on the way to Jordan

My friend Angie was travelling with me only in Syria, next part of the trip I'm doing mostly alone. But actually in Middle East nobody is really alone, and I meet many people I've seen already.. and so on Monday morning, during the breakfast I told about my Jordan plans to a couple from New Zealand and I've found out they're going to Jordan as well.. cool :-)

after arriving to the station, we were surrounded by taxi drivers shouting names of all the cities! one shouted Amman and after a not very long bargaining we decided to go with him. we paid 10 dollars!! it's less than I usually pay for a taxi in Brussels!

road was cool, formalities at the border went also quite fast (although we had to pass several controls), I bought my visa without any problem. We were also welcomed by smiled royal family - unfortunately only on the huge bilboards. We have found out that our driver was actually cigarettes's smuggler - he hided the boxes all over his body and asked us to hide some boxes for him, what we did (of course permitted amount) :-) I also discovered one thing - I was always wondering how the women wearing hijabs hiding faces prove their identity.. do they remove it for the control or what? so there's a special room, where the border-guard woman check them. I still wonder though how does it work when they travel to Europe..

after 3h we arrived to Amman, our driver was very nice and even helped us with finding our hotel. Hotel was cool - rooms were quite modest, but general atmosphere, backpackers from all over the world, TV playing BBC and internet made this place very pleasant :-). Amman was not that cool, and actually quite ugly. I have visited only the Roman Amphiteatre located in the city centre.

the next morning I decided to go to Jerash - ancient Roman ruins. I went there by minibus - luckily I got to the station 2 minutes before its departure!!! otherwise I would have to wait until another bus will be filled up with people (what can last even one hour!). interesting thing in Arabic countries is that everybody smokes where and when he wants. so smoking taxi driver, smoking passenger sitting next to you, smoking person in the bank or even smoking waiter while serving (!!!) is absolutely normal!! so in this smoky minibus I met some not smoking people, who were of course Europeans, and more precisely Italians. I was visiting Jerash with them, what was very good, because one guy did archeological studies, and shared his knowledge with us.

Actually travelling solo in Arab countries is not that bad. I got used to the fact that everybody stars at me. Everybody stars, but does nothing.. with one exception and this category are young boys aged 7-15. In Jerash there were at least 15-20 groups of young boys, and all of them were talking to me, following me, taking pictures of me etc.

ahh - the best thing I've seen so far were two Jordanians, dressed in traditional clothes and playing Scottish anthem on pipes :-)) and at some points these young boys started to dance their dances - they made my day!!!

Golan Hights!

This trip was supposed to be a bit different - after Syria and Jordan I was planning to go to Yemen. But just few days before my departure, a few tourists were killed, so I decided not to go there anymore.. but I still wanted to do something risky ;-) and this is why I decided visiting Golan Hights (it was not risky at all though ;-)).

I mentioned this idea to Agnieszka, already at the very beginning, but she absolutely didn't want to join me.. but thanks to my negiotiation skills, after a week of travelling around in Syria, she decided to go to the Heights with me. Of course I would go there even alone, but it's always better to have a company :-)

so we woke up very early, in order to get a permit from the Syrian Ministry of Interior. It took us some time in this crazy city to find the place, but when we got there, it went surprisingly fast - we just gave our passports to someone at the entrance, and after 15 minutes we held our permits. with the permits we went to the minibuses station and found the one, which was going to Quneitra. Asking the driver at what time we will leave is senseless - the answer is always the same: "when the bus will be full"... luckily the bus got full very fast and we could go!!!

Actually travelling through the Golan Heights is not allowed, but we could visit the town of Quneitra. Quneitra is a ghost town today. in 1973 Israelis evacuated all the Arabs and systematically distroyed the town. when we got to Quneitra, the driver of our minibus proposed that he could drive us around - of course for additional money. At the checkpoint we also got a Syrian intelligence officer, who officialy was making sure we don't wander off into any minefields, and in reality that we don't go in the places we shouldn't.

Quneitra made a very sad impression. The town was totally distroyed, all the houses were demolished, so the mosque, the church and the hospital. It was sad to see a once-normal town in which the life does not exist anymore. I loved this place and I think that getting there was a great idea. Although I cannot say that I enjoyed the place, it was a nother perspective of my Middle East trip after all these Roman ruins, crusaders' castles, mosques etc

Do you love Mohammad or we're visiting the North

Palmyra was absolutely marvellous experience!! we met amazing people, we had great adventures, without mentioning camels... ;-) our Bedouins wanted us to stay one day more and spend a night on the desert, but we decided to go to Hama. We met a Dutch guy and a bit crazy Italian girl, who were supposed to give us a lift.

it was probably one of the craziest trips I've ever survived - the car was totally old (1983) and could barely drive. Moreover after 20 minutes of drive we were surprised by the sandstorm!! it's actually impossible to see anything from 2 meters and the sound was everywhere inside the car.. and the guy was listening to some crap Dutch music from 70's... after the girl almost smashed Syrian soldiers standing on the road, I really wanted to finish this trip..

ok, we got to Hama - apparently Syria's one of the most attractive towns with its ancient wooden norias (water wheels), but for us it was a bit boring and stinking (!!) But the hotel was very nice and it organized some trips around Hama. we decided to see Krak des Chevaliers - apparently "the finest Crusader castle in the world" (or rather ruins actually..), which was indeed very nice and interesting, but I think that Polish Malbork Castle is much better :-)

but we have visited also Apamea - another Roman ruins. and it was it!! great place, I think I even prefered it than Palmyra's ruins. and the most impressive part of it was the 2km long Cardo - main street - marked out along much of its length by surprisingly well kept colonnades. It had to be absolutely incredible 2000 years ago!!

we've also seen the Dead Cities and Qual'at Samaan - the ruined basilica -built in the place where the pillar on which the Simon Stylites (Szymon Slupnik) was living. another great great place of Syria. and last but not least thing that really impressed us, was the landscape!! we were thinking of Middle East as of a place full of desserts and which lacks green colour. and northern Syria turned out to be the greenest place I've ever seen!! yeah, greener than my beloved Eire :-)

but the greatest came at the end and it was the city of Aleppo. Very conservative and different than Damascus, but in our opinion much more interesting. First of all a very spectacular Citadel, splendid souq (where we bought a lot of beautiful jewelery, scarves etc. for apparently good money. we keep on saying we're poor students from poor Poland and we have really good deals ;-)), impressing Christian quartier with churches of each rite and of course all these muslims. since we're there on Friday, which is the kind of our Sunday in Islam, we decided to visit the main Mosque of Aleppo. we were observing people (much more conservatively dressed - many women had totally covered face (!) and the best place to do so, was of course inside of the Mosque. it's really funny to watch what the people do there - some of them were eating, some of them sending messages, playing with children, laying on the carpet, reading something (ok, probably Quran), 80% staring at us and just some of them praying.. two girls wanted to chat with us, but they knew just few words, and completely couldnt understand us.. after the question: "you Muslim?", I answered: "no, I'm Christian", but the girl probably couldn't understand the reason of our stay in the Mosque, so she asked: "you love Mohammad?"... well, I lost my words and sincerely couldn't answer. what to answer on such a question while being in the Mosque..? so I wanted to explain her with these five words she knew, that I love Jesus, but she kept on asking: " do you love Islam?", "do you love Muslim?"... it was the most surrealistic conversation I've had for a long time, and yes, at the end I had to admit that I loved Mohammad... I was glad though that I made this girl's day.. :-)

Palmyra

After 2 days in Damascus, our next destination is city of Palmyra. Very surprisingly (it's not always the case) all our taxi drivers have meters and none of them was trying to cheat on us. at the station, we were the only persons who were not obliged to scan the luggage. Syrian government is doing its best to prevent the terrorist attacks. Apparently we didn't look very suspicious.

I think it will become a tradition, that the worse the beginning, the best the ending.. we have heard that after 9/11, the number of tourists arriving to Palmyra has significantly decreased and competition between the hotels became a bit nasty. and indeed, before even arriving to Palmyra, our bus driver unilaterally decided that we should go out already and go to the hotel in front of which he stopped. after our refusal, he was very unhappy, but he continued to drive. he stopped at the station. and number of people shouting and trying to convince us to follow them, was really impressive. but as we follow Lonely Planet advices, we decided to stay in recommended by LP the Sun Hotel.. the owner indeed was very nice, but the hotel... I was taking shower with closed eyes and slept in my sleeping bag, without any will to touch the duvet..

the quality of our room pressured us to leave it ASAP - we decided to head to the main city attraction and actually one of the most splendid historical sites. the ruins date to the 2nd century AD an cover some 50 hectares!! they are really impressive!! but before we got there, an amusin story has happened. we've heard that the president of Syria was in Palmyra that day, and while we're walking to the ruins we saw a caravan of at least 15 cars - police cars and black government cars. they were all driving very slowly just next to us, so we do believe that although we couldn't see the president (because all windows were also black) - he definitly saw us!! :-)

in the ruins we also met Bedouins with camels - I absolutely wanted to do a small ride on camel. his owner - a boy called Ali - was very nice, didn't want actually money and proposed that he could come the next day with two camels and show us the sunrise in the ruins. I agreed straight away, Angie after a little while :-)

Palmyra offered us also a very delicious Syrian food, a very delicious Syrian wine, a delicious shisha and amazingly friendly company of locals :-)

the day after, at 5am, two Bedouin boys with camels arrived in front of our hotel. we were so lucky - the sky was blue (what was not that sure as the previous day it was raining) and without any single cloud! 20 minutes later we were admiring a sunrise, beautifully lighting the ruins of Palmyra. after the sunrise, boys invited us to the bedouine tent for breakfast. kardamon coffee, houmus and scrambled eggs with naan were the most delicious breakfast we had so far!! and after they decided to show us the desert, where we got on their motorbikes!! absolutely amazing feeling to visit the desert at this time of the day and with this mean of transport!!! we ABSOLUTELY loved our Palmyra adventure!!