Crossing into Jordan

Amman mosque [Enlarge]

By now we were old hands at long distance bus rides, and pretty experienced at border crossing, but we were still on edge for the crossing from Syria to Jordan because there's so much that can go wrong. If the Jordanian border guards decided they didn't want us, we wouldn't be guaranteed re-entry into Syria as our Syrian visa was only valid for one entry. In theory we could be stuck in no-man's-land, refused entry into either country. We wondered what actually happens when that situation arises.

We had chosen to travel with Damascus bus station's most luxurious bus company, Challenge, but when Glenn tried to wedge his six foot frame into the allotted seat space we realised that even they were an economy brand. When the woman in front sat down and immediately tried to recline her seat he was nearly crippled for life and at the first stop we swapped seats so that he could stretch out into the aisle. An overnight on this bus would have done serious skeletal damage! Luckily it was only a couple of hours to the border and another hour from there to Amman, Jordan.

It seemed like the bus driver was in as much of a hurry to get to Amman as we were. He drove well over the speed limit all the way and we were soon at the Syrian border. Exit customs was a formality again. The steward got a log book stamped at a check point and we drove on to passport control. Again this was a large, imposing building and again there was no queue. In fact, at the foreigners window there was no official and we were sent to the desk for 'diplomats'. The official took our blue forms and filled in a few details on his computer. Then he scribbled an Arabic number in Biro in the front of each of our passports, stamped them and sent us on our way. To be honest we were annoyed at the defacing of our passports, especially on the page about 'Her Britannic Majesty requesting and requiring etc.' It just seemed wrong, and we wondered what Her Majesty would do if she knew about it.

It transpired that our driver was an Iraqi (we saw his passport), but in spite of what is happening to his country he didn't hold it against us. Very usefully, he was also fluent in English. We made sure that he knew that we needed a Jordanian visa before we, and his bus, could successfully cross the border. At Jordanian customs we were given the same kind of search as we had had entering Turkey: everyone off, bags open on a bench and a bloke walks past and peers at them. A token gesture rather than a whole-hearted attempt to counteract smuggling. Presumably they figure that with luggage as pitiful as ours, we couldn't possibly be smuggling anything worthwhile.

Back on the bus and on to Jordanian passport control. The bus steward led us to a money changer who swapped our last remaining Syrian pounds for slightly more than the 20 Jordanian Dinars we needed for two visas. With the cash in our pocket and accompanied by the steward, a 20-ish year old Jordanian Chelsea FC football fan, we went into the main building and up to the window labelled 'Visas'. [Note to selves: we must learn some stuff about the strange game called football (US: soccer), where 22 grown men run around in a field either kissing members of their own team, or falling over crying when approached by members of the opposite team. The game seems to be a standard ice-breaker the world over.] There was another passenger on our bus who needed a visa too and we stood together waiting. There was no one at the visas window, but we made our presence known to some official looking staff in the office next door. One of them wandered off, we assumed to find the visa seller, but still no one came.

After a while the bus driver came over to find out how we were getting on. He made some enquiries and told us we shouldn't be standing at the visa window anyway. Apparently we needed to queue up at the passport stamping desk to get our passports checked, then go back to the visa window and buy a visa, then queue up at the original desk again to get it stamped. Crazy, especially when the two queues are about 50 metres apart at opposite ends of the concourse. Anyway, we went to the 'foreigners' desk as required, but there was no one there either. After another ten minutes we were shepherded across the room to the 'diplomats and journalists' desk. Our passport was examined and we were sent back to the 'visa' window where an official had miraculously appeared. He opened our passports at a random page and stuck in a sticker (upside down in Glenn's case), stamped an official stamp over the top and scribbled a few things over that. Then it was back again to the 'diplomats and journalists' desk for that all-important immigration stamp and we were done.

We are getting a bit annoyed that every border official seems to think he needs to start a whole new page in our passports for his stamp. Because lots of countries require a full blank page for their bloated visa stickers, at this rate we're going to have to come home for new passports before we get half way into our trip. Maybe we will be able to replace them at a British embassy en route. Who knows.

We walked back to the coach and waited for the other guy who had required a visa, who was now having difficulty with his final passport check. Seemingly either his Canadian or Iraqi lineage was giving the Jordanian authorities cause for concern. We hoped he wouldn't be turned back, but we were glad not to have been the ones to keep the rest of the coach waiting. He rejoined us eventually, and we carried on towards Amman.

The bus finally reached Abdali bus station at 20:20. Amman didn't feel any warmer than anywhere else on our journey had so far: a little above freezing, but not much. The first person we encountered as we got off the bus was a friendly taxi driver. We had read about friendly Amman taxi drivers—a common ruse is to tell you that your hotel is full, or has burned down in a freak lightning strike or something, then offer to take you to a good hotel, where 'good' refers to the commission they receive, not necessarily the quality of the hotel. We knew that our chosen hotel was only 100 metres from the bus station, but we humoured him to see what would happen.

"Wanna taxi?"

"Maybe, how much?"

"Which hotel?"

"The Select Hotel."

"No, Select Hotel closed for cleaning. I take you to nice hotel."

"We have a reservation at the Select Hotel, we phoned them last night."

"Oh, Ok—I take you there."

"I don't think so."

Unfortunately the last laugh was on the taxi driver because we got lost trying to find the hotel! It turned out that the bus had dropped us a bit further down the road than he should have, so we missed the turning that would have taken us straight to the hotel. Eventually we found the place, and discovered that not only did we have a TV in the room, but one of the three channels with watchable reception was the Jordan Movie Channel, showing non-stop English language movies! Just what we needed. We went to bed and watched Hilary and Jackie, which made Isla cry.

Day 039
Damascus to Amman

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Road to Damascus

Camel ride [Enlarge]

After a final night back in Haleb (Aleppo) at the Spring Flower Hostel, we set off early in the morning accompanied by Ali and our new driver, Mohammed, in his smart air conditioned, reasonably new MPV. We were on a three-day trip south through the country to the capital, Dimashq (Damascus). From there we will make our own way to Jordan. Mohammed spoke no English but fluent French, since he is married to a Belgian. Luckily our French is good enough that we could talk to him reasonably well.

It was the first day of Eid Al-Adha, the festival of the sacrifice, and we passed a few trailers full of scared-looking cows and blissfully unaware sheep. Their time remaining on this earth was very short indeed. We had been told to expect blood on the streets, and blood there was. On every corner people were excitedly crowding round a scene of slaughter, and we repeatedly saw the act of the throat being cut and the subsequent death throes in full detail. We felt sick, but also humbled. We are both meat-eaters, but we prefer to think that meat comes pre-packaged from supermarkets, rather than from the real animals that we were watching being dispatched on the pavement as we drove serenely by. These people are prepared to confront the truth and get in there and do the necessary work themselves. And unlike in the west, where fast food restaurants throw away tonnes of uneaten meat every day, not a scrap of the these animals was going to be wasted.

As we contemplated our hypocrisy, the van's radio was on, broadcasting of course in Arabic. At the top of the hour, the news came on. We couldn't understand a word of it but we could tell it was the news because it had the same sort of inane-but-dramatically-serious 'news' jingle that unites radio stations all over the world. After a minute Ali, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned round to face us and told us the latest news. Saddam Hussein had been executed early that morning.

Ohmygod. They've done it. Not only have they done it on the first day of the feast of the sacrifice (how unbelievably stupid is that?), but they've done it on a day when we're driving around in Syria and cannot hide in our hotel room! We were silent for a moment. We knew that we were both thinking the same thing. Ali also knew what we were thinking. Were we going to be lynched?

Ali had however gone to pains earlier in the week to stress that his country's hatred is of the West's and Israel's policies, and that his countrymen are perfectly capable of differentiating between governments and people. They see westerners in much the same way as we see the people of Syria: as largely innocent victims of oppressive, corrupt, hypocritical and undemocratic governments. Tentatively, we asked him what the reaction was likely to be to the hanging. Mixed, was his view. Some people supported Saddam, others opposed him and would be glad to see him get his punishment. In any case it was all widely expected, and don't forget that Syria is a moderate country full of moderate and tolerant people. No need to worry, we were in no danger. He never actually told us what he thought of Saddam, but he did say that the timing of his death couldn't be any worse: the Shiites, who hate Saddam, would be offended by the 'tainting' of their holy day, and the Sunnis, some of whom love him, would use the occasion to turn him into a martyr.

Out of the city and and by now the death throes and corpses had been replaced by just the occasional red area on a pavement, betraying the scenes which had taken place earlier in the morning. We stopped at the side of the road to pick up a special breakfast, a flaky-pastry treat filled with honey and pistachio nuts. It was delicious, although neither of us particularly felt like eating.

Syrgilla dead city [Enlarge]

Syrgilla

By looking at what past civilisations have left behind them you get an interesting perspective on human nature. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Ottomans all thought that theirs was the definitive empire, which would never die. Just like the British Empire in the 19th Century. They became arrogant, and lazy, and finally irrelevant as their foreign subjects rebelled, either politically or economically, allowing another power to rise somewhere else.

In the second century AD Syria was in one such golden age. It was a pivotal part of the Roman Empire and traders came through the area along the silk routes to buy and sell in the cities. A buoyant economy led to the building of new towns and villages to house the incoming people and across the fertile hills of north-west Syria a network of communities sprang up. After many prosperous centuries they decayed, and they now form a collection of 'dead cities', or more correctly, 'abandoned villages'.Our first stop was Syrgilla, one of the best preserved of the dead cities, and one of the last to die, being abandoned in 1148.

The cause of the demise of these settlements is not entirely clear. Maybe the climate changed. The holes for roof beams still visible in the walls show that the roofs were pitched which indicates a wet climate, but Syria now has little rain; so perhaps there was too little rain for a few years in succession for the people and the crops. Syrgilla had no reservoirs or nearby rivers. Or maybe there was a big earthquake. In Ali's opinion the spread of Islam was the final straw. The main export in the area was wine, and alcohol is outlawed by Islam: not just its consumption, but also its manufacture and trade. Even if the people of Srygilla, and the other settlements had not converted to Islam, they would have seen their market shrink to nothing and their livelihoods disappear. One by one the families would have chosen to leave, to go where the work was, as their ancestors had done centuries earlier when they had come to this part of Syria. Low population density in the area means that the land has never come back into use and the houses still stand exactly as they were when they were deserted, slowly crumbling to ruins.

Waterwheel at Hama [Enlarge]

Hama

We now had a long drive south to Hama, a city famous for its waterwheels. There used to be wheels throughout Hama to elevate water from the Orontes river into aqueducts which carried it out to irrigate the fields. Now only eighteen remain and they have a full time carpenter to keep them in top condition. (By the way, 'Orontes' means 'disobedient', and the river got this name because it is the only one in Syria to flow from the south to the north.) We spent just long enough in Hama to take a few pictures of the wheels and to pick up another Eid treat: a yoghurty sweet coated in coconut and pistachio. It was sickly to the point of being almost impossible to eat. Glenn struggled to finish his (at which point he was offered more by Ali!) but Isla didn't.

Crac des Chevaliers [Enlarge]

Crac des Chevaliers

It was now early in the afternoon, the weather was perfect and we started our drive through the mountains to Crac des Chevaliers, one of the most famous castles in the world. It really is the kind of castle you imagine when you learn about King Arthur, knights, medieval princesses, jousting tournaments and holy grails. It has been altered a bit over the past 800 years, but Richard the Lionheart would still recognise it were he to see it now. The first fortress there was built in 1031, but it was when the Crusaders from Europe took it over that Crac was extended to take on pretty much its current form. It has everything a castle should have: it's built on a steep motte with a surrounding moat, and has an outer wall with turreted round towers and battlements, holes above the portcullis from which to pour boiling oil on your enemies below, and arrow slits to shoot them from. Inside the defensive wall the castle has accommodation for 2,000 soldiers with stables, kitchens, a chapel, baths, and separate rooms for the officers. The population had enough food and water inside the walls to sustain them for many months.

We stayed the night at Baibers Hotel. Baibers was the Muslim warlord who finally took Crac from the Crusaders as they deserted the holy lands in 1271. The hotel has a perfect location just across a small valley from the castle, and it would not have been a bad place from which to attack the castle. Our room had a balcony with a super view of the castle with the rising sun behind it. We had a memorable dinner just around the corner from the castle at an otherwise deserted restaurant. Dinner for four included drinks, dish after dish of mezzes, followed by grilled garlic chicken, as much fresh fruit as we could eat, and coffees, all for SYP 750 (GBP 7.27 / USD 14.37). Back in our hotel room we watched the videos of Saddam Hussein being hanged on Al Jazeera (the Arab world's CNN). We didn't understand the words but the pictures did the talking.

Syrian desert [Enlarge]

Palmyra

From the mountains we again had an early start the next morning and we headed east into the Syrian desert. The desert proper started shortly after we had passed the city of Homs, and the road to Palmyra was long and straight. Supposedly, if you only see one thing in Syria, you should make it the ruined oasis city of Palmyra. Just before driving into the city itself, we detoured up to a hilltop fortress for an aerial view of the ruins and the oasis—both amid miles and miles of rocky desert. Because of the oasis, the city was a vital staging post on the silk route for over a thousand years. In the second century AD it became very wealthy due to tax breaks given to it by Rome, and it began to build itself up as a major force. Its leader was the charismatic Zenobia, a woman who claimed descent from Cleopatra. Her husband was ruler of Palmyra, but he died (in suspicious circumstances) and as their son was too young to rule, Zenobia took over. She was the cause of her city's demise, becoming over-ambitious and setting her sights on defeating Rome itself. Her army was soundly beaten and Palmyra's favour with Rome was, understandably, dented. The city declined, was taken by the Muslims and finally destroyed entirely by an earthquake in 1089. Although people continued to live in the area the ancient ruins were gradually buried by the shifting sands and remained beneath the desert for the next 860 years. They've still only been partially excavated, but what is there to see is truly amazing. The sheer number of pillars, towering into the sky is still impressive today in a world where tower blocks are a familiar sight, so it must have been awe inspiring in its heyday to the caravans crossing the desert.

We were about to start our tour of the ruins with Ali when we were approached by some camel owners offering rides around the ruins. We weren't too bothered about taking a camel ride, especially when the camel owner's opening price was SYP 1,000 each (GBP 9.70 / USD 19.17). We bargained it down to 200 Syrian Pounds each (almost certainly still far too much) and had a strange but fun 20 minute ride around the ruins on top of two probably very bored camels. Camels act cool but we think they are actually quite vain—like cats, they make a point of looking 'not bothered' about what they're doing, while at the same time constantly looking around just to make sure everyone is watching them.

The modern town of Tadmor, across the road from the ruins, is unremarkable. We visited the museum to see some of the finds collected from the ruins which include pottery, coins, pieces of textile (2,000 year old clothing!), jewellery and four well-preserved mummies.

After checking into our hotel on Tadmor's main street and having a short rest, Ali and Mohammed took us out into the desert for a sunset picnic. Once again they had procured some tasty fare: shawerma kebabs, wheat patties filled with minced meat, sesame seed biscuits and fresh fruit. They brewed some tea and we sat down to watch the final sunset of 2006. As if on cue a Bedouin shepherd wandered past and Ali invited him to join us and share some tea and fruit. Curiously, he was fair-haired and blue eyed which got us wondering about his lineage. Perhaps he was a genetic throwback to a Crusading knight, or perhaps one of his parents was a European hippy whose camper van broke down in the desert in 1967 and who never left?

It was cold enough before sunset, but once the sun had gone it was freezing. Ali told us that there was a singer performing in a local pub if we wanted to celebrate the new year, but it was expensive and in any case we've never been much into new year's eve, so we said we would go back to our room. He and Mohammed did the same. We slept very well until midnight when the sound of car horns and gunfire in the streets woke us. Beats fireworks!

Damascus [Enlarge]

Dimashq (Damascus)

Next morning we again started out early on the road from Tadmor to Dimashq. Half way there, surrounded by desert, we stopped for tea at Bagdad Café (the setting, we were told, of a famous film). On arrival in Dimashq Mohammed dropped the three of us off in the city centre and Ali took us for a look at the old city. By now we were almost experts on Roman town planning and it was interesting to see that Dimashq still has its original Roman layout: a city wall with gates leading into a colonnaded walk of shops (the souk) which end in a triumphal arch with a temple beyond (now a Mosque). The shops in the souk used to extend out into the street, but the government recently had the fronts moved back to their original location, exposing the Roman columns. Apart from the merchandise, nothing about the souk has changed in 2,000 years, and we got an insight into what the shopping streets of places like Palmyra and Ephesus would have actually been like.

We stopped off at the Chapel of Ananias with its paintings telling the story of St Paul having his epiphany on the road to Damascus. Later we had flowers tea in Ash-Shams Coffee Shop and met up with a friend of Ali's from Dimashq who he had met at an interview for a place on a tourism course. If Ali is successful in getting on to the 45 day course, and passes it, he will be able to lead official tours and to advertise to hotels. He doubts he will be successful though because a prerequisite is a degree in English Literature (if you intend to be an English speaking guide) and he doesn't have this. We said how crazy that was as his English is excellent and probably much better than students who have studied Shakespeare for three years. But that's bureaucracy for you.

Then it was time to say goodbye to our guides, who had the long drive back to Haleb ahead of them. Ali walked us back to our hotel and we wished him good luck with his course. Left alone after seven days of being looked after we felt a bit lost. We hadn't planned our next step, but we knew we wanted to go by bus to Jordan so we asked at the hotel reception desk for directions to the bus station. The bus station was pretty small considering we were in the capital of Syria and we easily found a company with modern coaches offering tickets to Amman. The waiting room was busy, and seemed to be full of posh Oxbridge students, at least one of whom spoke good Arabic: was it a field trip? It turned out that they were leaving on the 15:00 bus which was about to depart. After the rush had subsided we approached the counter and asked about tickets on the following day's bus. There were two buses per day, one at 09:00 and one at 15:00. We wanted to go at 09:00 to be sure of arriving in Amman in daylight, but all the tickets were already sold. We thought about staying another night in Dimashq and catching the 09:00 in two days' time, but in the end we went for the 15:00 coach.

The entry for our Dimashq hotel in the guidebook said that they would help with booking onward hotels. While we were sure that that meant within Syria we thought it was worth asking if they would make a call to Jordan for us. They were happy to and dialled the number of our chosen hotel in Amman. Having found someone there who spoke English the receptionist handed the phone over and we booked a room for one night. With transport and accommodation sorted we could relax. We decided to go for a leisurely dinner in Dimashq's top restaurant, Elisar. It wasn't quite haute cuisine but it was a very good meal in a lovely setting, and it set us back the princely sum of SYP 1,200 (GBP 11.64 / USD 23.00) for the two of us including tip.

So, our considered opinion on this rogue state, harbourer of terrorists, part of the axis of evil? Well, we cannot possibly know based on our short, touristy visit. Certainly under the old president's regime there is no doubt that people disappeared and a lot of bad things happened. But under his son's rule there is a definite feel of a thaw in progress (even though the new guy's smiley face appears Big Brother-style on too many billboards and public buildings for our liking—an example is in the photo above: zoom in and look at the far end of the street). We found Syrians to be friendly, warm, welcoming people. They all wanted to know where we were from and whilst we had gone there intending to say "Scotland" rather than "the UK" or "England" this was never necessary. We don't know what was said behind our backs, or even to our faces,or to Ali when people spoke Arabic, but we never got a bad vibe, we never felt unsafe walking the streets of Haleb or Dimashq after dark. English is widely spoken—not often fluently, but always enthusiastically. There are huge cultural differences. Even with the high level of gun ownership in the US, the malls don't have bullet holes in the ceiling; contrast this with the souk in Dimashq where the corrugated iron arched roof is riddled with holes, shafts of sunlight stabbing through into the blackness underneath. Ali pointed the holes out to us as a mere curiosity. Hardly worth mentioning—a perfectly normal way to celebrate a wedding or your return from the Hajj at Mecca!

Syria's population is young, and getting younger. They're entrepreneurial, small businesses abound, they know how to trade. They love children and value family. A great place to go if you want to visit somewhere with most of the facilities of home, but with a totally fresh culture and a multitude of things to see and do. Syria will broaden your mind (and won't slim your wallet too much at the moment).

Days 036-038
Aleppo to Damascus

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.

Around Haleb

Qala'at Samaan (St Simeon's Basilica) [Enlarge]

St Simeon's Basilica

The next morning there were no members of staff to be seen in the Spring Flower Hostel, so no breakfast for us. We'd arranged to meet Ali and our driver for the day at 08:30 so we couldn't hang around waiting for someone to appear. We gave up and went outside where the driver was waiting in a 20 year old Mitsubishi Lancer.

One of the most impressive things we've seen on our travels is the vehicles. Cars that would have been scrapped ten, twenty, or even thirty years ago in to UK are somehow kept running. There's always the ubiquitous VW camper van, and after that, each city seems to have its speciality. In Budapest it was Trabants (possibly the most famous hangover from the communist era), and here in Syria it seems to be huge American muscle cars. At times you feel like you're walking through an old episode of the Dukes of Hazzard.

It was no muscle car, but our Mitsubishi seemed sound enough. We drove North out of the city, past modern apartment blocks, heading for St Simeon's Basilica. St Simeon was an early Christian who took a notion to worship God in ways which to us seem a bit barking, but to the people of the day were remarkable. He became a huge celebrity. Whether it was locking himself in a hilltop cave without food or water, or balancing atop a large stone pillar for a few years, St Simeon was certainly the David Blaine of his day, though we presume he had different motivations.

As the years went by, his stone pillar kept being added to until it was allegedly 17 metres tall. Perched at the top in perpetual meditation, Simeon attracted a cult following, although his obscure practices were banned by the early church, fearing an escalation in the strangeness. When he died, still up the pillar, from a gangrenous leg wound he was so famous that his devotees declared his pillar a holy site and built a church around it. Later a monastery was added, then a gate and lodgings went up for the many visiting pilgrims, and finally there were the souvenir shops. The whole thing became big business. Today the church is roofless, but remarkably well preserved, and the pillar is nowhere near its original height because pieces have been taken as souvenirs for centuries.

Ain Dara Temple [Enlarge]

Ain Dara Temple

Syria is littered with archaeological sites. The vast majority of sites are unexcavated hills, or tels. Their unnatural shapes usually give them away. Tel Ain Dara is one such hill. One day (in the 1950s we think) a shepherd was hanging around up there while his sheep grazed and he noticed that his dog had dug up something unusual—a piece of black basalt shaped like a huge ear. When the area was excavated by the authorities, the ear's owner—an enormous lion—was uncovered. See the photo of Isla and the lion. The site turned out to be a very early temple dedicated to Ishtar, Goddess of the Moon.

The temple would have been all the more impressive because the black basalt it is built from is so different to the surrounding limestone. It actually occurs naturally in that one spot amid the pink limestone hills. It must have been a powerful symbol to the pagan worshippers who led their sacrificial offerings around the temple's perimeter before ritually slaughtering them on Ishtar's altar. Best of all Ali was able to get us access to the University Archaeology Department's store room where all the finds are kept. So we saw the face of Ishtar, pieces of carved frieze from around the temple showing sphinxes and prowling lions and other artefacts that the regular visitors don't get to see.

Walking tour of Haleb

Aleppo [Enlarge]

After the finest shower ever, a fresh set of clothes, and a little rest we felt ready for a new day and a new city. We went upstairs to the roof terrace and found our guide for the week, Ali. Over our first glass of Syrian tea, which to our taste was exactly the same as Turkish tea (strong, without milk, and bitter unless you add lots of sugar) he told us a little about himself. He is a student at the university, and has a wife and three young children. He supplements his income by running private tours of Haleb (Aleppo) and Syria. He told us briefly what we would be seeing and doing for the next week, and then our tour began with a walk around the old town of Haleb. The old city, within a still largely intact wall, is a huge, seemingly random pile of buildings: each period (pre-Roman, Roman, Ottoman, Medieval and French) squeezed alongside and on top of the previous ones. Of course the city has now spread far outside the walls and about four million people call Haleb home.

Syria is a country with a long and varied history. A series of invading armies have come, established their rule, bashed the place about a bit and left again. The most recent foreign take over was in 1920 when the French added their name to those of the Egyptians, Persians, Romans and Ottomans. The French Mandate came to an end in 1946 and Syria has been independent ever since. Haleb has been changed architecturally, as well as culturally, as each civilisation has left its mark. And the changes are still going on. In front of the city wall, a row of old shops was demolished last year to reveal the original Roman stonework behind them, and around town new hotels, mosques and apartment blocks are being constructed. A new Sheraton Hotel fills an entire block and dominates the whole area it has been built in. It is due to open any day (as we were there the hotel was running in simulation mode and the staff were being trained).

Ali led us through Bab Antakya, one of five gates into the old city, and the one through which the Ottoman army entered when they took Haleb in 1517, led by the curiously-named Selim the Grim. Bab Antakya leads almost directly into the souk, Haleb's amazing covered market. The souk has been in continuous use as a shopping area since before the Roman times, though the current vaulted stone ceilings are only 700 years old! We got to see the souk at its most authentic as it was thronging with people doing their last minute shopping before the four-day festival of Eid al-Adha.

We did our best to keep up with Ali as he slipped expertly through the crowds of the souk. He stopped from time to time to point something out. One feature he showed us was that the vaulted ceiling occasionally opened into an Ottoman dome. The presence of a dome indicates an important place in the souk, usually a caravanserai (also known as a khan). These are open courtyards with a huge wooden door, large enough for a fully-loaded camel to enter, and strong enough to protect the richest load of silks or spices from night-time thieves. The ground floor of the khan had stabling for the animals, storage for the wares, and a place for the shopkeepers to come and buy wholesale. The balcony above was accommodation for the merchants who had travelled with the caravan along the silk routes that pass through Haleb.

For us the khans were a tranquil haven compared with the bustle of the souk, and we could imagine just how welcome they would have been to the merchants after weeks of trekking across the desert from China or India with their ornate central fountains and beautiful decorations. Many are still in use today by the souk traders. Some have even been used for storing exactly the same wares since they were built, although the old tobacco khan we visited now specialises in cheap shoes.

Outside of the souk Ali showed us some of the other notable buildings in the Old Town and explained the interesting stories behind them. One that demonstrates the Syrian acceptance of different religions concerns the Islamic School, housed in a building which used to be a Christian church. In 1097, Antioch (now Hatay/Antakya, just across the modern Turkish border from Haleb, where we spent the night in a cold, near-deserted bus station) was besieged by Crusaders. A conflict was coming which would engulf Haleb, and the Muslim leaders of Haleb asked the city's Christian population which side they intended to support: Aleppan or Christian. The Christians felt that they were Aleppan first and foremost, and their leaders pledged their full support to their Aleppan brothers; but when the Crusaders reached the city they changed their minds. Eventually the Muslim army triumphed, beating both the Western Christians outside the city and the Syrian Christians inside, and the Christian leaders were called to account for their treachery. The Muslim chief realised he had a dilemma. If he punished the Christian leaders with death, he risked civil war in Haleb, but if he let them go unpunished his authority would be weakened. In the end he devised a punishment that avoided civil unrest, but did not damage his control over the city: he ordered that four Christian churches be surrendered to him, to be converted into three mosques and an Islamic school.

By now it was getting dark so Ali suggested that he take us back to our hostel and we resume the tour the next day. We arranged to meet at 09:30 to give us a chance to catch up on some of our missed sleep from the night before. We hadn't eaten a proper meal since breakfast the previous day, so before we could sleep we needed to find a restaurant of some kind: preferably something easy, both culinarily and culturally. We managed to find a nice safe western-style hotel which did an almost recognisable toasted cheese sandwich and freshly squeezed orange juice—and better still they didn't care that we wanted to eat at an embarrassingly early time of night. By 20:00 we were in bed and asleep.

The alarm on the mobile phone woke us at 07:45 and after another fantastic shower (the shower was the best bit about the Spring Flower Hostel) and a traditional Syrian breakfast of cheese, boiled egg, olives, flatbread and jam prepared in a very dirty kitchen area (the hygiene was the worst bit about the Spring Flower Hostel), we just had time to do the laundry before meeting Ali. The first place he took us to was yet-to-be-opened museum in a former mental hospital. He has lots of contacts in the city and we were privileged to get inside before it actually opens. There is a definite feeling that Syria is really gearing up for tourism now. We truly hope that it will manage to accommodate an influx of tourists without sacrificing its cultural identity and ending up like much of Turkey, with people outside every shop telling you that you are their best friend and trying to sell you the same mass produced rubbish over and over again.

Ali had been telling us about the houses and streets in the old town. Each street is named after the family that lives in it. One extended family shares all the houses in the street, and often they even have a small private mosque too. When sons get married their wives come to live in the family street. When daughters marry they go to live with their husbands' families. Ali's family have their own street in the old town, and our next stop, not on any tourist map, was a definite highlight of our week in Syria: having tea with his family. He took us to meet his mother, wife and children and to have some amazing tea with cinnamon (would never have thought of that).

Ali was 17 and his wife was 15 when they married nine years ago. They now have three children, two boys and a baby girl. When he rang the doorbell, we were surprised that he didn't have a key to his own house. The eldest son, aged 8, answered the door and we realised that he was giving the womenfolk time to go and get veiled up. During tea, Ali's son showed off his English to us, asking us our names and how we were, and reciting the English alphabet. His dad realises how important it will be for him to be able to speak English in the 21st Century, and he has been teaching him well. By contrast, we later discovered that Ali's wife cannot read or write at all—neither English nor her native Arabic—and he is quite OK about this. We wondered whether he will teach his baby daughter English as well as his sons.

After more tea we walked into the Christian Quarter, where we paid a quick visit to the 'Greek Catholic' and 'Greek Orthodox' churches. Not being totally clued up on all the different versions of Christianity practised around the world, we didn't know the difference between Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox, and to our relief Ali didn't know the difference either. Things were further confused when he told us that the Arabic signs on the churches translated as 'Roman Catholic' and 'Roman Orthodox'.

In what would become a major theme for the week, Ali kept repeating how tolerant Muslim society is of the other religions. Well, at least the other Abrahamic religions (Christianity and Judaism). He has no time at all for what he called the “tree worshippers”, by which he presumably meant Hinduism and the other Asian religions. He went to great pain to point out that yes, Muslims really do respect Jews: their problem is with the state of Israel and its policies, not Judaism. Sure enough, we discovered that the mosques in Haleb have Star of David symbols on the minarets and above the doors.

Incidentally, before we entered Syria, we realised that we would have a far easier time to call ourselves Christians rather than admit that, while we respect the beliefs of everyone, we personally think that all organised religion is claptrap. Of course Ali quickly saw through us. But so intertwined is he with his faith that he didn't seem able to grasp the concept of non-belief, so he labelled us 'nonpractising Christians'.

The highlight of the Christian Quarter was two 18th century houses, once private residences but now restored and converted into hotels and restaurants. Like the khans they had a central courtyard with a fountain and elaborately painted walls. Obviously they had been home to some very wealthy families.

We had hoped that the weather would be warm by the time we got this far south, but we have found that winters in the region can be vicious. Glenn's thin fleece wasn't warm enough and as he'd seen plenty of lovely thick jumpers in the souk, we asked Ali if we could stop and buy one. Ali found us a stall and Glenn tried on a couple and settled on a style he liked. The Jumper was available in two different colour options and when Glenn asked Isla's advice on which one he should buy, Ali remarked “Who says European women are repressed?!" (This is very interesting, because the West thinks that Muslim women are repressed, but Muslims think exactly the same of western women, who they see as being 'forced' by society to go out unveiled and wearing make-up, for men to ogle over. Remembering the state of our home town in England on a Friday night, we thought that just maybe Islam has a point).

It was 15:00 and we were all hungry. We stopped at a food stall in the Christian market and Ali wanted us to try a cooked wheat patty served in a wrap, but when he ordered one of these for each of us the stall holder protested that it would be too heavy for our delicate western stomachs and refused to serve it to us. We had a lamb shawerma instead, and it was very tasty. Our fragile digestions coped with it admirably.

By this time we had managed to wear Ali out with all the walking around so he asked us if we would mind calling it a day and he dropped us back at our hostel. We sent a quick email to let Glenn's mum know that we were safely in Haleb, knowing that she would pass the news on to the rest of our families. Then, after a little rest we went to find somewhere to have dinner. Tourath House, one of the lovely converted Ottoman houses we had seen earlier, had given us their card and leaflet which advertised them as a 'Hotel and Restaurant' so we decided to go there. Unfortunately the advertised 'Restaurant' wasn't quite open yet. So we went two doors down to the similar Sisi House. It was a lovely setting and the local cuisine was excellent and very cheap.

It was quite late by the time we headed back to the hostel, but we weren't the last to bed. The staff seemed to be having some kind of party, which went on into the night, long after we'd plugged our ears and dozed off.

Into the axis of evil™

Antakya bus station [Enlarge]

We had nothing planned for boxing day apart from our evening journey to the city in the south of Turkey called Antakya or Hatay (it can't seem to decide which name to use, but anyway, it's the Biblical city of Antioch). From there we would be taking the overnight bus which would see us arriving in Aleppo, Syria some time in the morning. As it had snowed during the night and was still snowing (pity the people doing the mountain hike that day), we thought we would spend the day in the warm uploading our photos to flickr. Up to the point where we left İstanbul we had found enough free internet access to keep up to date with the photos and the blog, but now we were in the sticks we hadn’t been near a computer for over a week. We were in the internet café for so long that the owner eventually gave us a free glass of tea.

Having fully caught up, we returned to the Cappadocia Palace hotel at 15:15 ready for our transfer to the bus station. Yuki drove us down the hill to the bus station, and with the snow and ice on the road we were glad we hadn't walked. The following is what the Yuki tours guy had told us would happen next:

• Catch the 16:00 bus from Ürgüp to Adana, arriving at something like 20:00. He gave us a pair of handwritten tickets for this leg.
• Someone would be waiting for us at Adana, to give us tickets and show us where to catch the bus to Antakya. It would leave at 22:00 and arrive at 23:30.
• Someone would be waiting for us at Antakya, to give us tickets and show us where to catch the bus to Aleppo. It would leave at 00:00 and arrive at something like 08:00.

This bore no resemblance to the itinerary we had been given by Hayden in İstanbul (for a start, he said we would go via Kayseri rather than Adana), but the Yuki man was insistent that everything would be fine, this was better and faster, and there was "no problem". Again those two words. We had no real option but to go with it and trust that it would work out. Here is what actually happened next.

Catch the 16:00 bus from Ürgüp to Adana, arriving at something like 20:00.

We went into the office and walked up to the Nevşehir bus company desk to ask about the 16:00 bus to Adana. "No bus" came the response. "Servis to Nevşehir, then bus to Adana." He refused to answer any questions about when the next servis would be leaving for Nevşehir, again saying "no problem". Unable to debate in Turkish we just had to wait it out, and eventually after much confusion a minibus pulled up and the man pointed at it and said "Nevşehir" so we got in.

We arrived at Nevşehir at about 16:45 and found out that the next bus to Adana was the 17:00. We now had no idea whether we were on track or not, and we were a bit worried because our changeover times didn't have a great deal of slack in them. Nevertheless it looked like we would be OK to get to Adana for 20:00.

Someone would be waiting for us at Adana, to give us tickets…

Because of the snow and ice our bus was badly delayed and we actually arrived at Adana an hour late at 21:00. However, since our bus out of Adana was not until 22:00, we were relieved that things seemed to be working out OK, just as we had been promised. And then it started going very wrong. There was nobody waiting at Adana to meet us. We walked around the coach and stood in the bay for twenty minutes or so, but it was obvious that we were not going to be met. We heard a voice from a nearby coach shouting "Hatay! Antakya!" (these are the same place, remember). This was where we needed to be so maybe it was just a matter of getting on. The steward was very happy to see us and showed us to our seats, but he spoke no English. He got out a pad and wrote "24.00" on it. We waved our itinerary and vouchers at him, and insisted that we had already paid, but of course this meant nothing. He wasn't expecting us, and if he was going to take us to Antakya, he wanted payment. So we got off the bus again and watched as it drove out of the station. The last leg of the journey had been with the Nevşehir bus company, so in desperation we went in search of the Nevşehir desk. Maybe they would know what was going on. They didn't. Our itinerary and vouchers from Hayden in İstanbul meant nothing to them.

Now we were pretty pissed off and out of options. Throughout the journey through Turkey, we would have saved a fortune and had a much easier time if we had bought our own tickets and made our own way. We could have bought all the tours locally, again much cheaper. We were much more annoyed that we had been so badly ripped off by Hayden in İstanbul and belived his crap about "don't worry, it always works out", than we were about being stranded in a vast unknown bus station with night approaching, hundreds of miles from where we needed to be.

We got out the mobile and rang Yuki Tours. It being 21:30, nobody answered. Remembering that the owner of the Cappadocia Palace Hotel was also the owner of Yuki Tours, we rang there. We managed to communicate the problem to them and they promised that someone would call us back. Sure enough, someone did, and he told us to find the office of the 'HAS Tours' bus company, and ask them to phone the Cappadocia Palace Hotel. A way forward at last. We found HAS, but could we convince the man behind the desk to make a long distance phone call to the other side of Turkey on the say so of a couple of backpackers who spoke no Turkish? Of course not. He flatly refused. So we took his card and called the Cappadocia Palace again to tell them to phone him.

Over the next few minutes much animated negotiation went on over the phone between Yuki Tours and HAS. Eventually the HAS man said "come". We followed him to the Nevşehir desk—they were the only bus company with offices in both Ürgüp and Adana, so they were going to be the intermediary for what was about to happen. After a lot more gesticulating and speaking on the phone, the Nevşehir man gave some money to the HAS man. The HAS man told us to come back at 23:00, and he would give us a ticket on their 23:15 bus to Antakya. Presumably Yuki would sort it out with Nevşehir in their Ürgüp office. Whatever.

It was 10pm. We had an hour to kill, and we now knew we were going to have exactly the same problem at Antakya. We decided to phone Hayden on the mobile number he'd given us. Amazingly, he answered. He confirmed what we'd suspected: that Yuki should have given us cash or vouchers for the buses all the way to Aleppo. He said he'd call them and make sure we would be OK at Antakya.

We found a warm place to sit in the waiting room and Glenn went off to find out where the bus to Antakya would be leaving from, leaving Isla to guard the bags. He hadn't been gone a minute when a man in a chair opposite Isla suddenly clutched his chest, fell forwards onto the floor and began to have some kind of seizure. Through the glass wall of his office next door a transport policeman hesitated and then seemed to resign himself to the fact that this probably was part of his job and came through to help. A few other men clustered round the man and tried to restrain him. After a few minutes someone came in with half an onion to hold under the poor man's nose. In spite of their help he came round after a few minutes and seemed to refuse any other assistance. Glenn had come back, talking on the mobile, half way through the performance and Isla admitted that she was so on edge she had at first thought it was some kind of scam. Late night bus travel makes you very cynical.

Glenn was on the phone to Hayden's boss, who had obviously been on the line to Yuki. He was very sorry and promised he would sort everything out. There was a direct bus from Adana to Aleppo, so he would get us a ticket on that and we wouldn't even need to change at Antakya. He told us to go back to the HAS desk and wait there—he was about to phone them. There was some more behind the scenes negotiation and we were given a paper ticket to Antakya and YTL 15 to buy a ticket to Aleppo from there. We protested that we had been assured we would get a ticket all the way to Aleppo, at which the HAS man told us that Hayden's boss was wrong, there were only direct buses in the summer. We would be changing at Antakya after all, and, even better, we'd be arriving into Antakya at 02:00 and the bus out was not until 09:00.

There then followed a night bus experience pretty similar to the previous one.

At 02:15, the coach dropped us outside Antakya Otogar. We walked through the freezing night into the concourse. The place was deserted and almost everything was closed, but there was someone at the HAS desk. We wanted to buy our ticket to Aleppo with the 15 Lira we'd been given at Adana, so that at least we would know that we were going to be on the 09:00 bus out. The man sitting behind the HAS desk was wrapped in a blanket, and had an electric heater on behind him. Another man was lurking close by. We asked about the bus to Aleppo. The man behind the desk didn't seem to speak English, but the lurking one did, and his face fell. "Border closed—festival of Eid al-Adha." He would have fooled us but for the fact that he then tried to persuade us that although the border to Aleppo was closed, he knew a man who could get us across by taxi—for a consideration, of course: 70 US dollars (GBP 36). By now we had realised that the man at the HAS desk was just some sort of squatter who wanted to use their heater, and we managed to get the lurking man to admit that the HAS desk would open for business at 07:00. He told us that we were wasting our time, they would only confirm what he was telling us. We didn't believe it (even Ayala Travel in İstanbul wouldn't be so incompetent as to sell us a tour of Syria that we couldn't actually take, surely?) so we decided to sit the night out and wait. We told him we would think about it and would get back to him at 07:00.

There was no warm waiting room at Antakya—the seats were all in the freezing cold concourse. We found a seat as far away from the fierce draught from the main door as we could. We zipped up our coats and pulled on our hats and gloves. At about 03:00 we were approached by a man with a HAS uniform on. What were we doing here? Why didn't we come upstairs to the café upstairs where it was warmer and we could drink some tea. We liked the sound of 'warmer'. When we got upstairs the HAS man disappeared, but another guy immediately pounced and asked if we would like to change some money. From one of his many pockets he pulled out a huge wad of notes in some sort of attempt to prove that he was serious. We did need some Syrian pounds, but not until we had a bus ticket and knew we were actually going to Syria. We told him "not yet—when we have a ticket" and he took this as an opportunity to bargain. His exchange rate improved. We said "really, not yet". Throughout the rest of the night he came over at regular intervals to try to convince us, and by the end of the night we actually looked forward to his visits because they broke the monotony. At 05:30 the owner of the café turned up for work and having tried to sell us some breakfast, made it clear that if we weren't planning to eat or drink, we were no longer welcome in his café. So we walked back downstairs to the concourse. The place was definitely beginning to come to life, but the HAS desk was still not populated by proper HAS people. We hung around near the desk trying to get some warmth from the heater at the back of the office. Finally, at 06:58, the desk opened and we were straight in there with our money. Of course the border was not closed, and in a matter of minutes we had our tickets. The money changer was waiting for us because we had told him that we would change some money once we had a ticket. He honoured the rate he had promised us, which was actually much better than we would have got at a proper booth. OK, it could have been funny money but we had seen him getting plenty of business with locals through the night, and we only wanted a little to get us started in Syria. Ticket bought and money in the pocket, by now the sun had risen and we only had the small matter of two hours more to kill, so we bought some Doritos for breakfast and went to the back of the bus station where the sun was coming in through the windows. We stood in the sunlight to thaw out and eat our breakfast.

At 09:15 we discovered that the transport to Aleppo was a minibus rather than a coach, but minibuses are actually better for crossing borders in because the waiting around for the other passengers to get the passports stamped and luggage searched is much less. Our fellow passengers were a Turkish mother and daughter and two Syrian men. After a while we arrived at the sprawling border crossing complex, which was also a building site as they are doing some major renovations.

As we arrived at Turkish customs, a border guard walked over to the minibus and our driver got out. He came round to the side door, and pulled a crate of bottled water from under Isla's seat. He handed it to the guard, who walked away happy. No words were exchanged and it seemed that this was HAS's way of ensuring that we had a nice easy border crossing. Contraband water!

Then at Turkish passport control we got out and queued at a window for our exit stamp. A man pushed us in at the front of the queue and then wanted some baksheesh for the privilege. He got one of our last Turkish coins and seemed pleased with it.

No-man's land consisted of about a mile of countryside and included at least one abandoned village. It also contained thousands of lorries queuing up to enter Turkey. They lined both sides of the road, nose to tail, and as we turned the final corner before reaching the duty free shops, the queue opened out into a four-wide stream of lorries who were queuing up to be allowed to enter the main queue! Throughout no-man's land there were mountains of rubbish, and the remains of several camp fires. The lorry drivers must have been there for days or weeks.

Our minibus's next stop was at Duty Free, followed by another at Syrian passport control. The sign on the Syrian building said 'Post Office', but the driver told us that was where we needed to be so we went in and up to the counter. There was no queue at the 'foreigners' window and the official behind the desk took Glenn's passport and gave him a small blue form to fill in. It asked exactly the same questions as the visa application form had. Obviously they wanted to make sure that they got the same answers as they had done previously, or maybe they just don't have a joined-up database. When Glenn had completed his form, the official stamped it, and the visa. Then he took Isla's passport and gave her a form. While she was filling it in, the man got bored, and gestured for her to pass it through the window to him, only partially completed. He stamped it and said she could take it away and fill the rest in later! We would need the blue forms when we left the country. With our passports and forms we got back on the bus.

Another box of bottled water changed hands at Syrian customs and we drove through without any checks.

And then we were inside the Axis of Evil. It didn't seem very evil, although it did look and feel different from Turkey. Firstly, the soil is very red and there are olive trees planted everywhere. Secondly, the moment we crossed the border the two Syrian men on the bus suddenly became very friendly and started talking to us in pretty good English. They were working in Turkey, but were going home for the festival of Eid al-Adha, which would be happening for four of the days that we were spending in Syria. They were very happy to be going home for a while. The final difference we noticed immediately was that the bus driver turned into a horn-honking, headlight flashing, death-wish overtaking maniac, which seems to be the Syrian way of driving. At every new country we have been in, the driving standard has made the previous country seem like a model of consideration and mild manners. We stopped at the first fuel station we came to and the driver filled up with petrol which cost a third of the Turkish price (diesel is a tenth the price). After 40 km on fast, four-lane road we arrived in Aleppo. We fought our way through the traffic and finally came to a stop in a square of tarmac called the bus station. Yet again we were due to be met by someone, and for a change we actually were! Hayden's boss had clearly been on the phone. Our contact walked us round the corner to the Spring Flower Hostel, showed us to our room and suggested that we take a shower, have a rest for an hour or so and then come upstairs to the roof terrace to have some tea and to meet our guide. We liked Syria already.

Day 032
Urgup to Aleppo

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.