Hama (حماه)

Hama has a nice little souk, where a mad-man is armed with a loud-hailer and the locals are keen to make friends. The city is famous for its noria — wooden water-wheels — but the river was in need of a bit more rain to make them turn during our visit. The local patisseries are nutty, creamy, cheap and damn good.

There is little of the old-town left after Hafez al-Assad (the current president’s father) ordered its bombardment seventeen years ago.

Wandering around Hama on a Friday (the weekend here), the town is a lot more calm than it was the night we arrived. The majority of shops are closed, the amount of traffic is slashed, and the muezzins seem to crank up the volume. Finding a falafel is not that easy.

Flocks of pigeons rise from the rooftops and circle in the sky before being coaxed back down, just to fly-up again a couple of minutes later. Pigeon fancying isn’t limited to Newcastle it seems.

As we were wandering around, we met Kyle, an Alaskan who has been cycling from Singapore, and who is on his way to Egypt. We also met a couple of French pensioners who are walking from chez eux in France to Jerusalem. These would not be the last pilgrims we meet.

The quote Rien de tel que d’aller au bout du monde pour rencontrer des gens qui vont encore plus loin comes to mind.

Cliché

We were treated to some stunning evenings & sunsets here in Hama. I’m (still) a sucker for the silhouettes of the domes of mosques & their minarets…

Rest day

Taking it easy in Hama with a shai and a good book. (Ébène: Aventures africaines by Ryszard Kapuściński — highly recommended for the francophones out there. Merci Mlle. Péchaud.)

Crac des Chevaliers (قلعة الحصب)

This majestic Crusader castle — one of the “must-see” sites in Syria and described by T.E. Lawrence as “the finest castle in the world” — sits atop the Homs Pass. The mountains here separate coastal Syria, where this morning we woke in Tartus, from the interior of the country. To the east, a fantastic view is afforded over the vast plains which extend all the way to the horizon, where our journey would continue.

Once inside, standing at the top of one of the great towers, you easily let your imagination get the better of you, imagining an army assembled below waiting for orders. The castle is immense, and the history oozing out of the stone blocks is extraordinary.

A microbus got us back down from the hills and we headed toward Homs. We had to pay for an extra seat for our bags, but the beautiful smile from the Syrian girl who explained this to us made me quickly forget the 50% fare increase. Next stop, Hama.

Lions & Tigers

Tony & I had heard of some mountains out east from Tartous, and so via a series of micro-buses, went in search of some hiking.

We did indeed find some great hills, although as seems to be always the case here, there is no development in terms of trails. Hiking doesn’t seem to be a popular past-time; walking for fun simply confuses most of the people we meet.

Walking out from a village we’re stopped by some road-workers to have some shai, and then later by a guy calling down from his balcony, asking us (in Arabic) where we were going. “Mashi, shoof” we called back, whilst miming our intended actions. These two words (“walk” and “look”, respectively) are some of the most useful Arabic we’ve picked up. Calling his young daughter over with the hope of warning us of the danger in the hills, he calls back “Tigers!”. In Syria? we wonder.

Once up in the hills, scrambling about on some rocks, gun-shots occasionally echo through the valley as flocks of birds fly-up from the trees. The dirt-track up here was littered with empty shot-gun cartridges.

The guy down in the house didn’t know what he was missing, as we sat watching the sun set over the mountains.