Culture – 5 chapters
Our most recent expedition took us to Albania, a country with uncharted waters that was closed to the outside world for most of the 20th century and which is only just starting to reveal its secrets. The ‘Land of Eagles’ as it is known is allegedly peppered with smugglers and unexploded naval mines, but when we travelled to its shores we found a very different reality.
Before the black gold made some families of the Arabian peninsula immensely wealthy, nomades settled down along the southern side of the Persian Gulf and risked their lives by fishing the earliest source of wealth in the region : pearls. Today, the practice has disappeared, but the Emirates still possess one of the most fabulous pearl’s treasure in the world. Here is an investigation on a well kept secret.
The United Arab Emirates is well known for its passion for extravagant skyscrapers and constructions, its exuberance and its financial power thanks to oil and gas. The emirs even try to conceal their relatively poor nomadic tribes’ history. Along the coast, we managed to find one of the last old villages of fishermen, abandoned. It is said to be haunted…
