Places That Became Unsafe or Safe for Tourists in the 2010s

------ is the sort of place that's hard to dislike. It's a relaxed, comparatively green and uncluttered city

Divers might spend a week or two in the laid-back resort of Dahab, while more adventurous souls could have explored the Western Desert, a region of dunes and oasis towns, such as Siwa

----- stands in splendid isolation on a bluff overlooking a long, lazy bend of the turbid River Tigris. Approach by air and the city appears as an oasis amidst the sun-bleached fields, crazed basalt lava flows and deep gorges of upper Mesopotamia. It's an ancient landscape, one where early man first gathered, then learned to cultivate wild grasses and pulses. The city itself dates back at least 5000 years

The October heat, though impressive, is not oppressive and with the harvest in, the souks are burgeoning with fresh fruit. It also happens to be the season of weddings, so in every other village there are tented feasts, sword dances and processions of warriors in their finest

It has a cheerful, sprawling capital, and the towns of Ségou, where colonial buildings line streets planted with shading trees, and Djenné, home to the world's largest mud structure. Wading ankle-deep in Saharan sand through winding, mud-walled streets, we found a place cocooned in its past

We saw no signs of the fear engendered by living in a police state, nor the hostility to Westerners some of us had been expecting. On the contrary, the country's long isolation has preserved a certain innocence, a readiness to help and a wistful curiosity about foreigners

 

 

A place where pagan tribes still prosper; where marijuana grows wild and common as daisies; where, in cities, women regularly forgo the hijab or headscarf; and where every part of a truck serves as a seat – even the bumper

Half of our queue at the new international airport was made up of young people with backpacks and baseball caps. We joined squads of cowled parties in black ponchos tramping off to visit all 17 of the recommended viewing points and then bussed south towards Hwange National Park

Until 2015, the UK Foreign Office advised Britons against all but essential travel to the whole of -----. Its decision to lift that warning helped the country attract a record 7.3 million visitors in 2018 – up from 2.94 million in 2010, making it one of the decade's fastest-growing travel destinations

While its reputation has once again been sullied by the ongoing persecution of the Rohingya, it has tiptoed towards democracy since then, and last year tourist numbers leapt to 3.55 million – an increase of 349 per cent from 2010