1-I went to speak with my Professors in the University, where they could accept my idea or not, I was so afraid that they didn’t because it was something that I really wanted to do. But when I went there they liked the idea and accepted it.
2-Then I started to search for people that understand about this kind of work, writers, religious Leaders, and one person that really gave us very nice advice was Roberto Khatlab which is a writer that wrote more than sixteen books here in Lebanon, about history, religion, tourism, etc...He said to me, the first thing to do is to go to the Ministry of Tourism, then he also gave me other advices that really helped.
3-I went to the Ministry of Tourism in Lebanon with my brother Shadi and Professor Muhammad that decided that he was going to help us, and in the Ministry of Tourism I spoke with them about the Project, and about the ideas, they gave me books about the subject, a map, and some guides. Also they told me that when I finish, to came back and show what I get, because this can turn to a religious tourist guide in Lebanon, and I hope so.
4-The next step was to rent a car, my brother went to see a car and someone to drive it, because I can drive, but not that well. So he went out searching for a car, then, a very good friend brings him a car that we rent for five days, and he decided that he would drive in this journey. I was so happy, because well, that was a good start .
5-We read the guides, and the books, we study the map, and we divided the map in five parts, which are correspondent to five days that we have.
6-We tried to bring some equipment, and we prepared it to the next day, where we were going to start our journey.
7-Everyday we went from house 6:00 am, and we just returned at midnight. Because we just had five days, so we must use all hours of the day, to bring the results that we wanted. One thing that we had to pay attention all the time was about while passing by one city, making sure that nothing(any Sacred Place) was left behind, because we wouldn’t pass there again. Moreover we had to go to places with difficult access, where we had to walk a lot, sometimes in the Mountains in dangerous places, but was nice.
8-In Lebanon, some big cities are divided in small villages, every city that we passed we first went to the Municipality and to the Tourism Information office to get all information about Sacred Places and it’s location.
9-Information that we got from the governmental offices, books, guides, and researches that we did on Internet was not enough, many places were really hiden.The communication and contacts were the key to get to the Sacred Places, because many of those Sacred Places are just known by old residents and religious leaders of each village who helped a lot. No one did this work before, because we were no just showing the famous Sacred Places, but the ones that few know about.
10-When we arrived in a Sacred Place, we recorded in audio, we took photos, we shot videos, we took notes, we observed the rituals and we speak with people about the Sacred Places, its stories and about miracles that happened in each place, the stories were beautiful, and give each Sacred Place a special touch.
11-We didn't have an exact time to stop to eat, but when we did it, we took the opportunity to recharge the battery of the cameras, save the data in the lap-top, and added in the agenda the contacts that we had.
12-After all the work, while coming back to Beirut, they left me home, and I went put all the data in my Computer. We slept almost 3:00 and wake up 5:00 to the next day of the Journey.
First I thought that was about travelling in Lebanon, but then I realize, it was not about a nice tour, but really about a nice but hard work. We visited on average 10 Sacred Places per day, we travel from North to South, East and West.
