compared to the other banks, and offer more services and professionalism, though others are catching up and modernizing rapidly.
Read More
Categories
- General (13)
- Libya Desert (4)
- Roman (3)
- Tripoli (8)
- Uncategorized (3)
Archives
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
Libya Expeditions is proudly powered by
WordPress
Entries (RSS)
and Comments (RSS).