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If you drive from Hilla to Kerbala and continued vest until there is no asphalt on the road, you are in the Iraqi-Syrian desert. It looks like this.
Will you continue to follow the trail, you can expect a big surprise.
Suddenly over a small hilltop, you run into this view. It's incredible, the very first time you get the experience. Water as far you can see. An ocean? Of course not, but it is one of Iraq's desert lake, and this one is so big, that you can not see the opposite shore.
It is Razazah Lake
It saves us from some of the worst working days we have at Hilla Silos. Those days when they were operating the Silos the air in the hole gallery could be so full of dust that we could not see more than 10 m ahead. Then, that 50 km to Razazah lake become our escape route, and our imagination of the cooling lake got us to be able to continue until 3 a.m. where we could escape.
Here, it is Kurt and Azis near the lake. Azis was the only one of the Pakistanis who wanted to join us on those trip, but he never took a dip as Kurt, and I do.
Kurt to the left and I to the right. It is the only picture I have of myself from my time in Iraq.
A Desert Fort:
If you turn left in Kerbala and try to reach the opposite shore of the Razazah lake, you will still have asphalt under the wheels on till a small village named Ain Tamar. But you never get so far, because you run into a new surprising sight. "And old Fort"! And after a closer look, it turned out to be from approximately 700 AD and was an essential part of the areas trade route.
On my old Iraqi map, the real name of palaces is Ukhaidir Palace. And suddenly we are walking in the footsteps of another famous imperial Brit, Gertrude Bell, who do excavations here in the first decade of the 20th century.
See new T.E.Lawrence, and the British army used her as consulting, as they establish the border lines to the new Iraqi state in 1921 on ruins of Ottomans empire. She was educated in Oxford and flue in Persian and Arab. Impressive.
A view of what once was a closed courtyard.
Nobody doubted that it was built for defence purposes.
Kurt underneath beautiful Islamic arches, which must have been a part of a gallery.
Ukharir Palace has become world heritage since our visit in 1982, and UNESCO funds the excavation. It looks entirely different today.
Later in my life, I discovered that the fort placed on the camel route running from Palmyra and west of Razazah lake to the Persian Gulf. It built during the Umayyad Caliphate heydays in and between 661AD and 750AD. Caliphate ruled from Damascus.
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