Advertisement
Published: December 3rd 2009
Damascus
Well I left Palmyra in my usual slow, faffing kind of way. No crack-of-bloody-dawn starts for me!
The previous night I'd met up briefly with my Brazilian friends who bragged about the best falafel they had ever had, picked up from a little stand just across from my hotel. Starving as I was, and fed up of paying tourist prices for meals (delicious though they may be), I raced off to eat. I had skipped lunch and riding all day had built up a real hunger, but it was all good: just one person in the queue in front of me. No worries, I would eat soon.... Or would I? ...I watched the guy in front proceeded to order falafel after falafel - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, TEN!!? It was ok though, I could wait. There were still loads of them left in the dish at the back. But it was not to be. As the 10th falafel was rolled up and went into the bag, the guy obviously thought he might not have enough to feed his village or whatever and, as an extra, ordered every last falafel ball in the dish
into a separate paper bag, presumably to eat as snacks before the main feast.
To say I was disappointed would be an understatement and I really couldn't wait the 20 or 30 mins needed to whip up another batch. In the end I settled for another overpriced, over portioned, tourist meal (To put in perspective: tourist meal = 400 SP / 6 Euro... falafel = 15 SP... not exactly bank breaking stuff but still). Anyway the meal was excellent (some kind of heavily spiced chicken stew with lentil soup and rice on the side) but what can I say, I had my heart set on falafel. Oh well.
In any case, falafel still on my mind, I woke up the morning of my departure and after packing up my things, putting it all on the bike, having a slow, leisurely breakfast and faffing some more, I headed across to the stand and picked up 2 of the tasty buggers for lunch. Feeling better, I said my goodbyes and took the wide, empty road out of town, heading West.
To be honest the ride was a little dull. At first anyway. For those of you who know it,
think of the Karoo, in winter, with a little less scrub and minus the koppies and more interesting features. Long straight stretches of road with very little traffic and very little to look at. Not true desert and not true mountains. I was tempted to head off-piste and churn up the dirt a bit. It looked very inviting and on another occasion would have been perfect, but my sensible side thought better of it. Too much to risk with a fully loaded bike, tires I needed to make last (I'm Hoping my Karoo II front and MT21 rear will last to Nairobi at least) and no support should anything go wrong. :-/ To amuse myself I started flashing oncoming traffic to see who would flash back. Mostly they beat me to it though. When a long line of trucks or buses came past, each would see me flashing the ones before and they'd flash their hello's down the line. Lots of flashing and friendly waves. Nice.
My one stop was about half way at a middle-of-nowhere roadside place run by Bedouin. I got tea and smiles and stories of snow and sheep and a life of 24 years never
having left that spot other than to go to the closest village for festivals. 24 and looking like 40. Tough life, tough people, but as usual welcoming and cheerful.
Noticing my oil had dropped a bit over the last 1500km (can't see any leaks... hopefully just a bit of burn off and the cold weather), I topped up a touch and started the next 150km to Damascus. About 20km from Damascus things started to get more demanding. The road got increasingly busy and pot-holed and rutted and crazy. Traffic got slower and slower and roads tighter and tighter until I was crawling along, surrounded by mini-buses trying to cut in from the left, trucks hooting on the right, people, animals, bicycles, more bumps and holes and general tough, aggressive riding. With only 1 wrong turn, and quick correction I managed to navigate myself into the centre of town. After 3 hours of long, straight, cold riding it was a real drain to fight my way in and I was pretty knackered by the time I reached Souq Saoorja St, the area I had already identified as having a good few hotels (if not a few good hotels) and possible
options for safely parking my bike.
Hotel hunting sucked a bit. Everything was either too pricey or too shitty. A key thing was to find somewhere safe for my bike. Not that Damascus is a very dangerous city I don't think, but I definitely didn't want to leave my baby on the streets, especially not for a few days if I was going to stay that long. I checked out 6 or 7 places and in the end settled for a rather grotty, mid-priced room (almost triple what I was paying in Hama, and just under double Palmyra!) in a fairly basic hotel but with 2 selling points: the room has a 4th floor view over the city, and the window looks down onto my bike, safely parked (I hope) and covered behind some barricades in front of the local police check point. More or less satisfied, but feeling a little iffy about the whole Damascus thing, I unpacked, took out my city map and, munching on my now cold but still delicious remaining falafel, headed into town.
I thought I was pretty good with maps. Ok many of you will cast your minds back to a certain
misshap with a certain border, er, transgression, but in my defense (as far as map reading goes) I would point out that in that little adventure I didn't have a map 😊 In this case I did and, trying to shake the iffy feeling, set off in what I figured to be the direction of the old city.
It was not the right direction. In fact as I have realised today it was pretty much exactly the wrong direction. Sigh. In the end, feeling a little unimpressed with the 'so called' old city of Damascus I found a roadside nagile bar and had a smoke and a glass of tea and headed back to the hotel.
This morning things worked out a lot better. Feeling I must be getting something wrong somewhere I passed by reception on my way out of the hotel and asked for some directions. Lovely guy on the desk. Not only did he set me straight on my map reading, he also offered to give me a tour around the old town when he got off his shift at 3pm. So looking forward to that, I walked down to the national museum for a
few hours and then made my way back for my little tour.
The museum itself was ok, but not mind blowing I thought. The old city on the other hand is really excellent. The main Souq (Al Hamidiyeh) is about 500m long, with a total of 1.5km of branching side alleyways and courtyards. It feels MASSIVE, the main thoroughfare a long, straight dome covered hall, really a covered road, about 15 to 20m wide I'd guess and lined with narrow shops on either side, selling just about everything you can think of. And this is just one of many Souqs inside the old city walls. Side streets lead to more covered alleys and wider, uncovered roads, each little area or alley specialising in its own commodity: spices here, clothing there, wood work, metal work, food, jewelry, pottery, toys, gaudy decor, coffee etc etc etc. There is the usual fairly tatty sort of stuff on sale as well as some really good quality hand craft: musical instruments, carpets, chairs, inlaid tables and heaps of other stuff with people browsing and jostling but, at least when I was there, not too crowded. I was really impressed. At most intersections stand beautiful
buildings, many mosques, as well as Armenian and Greek orthodox churches and other buildings, now turned into coffee and nagile cafes, restaurants and hotels.
After 3 hours of walking around I was (and am) knackered. I don't think I saw more than 1/3rd of the inner city and I didn't set foot inside any of the mosques or churches. That's for tomorrow. Right now I think it's time bed. I will publish this tomorrow when I can upload my pics at the same time. So until then:
To be continued...
So day 2 in the old city and I'm equally knackered at the end of it. Well worth it though. Mostly I just did some more extensive wandering around the souq(s) but the highlight was visiting the Umayyad Mosque, one of the biggest in the world and situated on a site that has been used to worship one god or another since (my guidebook says) 2500 BC! It's most recent conversion to a mosque was in the 8th century, an arrangement that the then Calif apparently peacefully negotiated with the Byzantine Christians offering them instead permanent rights to 4 other holy sites/churches within the old city walls
- sites which I think are still used by the Greek and Armenian orthodox community today. I'm not sure how much choice the Byzantines had at the time, but it seems a reasonable exchange considering where the power in Damascus obviously lay in those days.
And so that was the end of St. John's cathedral, much as St. John's displaced the Temple of Jupiter before it, and so on back through recorded history. The site really is impressively big and the mosaics are excellent. No point me banging on about it when there's wikipedia and all, so check it out there if you feel the need for any more details. Anyway, feeling pretty tired from walking around I sat in the quiet courtyard and soaked up the sun for a bit, then continued on my way.
Up one street, down another. A few more museums and old restored houses, a couple of snacks for lunch and really very little else eventful to report. But it was a good day and after a couple more hours I left the old city and went back to my hotel to put my feet up for a bit... and then here in
this internet cafe where it's taken me 3 hours to get this short entry in and upload these pics. Fast internet this is not...
And that's it for Damascus for me I guess. I'm going to get a loooong sleep in tonight and hope to be packed, breakfasted and on my bike around 10am latest tomorrow morning, then heading South to Bosra. I'll spend a night there I think and cross over to Jordan and onto Amman on Saturday morning. More updates from Jordan! Laters.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 7; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0511s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
SeanBM
Sean Murphy
The road to Domascus
You didn't happen to have a conversation with Paul of Tarsus, by any chance? :)