In mid-February, Floyd County Attorney
Virginia Barrow Harman and her friend,
former Rome Circuit Judge Tambra Colston,
decided to take the trip of a lifetime together.
From Feb.16 to March 2, the two made their
way from Istanbul, Turkey to the ancient cities
of Egypt. The friends had quite the adventure,
from visiting a Turkish cafe where they ate
hummus and watched a whirling dervish to
getting lost on the way to a Nubian village after
a very unsettling camel ride.
Harman and Colston left just as the pandemic
began taking over the world, but they were
careful in their travels even early on.
“We had surgical masks, lots of hand sanitizer
and were distancing as best we could,” Harman
said.
The two were screened for COVID-19 once
when they arrived in Cairo from Istanbul.
“Just the next week, those cruising the Nile
were greatly impacted and f lights in and out
of Egypt began to be cancelled or delayed,”
Harman said.
When they arrived home, they went into a
two-week quarantine period before the national
emergency took effect and the country went
into lockdown.
Nevertheless, Harman and Colston wouldn’t
change a thing about their adventures in the
ancient world. And in the following pages
they share stunning images with the readers
of Rome Life magazine – images from a most
unforgettable trip.
While Virginia has been riding horses all her life, she found riding the
camels pretty difficult. “These crazy camels were HARD to ride! Big
swinging gaits over monster sand dunes and/or along a tiny trail high
above the Nile with a sheer drop of at least 100-150 feet!” she said.
While riding to a Nubian Village, their 12-year-old guide was not taking it
slow and they ended up having to dismount a ways away from their stop.
Built in 537 A.D., the Hagia
Sophia was originally a
church before the Ottoman
Empire took over and
converted it into a mosque in
the 1450s.
Cover photo: A camel
rests peacefully at sunset
after trekking through
the Egyptian sands. The
animals are the best mode
of transportation through
the shifting sands and
are perfectly suited to the
harsh desert environment.