Cruise ferries are organised by Italian, Greek, Turkish and Cypriot companies and their programmes vary year by year. Contact a travel agent for details. Change at Ankara for the Taurus Express to Aleppo. The principal international routes are from Istanbul, via the E5 road to Ankara, Adana and Iskenderun in Turkey. From the south, the best routes are from Aqaba on the Red Sea in Jordan.
Services are available across the desert on routes from Baghdad to Damascus, and Amman to Damascus.