More Old Stones

It's been a while since our last posting and those of you who know me well have probably gussed the reason why. Yes, for the first time KP gets to surf the net whilst I make a contribution to "our" travel blog. Hence the delay.

Although Amman seemed like a fairly nice place our brief stay there was notable for only one reason really - it snowed very heavily! Not exactly what you expect in the middle east. The shared taxi (with Amy and Duncan, the couple we met on the ferry crossing from Egypt) to Damascus took 3 hours, and having obtained our visas in London beforehand, clearing immigration was problem free. James, an Aussie we met in Petra, was not so lucky however and was detained at President Assad's pleasure for an hour so whilst the customs men decided whether he was a worthy recipient of a Syrian visa. Fortunately he was eventually cleared, granted a visa and allowed through. There is a moral there - if you are thinking of coming to Syria get yourself sorted before hand.

There probably aren't that many 'must see' sites in Damascus but, partly out of laziness and partly out of a genuine like for the place, we ended up spending around a week there. Syria might not be the top of everyone's holiday wish list but the both of us reckon it's a fantastic tourist destination. There are plenty of interesting places to visit, it's easy to get around, very cheap, very relaxed, the food is great and, best of all, the people are incredibly friendly. No crazed embassy buring mobs either - contrary to the warnings of some of our friends.

The other night, for example, as we wandered around the city streets, we were approached by a chap who introduced himself as Zufir and seemed to offer, in broken English, to act as our tour guide. Having just come from a month in Egypt we were, to say they least, fairly sceptical (anyone who has been to Egypt will know exactly what I'm talking about) but as we had nothing better to do we kind of tagged along with him (or rather, he followed us until we gave in). 3 hours later and we had been richly rewarded with an impromptu tour through the back streets and craft workshops of old Damascus - places that otherwise we would never had known existed. Everywhere we went people ignored our protests of bulging backpacks and stomachs and plied us with free tea, soft drink, sweets, tapestrys etc Throughout our time in Egypt we'd become fairly resentful of the characters who'd follow you around for a while, pointing out the obvious in bad English ("this pyramid very old") and then demand money for doing so but with Zufir we were more than happy to pay whatever he asked for. Before we could even pull out our dosh, however, he'd salaamed us, shaken our hands and disappeared into the night. How churlish we felt. This is the kind of hospitality the middle east is famed for and it has been an almost daily occurance for us since we arrived in Jordan.

After 5 decadent days in Damascus (as the budget hotels were absolute dumps we went 'upmarket' and stayed in spotlessly clean, airconditioned, satellite TV luxury for the princely sum of UK16 pounds a night) Palmyra beckoned. You probably wouldn't travel too far to visit the modern town of Palmyra in its own right but it is very conveniently located to the beautifully preserved, and vast, ruins of the ancient Roman city of the same name, which are definitely worth exploring. The new town is small and tourist dependent and, as it was off season, we were much sort after commodities, especially after word got around that we were travel journalists in town to review local hotels. Although we didn't know it at the time this inadvertant ruse was maintained for several days until someone actually bothered to ask us what we do. Fortunately for us, our hotelier and everyone else we came into contact with had never heard of Basil Fawlty and, even after our cover was blown, and they discovered we were, in fact, homeless vagrants rather than correspondents for Conde Nast, their hospitality continued unabated. Mind you we wouldn't expect anything less in Syria.

In retrospect I guess I can see how the local hoteliers could have mistaken us for what we were not. Our standard practice, when we get to a new place where we know we'll be staying for a few days, is for one of us (in this case KP) to relax in a local cafe minding the bags whilst the other, armed with a pen and notebook, checks out all the nearby hotels. Aside from helping you get a feel for the local accommodation market we find that adding a hotels details to a long list of other hotels (or a bunch of meaningless scribble for that matter) in sight of the owner will often do amazing things to his price.

I'm finding that, despite having seen acres of ancient ruins over the past 2 months, I'm still a long long way from reaching the 'all templed out' stage, and that far from becoming blaze about all the ancient stones we are seeing I'm actually becoming more and more fascinated by them. It's probably fair to say that KP is slightly less enthusiastic, but only by a little.

Needless to say then that we both found the ruins at Palmyra magnificent. At the height of its influence (3rd century AD) Palmyra was ruled by a warrior Queen, Zenobia, whose rise to power incurred the wrath of Rome. She duly thrashed the Roman force sent to batter her into submission and went on to successfully invade large tracts of the empire in that lay within the borders of modern day Syria, Palestine and Egypt. It couldn't last however and eventually the Romans got their woman. They were obviously keen to disuade others from getting similar ideas as you can still see the gaping scar where her statue had been hacked apart whereas the locations of monuments to more pliant local rulers are still fairly intact (we only know all this cause we hired an excellent local guide for a few hours).

Aside from their sheer age the other thing about these sites that really blows me away is the way in which they are immersed in layer upon layer of hisory. Take Palmyra for example, where you can see, right next to the main ruins, remains of temples that were 2000 years old even when the Romans turned up in the 1st century AD. Skipping a thousand or so years the site is encircled by a wall built by Saladin, the Islamic knight who smashed the crusaders a good few times (check out that movie from last year starring Orlando Bloom). Just for good measure a fairytale like 17th century Arab fort sits atop a nearby hill guarding the whole lot. I freely admit to been a bit of a geek when it comes to these things but surely all that would stir even the most cynical soul.

Suitably calmed down after all the excitement we sadly left behind our lovely UK7 pound room to return to Damascus by way of Syria's excellent express bus network. Then it was onto Beruit via the snow covered mountains that lie between Syria and Lebanon. As I write this we've already been in Lebanon a good few days (KP is going to say something about that) but the idea is that we return to northern Syria in the next few days for another week or so before crossing into Turkey. We'll see.

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