The Orient Express was a long-distance passenger train service created in 1883 by a Belgian company, initially connecting Paris to Vienna, then Venezia, and finally Constantinople in the 1920s. Concurrently, the Ottoman Empire built the Anatolian Railway (in the 1890s), connecting Constantinople to Konya. This railway was subsequently used by the Germans, who commenced the construction of another renowned line: the Berlin-Baghdad railway, which was only completed in 1940. One can imagine that nothing more was needed to prompt me to embark on such a journey. I traversed the Silk Road in 2018, voyaging from the Middle East to East Asia. The initial leg of this odyssey required going from Paris to the Middle East, entirely eschewing air travel.

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I departed from Paris by train, commencing with Lausanne, Ljubljana, and Zagreb. While the Orient Express did not traverse these locales, a longstanding desire to explore the Balkans motivated my passage through these venerable cities. I yearned to experience the ambiance where one subtly glides from Western culture to Eastern. Traveling by train became challenging, necessitating the use of buses to reach Sarajevo, Belgrade, and Sofia. The final train of this expedition traversed from Sofia to Istanbul.

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In Turkey, my primary objective was to savor the nuances of Kurdistan. However, traversing Istanbul or Cappadocia without pausing proved untenable. Three weeks later, I entered Iraq through the autonomous Kurdistan region. At that time, Baghdad wasn't a viable option, given security considerations. Consequently, I resolved to relish the splendors of this remarkable region to the fullest.