Week Sixty-One

Today starts off well: we're up early, have a coffee (no food - Milla saw a kebab place at the microbus station yesterday), pack, dump our rucksacks and pay, and get out by 09.15. Not quite as good as Milla's "We'll be on a bus by 09.00", but still pretty good. It's a tiny bit drizzly, but most of the rain seems to have fallen overnight - much of it is still lying around in small lakes in the streets. We pass a few places with chickens just before the bus station (Milla's temporarily off chickens after she saw the way they treat them - my "Never mind - it'll be dead by this evening" didn't seem to help), but only one place which actually seems to be serving instantly eatable food. They insist we eat inside (possibly, during Ramadan, people smash their windows otherwise) and so, after a heated and public and difficult-to-explain argument, in we go. They're not actually in full production mode (hardly any customers) so our shwarmas take ages to arrive: it's on a place and all cut up, so we definitely don't have an option of carrying it out with us.

After this point, when we finish eating at 10.30 or so, things start to go wrong. We're trying for Banias and then Qala'at Marqab today, and after asking anumber of people we discover that buses for Banias don't leave from here (the first few people we asked helpfully pointed to other areas of the bus station). And then it starts to rain. And then it starts to seriously deluge. We quickly abandon our walk, and then abandon our hiding under shop awnings and instead take refuge in a covered fruit/veg market. By now my boots are squelching badly (they have holes in the soles!), and it's set to get worse since the torrential streams through the middle of the market are beginning to form rising lakes. Stallholders move their produce off the ground and we (with others) retreat to the centre of the market. There was rain in Aleppo on our first day in Syria (the locals were quite proud of the fact), and normal rain yesterday, but this is a downpour - it lasts half an hour and then starts to ease. We have to wade out of the market and, completely soaked, decide to abandon our plans for the day (it's after 11.00 by this time) and return to the hotel where we sit on the balcony (to hide the fact we're eating and smoking from the staff) and watch the intermittently returning rain.

When we spot what looks like an likely gap, we grab our rucksacks and trek the 1.5km to the train station and adjacent bus station: our "likely gap" doesn't quite hold out, so we manage to get a little wetter anyway. They're digging up much of the bus station, but that's not stopping the bus companies: we find a large coach service leaving in two hours, and a little minibus leaving in fifteen minutes - the minibus wins, especially since this one's got a little compartment at the back for luggage, so our rucksacks don't have to be cramped up beside us for the whole trip. Lattakia gets 2/10 for being quite cosmopolitan, but soulless.

The journey takes two and a half hours, and takes us past a large Palestinian camp in the outskirts of Lattakia: unlike most (we've seen a few), this one seems in reasonably good shape and may still be occupied. Then we travel down the coastal strip, with its red/brown soil and citrus fields, over the barren mountains and down into the Orontes valley where the soil is alluvial and richer and they have proper fields and are growing what I consider more normal crops. And then we're into Hama, unusually during daylight hours, and notice a huge number of mosques and that the headscarf proportion is up over 90% again, and the full face-covering black is way up as well.
There are two famous budget hotels in Hama - the Cairo and the Riyadh: we get as far as the Cairo and stop. It has large, clean rooms with showers and European-style toilets en-suite; and TV in the rooms (with BBC World); and supplies towels and toilet paper. This being our proper 6-month anniversary, we splash out a bit and go for it: what's more, if we really like it then we can use it as a base for a whole bunch of places (including this morning's aborted Qala'at Marqab, and Tartus).
In the early evening we go out for a stroll around Hama - the Orontes goes through the centre of town, and there's a green-rich park (most parks are mostly barren concrete and paving in Syria) around Hama's most famous landmarks, the "norias" or wooden water wheels. Each is attached to stone aqueducts leading away from the water, since the wheels were used for irrigating nearby land and as the town's water supply. They're very scenic, and quite a laid-back tourist attraction.
To the northeast of where we're staying is the stone-built old town, with winding streets and overhanging balconies (much like old Aleppo or Antakya), and we spot a cheap hamam (Turkish Bath). Then we wander around the souq and adjacent shopping streets (okay, and much less hassle/pressure than Aleppo) before deciding to get something to eat. At this point Hama lets us down - there's almost nowhere to buy any kind of street food (except pastry sweets). We end up (after a forty-five minute search!) with felafel from a little place near the hotel and then retire to our rooms for wonderful hot showers, a lazy evening, and a long conversation with our free-thinking host. One of the most interesting things he says during his wide-ranging condemnation of Syria is that they have Armenians in Aleppo who would be quite capable of starting a Syrian car industry "if they were allowed to". Hm.

A lazy, relaxing rest day in lazy, relaxing Hama. We get up late and go out late to do sightseeing and shopping. High on the list is new shoes for me - my trainer/boots from Bucuresti are in a sorry state: the sides (all four) are split, as are the treads, so I only need to step in a few millimetres of water to get my feet wet - also, the insides are disintegrating. We retrace part of last night's route - past the clock tower (every Syrian town seems to have one), through the park (even prettier in daylight), via tourist information (for details of where buses leave from) and along past some of the water wheels. Apparently these wheels still turn, but only in summer when the river is full and fast-flowing: now, although much healthier looking than the brown sludge in Antakya, the Orontes river is almost stagnant.

The river in the centre of Hama follows the shape of a numeral "2" (have I mentioned that they don't use "Arabic numerals" here? Their 2 looks like a backwards 7). We're staying in the clock tower area below the bottom line; above that line is mostly park; in the space to the left is a large circular hill, much like that in Aleppo; left of the clock tower area are the two main shopping streets and the triangular souk between them; and above the shopping area left/west of the hill, is the "Medina". We follow the river past the hill and down into the medina, which has a lovely old mosque, a new, large, shiny and scaffold-filled orthodox church and (finally) a number of restaurants. Next up we climb the hill (or "citadel"): it's a big park with views over all of Hama - there's also an archaeological site at its centre, but nothing worth mentioning in detail. We sit there in the midday sun for a bit, until the midday sun goes away and rain threatens - remembering yesterday's downpour, we flee back to the hotel for a spell.

The afternoon is spent unsuccessfully shopping for new footwear for me, and a nightwear T-shirt for Milla: T-shirts are largely unknown in this conservative Islamic town (they all have long sleeves), and so (apparently) are decent hard-wearing trainer/boots. There must be over a hundred stalls and shops selling shoes but a.) half of them are women-only and a further 20% are for kids, and b.) although many have trainers (most pretty much stock the same 8 or 9 models), they have nothing with high ankle support. Naturally, as sunset approaches, almost everything closes and streets turn into that chaotic 45-minute rush home. We return to the hotel and wait for everything to open again.
When we go out again, I've decided to just go for regular trainers, but despite that it takes ages to find a pair - the standard types on sale (mostly label imitations) only go up to size 44: I'm a 45, and the few 44s I try in desperation merely prove this. We strike lucky at the end of the day (after another 3 hours of walking!), and pick up an okay-looking pair for $8: hopefully they'll last a couple of months.
Another item we failed to find, incidentally, was letraset/rub-down letters: I was thinking of massaging our ISIC cards so they looked typed (and decreasing my age), but the concept seems pretty much unknown - possibly because it would be more difficult with the Arabic alphabet. Milla tells me that such things were illegal (like typewriters) in communist Romania, so possibly they are here as well.
The evening ends with more sweet pastries and more felafel (about our only local eatery option), and hours watching TV (the news is mostly about trouble with Iraq and Israel, both of which border Syria). We also finish the last mega-pomegranate from our Al-Bara day: it takes forever to peel and eat them (there's clearly a technique we lack) - pomegranates are the thief of time. And that wraps up our 12-month anniversary of meeting.

We get up at an excellent 07.00 (despite setting the alarms for 06.30) and, as we get ready, listen to a number of military jets thundering overhead. Considering Israeli incursions into Nablus and the Iraqi situation, that's kinda worrying hey, they don't seem to be bombing us, so that makes them friendly as far as we're concerned. We're out just after 08.30 and by 09.10 have found not only the microbus station but also a microbus to Squeilbiyya (you wouldn't believe what the Arabic looks like), which is the closest largest town to Greco-Roman site of Afamia/Apamea (named after Seleucus' wife - Apama), one of the Syrian Tetrapolis of major cities and erstwhile Roman capital of Syria Secundus. Housing a couple of hundred thousand and many more in its hinterland, it was ravaged by earthquake and invasion, and the tiny modern remnant survives only in and around the acropolis (outside the Roman city walls).
It seems to have had a pretty hard time - earthquakes in 526 and 528 and a Persian raid in 573; the Persian control from 612 to 628; then Arab conquest ("liberation", I'm sure they'd call it here) from 636, then brief Byzantine reoccupation before it landed slap-bang in the front line of the Crusades. Another couple of earthquakes in 1157 and 1170 finished off anyone's desire to live in the old site.

We change buses at Squeilbiyya for a 10-minute trip, and are dropped just past the old acropolis: nothing Greco-Roman is left there. Now it's the Syrian town, crammed inside the old walls of a Crusader castle - Qala'at al-Mudiq - which covers the whole hill-top. We leave this for later, walk round the bottom of the hill and 9with directions from locals on bikes) away from the modern road. Even from some distance away, the columns of the old Roman main street are already visible on the plain before us. Where the modern road crosses this street, we find a little ticket office and the guy there lets us in for almost nothing (ie. accepts our ISIC cards). We also decide to buy a little guide book (in French), since it's already obvious that this is a huge site - we spend our first few minutes working out where we are on the little map, and where we should head first.

The walled city was roughly oval, with a long main road running North-South along the longer axis (like Damascus, on its side): this road was entirely colonnaded and, being Roman, perfectly straight. From the ticket office we can see this street (with re-erected columns in huge stretches) running well over 1km north of us to the distant Antioch Gate, so that's the direction we head. After 250m we reach the old centre - the columns here have unusual twisted fluting (clockwise and anti-clockwise on alternate columns), and facing them were the Tycheion (dedicated to Fortuna) and the 150m-long agora. At both north and south ends of the agora (now just a field) were monumental gates. Although the Byzantines built a large public latrine over the south gate, the north still shows very ornate column bases. Further west of the agora was a temple of Zeus, of which we can find nothing surviving.

By this time we've already been accosted by two locals looking to sell us coins - excellent quality coins, better than the stuff we saw on offer in Turkey. Throughout our visit, locals ride around the site on motorbikes, stopping to offer us items for sale - several of these items really should be in museums. One was a small but beautifully carved marble head; the other was a (bronze?) pendant in the shape of a penis with wings. The guy selling the latter, with his muslim sensibilities, was really embarrassed about it: he kept asking "Do you know what this is?" (it was pretty obvious) and wouldn't address Milla directly while he had it in his hands. We'd both quite liked that piece, but considering he offered us a string of Roman and Byzantine ceramic beads for $100 (starting price), we figured it was out of our price range. We also figured all these items were genuine, since the fields inside the site were filled all day with people walking slowly scanning the ground (often with their kids). Also there are numerous clearly-amateur holes dug around Apamea, as well as the regular professional trenches.

We press north from the centre, along the colonnaded road, to the quarter-way point and major junction: as well as a series of pseudo-portico facades lining the road here, there's a high column with built-in seats at the base to mark the point. Since this is a Roman site, there were almost certainly identical columns at the half-way and southern quarter-way points as well, but there's nothing left of them. We strike east a little, passing a man and horse tilling a field (whether for crops of just to turn up coins we couldn't tell), and meeting more locals trying to sell us coins: we also pass bits of houses, a few minor stretches of paved streets, and some remains of a bath complex. On the other (west) side of the main road is a long church (or the remains of one, rather) with an extra outer narthex similar to the one we saw in Ephesus.
From there it's an easy walk, finally, up to the north/Antioch Gate, the Nymphaeum (nothing left except some elaborate plumbing) and some newly excavated areas of cisterns and other water supply elements. We chat with the guard there, who inspects our tickets (this is another entrance), and then follow the old city wall around the eastern edge of the site and past an old necropolis, now riddled with little pits where locals have presumably dug for finds: this area has far more of them pacing the ground.

After 13.00 we head right the way across and out of the Roman site and down the hill to the little Apamea museum - it's closing early 14.00, presumably because it's Ramadan, but the guy at the ticket desk assures us that ten minutes is enough to see everything. Actually, twenty minutes would have been a better estimate, but not much more. It's in an old khan, and has a couple of sculptures, lots of tombstones and a number of panels of mosaics. You can buy lots of postcards of these mosaics, in which they look right and well-preserved (that's the reason we visited the museum) - in reality (and with no artificial lighting during our visit) they're pretty dull and faded: they really need to restore them using whatever techniques were employed in the mosaic museum in Istanbul.

We pause to buy cigarettes and have a coffee (most tourist sites in Syria have little cafés which, although there are no locals during Ramadan, are happy serving stuff to tourists), and then head back up for the unseen 25% of Apamea. We start with the theatre, the Roman building closest to the current town - there's not a huge amount left: no seats, a couple of access tunnels and only a small part of the façade has been restored - also it's been pretty much given over to vegetation and livestock (and a couple of children).
When we reach the ticket office again, this time we turn south along the big colonnaded street. Apart from its columns, there's not a lot to see on this stretch (the remains of a church and the foundations of a rotunda) so we strike further east. There's been quite a lot of excavation in this last area, uncovering a couple of large villas on one side of the road (one with a very impressive courtyard of columns) and the old cathedral and a large palace complex opposite them. The palace isn't much to look at, but the cathedral's much more interesting - the central building was surrounded by a circular courtyard (still mosaiced in places, in geometric patterns), and there were a number of smaller chapels and a square outer courtyard in the complex around it. After that, in the facing light, we head out of the site past the empty ticket office and join the pre-sunset stream of people up to the hill-top village of Qala'at al-Mudiq. One guy we pass offers to let us sleep at his house overnight, which worries us a little about our chances of getting a later bus back to civilization.

After a steep climb with good views down both the valley and back across to Apamea, we pass through the old (and looking worse for wear, especially with houses perched on top of them) Crusader walls. Inside is packed a little Syrian village of twisting and uneven streets (and a little square): the place is deserted, with the smell of cooking emanating from every house, since sunset passed during our climb. We wander about, greeting cats and cattle, clamber around one of the few stretches of wall which isn't obscured by housing, say no thanks to another local who offers us accommodation, and then head back out as it's beginning to get really dark. We both agree that, with its setting, this could quite easily have been another Sighisoara - but it's Arabs rather than Germans living here, so instead it's actually fairly dull, squalid and lacking in character (it's worth noting that Syria's main tourist attractions, Palmyra and Krak des Chevaliers, are Roman and Crusader rather than Arab).

At the bottom of the hill we find a little open shop for cigarettes, and chat with locals (as usual we say we're Romanian - less people try to rip us off that way) while we wait for a passing microbus. After 45 minutes something eventually passes for Squeilbiyya, though when we get there there's no sign of life from the bus station: we investigate, but find only a mob of microbus drivers trying to function as taxis. We hang around a roundabout with a couple of Arab guys going the same way. Eventually a microbus driver decides it might be worth his time, loads us in, waits ten minutes in case anyone else turns up, spends another fifteen minutes driving slowly around the town (with no success) and eventually sets off. Thankfully he picks up a number of other passengers en route, otherwise we might have been hit with a higher price to compensate for the half-empty bus.
Our lesson from today is not to try and travel during darkness from outlying areas (during Ramadan at least), since it took two hours of mostly waiting to get back to Hama. Apamea, meanwhile, gets 4/10 on the ruins scale (Milla would rate it higher - and it could go up to 6 if they excavated and labeled more) and Qala'at al-Mudiq gets 1/10 'cos it's just a village, despite the setting.

We had a couple of long-distance options for today, but I sabotage us by not setting my alarm (we both seem to have trained ourselves to ignore Milla's): as a consequence, we drift awake at about 09.00. By the time we're mobile and ready to go, it's too late to hit anything far away (especially with uncertain closing times during Ramadan) so we review closer (one bus) options nearby and select Misiaf (or Musyaf/Missiaf/etc. - there are normally various options, often with variant spellings on adjacent or subsequent road signs). The village/town has a castle, though an Ismaili/Assassin castle rather than a Crusader castle, so we'll see what that looks like.

The microbus station of yesterday has direct services for almost no money - in fact, for the first time since reaching Syria, it costs an amount which isn't a multiple of 5 Syrian pounds. I'd previously assumed that was a result of the coinage (ie. nothing lower than a 5), but it now transpires that there are 1 and 2 coins as well: so it's a matter of choice. That's kind of interesting, since it implies a much more notional concept of value than we have in the west/Europe, especially since the lowest denomination they use (5) is worth $0.10, which is quite a lot here. Hence little sweets are wildly over-priced at S£5; my temporary torch (until I find a Maglite bulb) was S£10; we picked up a couple of little plastic zippable storage bags this morning, and they were also S£10. It may, of course, be a face-thing (they're too proud to want to be seen to be concerned with small change); or else their idea of value isn't linked as closely as ours to that of currency. Whatever the reason, I now have some low-value coins which I'll need to get rid of somewhere.
We pass parked trucks on the way out of Hama (they - presumably the same trucks - were there when we arrived: lots and lots of them - far more than we've seen driving on the roads): possibly they're not allowed on the roads during the day. And of course Hama's Assad statue - the one in Hama is particularly stiff and unnatural, qualities in which Assad was apparently quite strong when it came to statue poses. And soon, after crossing to the western slopes of the Orontes valley, the bus is climbing into the hillside town of Misiaf. The castle was obvious from some distance away - it's on a rocky crag, just downhill from the town centre: not the highest point in the immediate locale, but the one with the most consistent steep slopes. There are a couple of cranes outside, so some kind of restoration is in progress.

The entrance is up a fairly shallow set of steps (much more gentle than, say, Qala'at Salahdin) and despite Lonely Planet's tales of a lone caretaker, leads us to a little ticket office manned by four people. We get our student discount price, no questions asked, and ascend further inside. Misiaf castle turns out to be similar in design to a Crusader castle, but quite different in execution: it has a huge central building surrounded by a curtain wall. No real courtyard to speak of, and in fact very little open space (there's more now than then), the whole castle was a multi-level warren of rooms and halls. There were no really large halls, either, unlike in the Crusader model, and the stonework was all small blocks and less-worked than the more massive Crusader blocks.

There's a huge amount of restoration work going on (at least fifteen people working inside the walls and more outside - being workers, we observe them occasionally having illicit cigarettes), and the visitors are quite outnumbered. In fact, during our time there we only saw two other visitors (both local-looking) - a weird guy with a nice camera, and a weirder woman who was a bit creepy.

A squashed oval, most of the outer towers are at either end or over the entrance: although the upper levels have plenty daylight (often due to missing walls or ceilings), the lower floors and passages within the walls definitely needed torches. There was a friendly guy showing the creepy woman around with a flashlight (we met up in a little tower with a well): earlier the same guy had briefly unlocked a little, square (mosque?) for us. We stop for cigarettes and biscuits in a lower floor inside a little defensive tower, lit by three slit windows (which is also odd - I thought slit windows were for longbows, whereas I thought the arabs used crossbows), and then head out. Misiaf gets 2/10 on the ruins scale.

We wander around outside, looking for both a microbus back and a decent viewpoint of the castle for a photo (there are buildings in the way mostly), and meet a local guy "Ahmad" (possibly). He offers to take us to the bus station, and en route explains that he's actually a student in Aleppo but is currently working on the repairs at the castle for the money (I expect him to offer us coins at this point, but he doesn't). He tells us about his "sport" (he can break 8 bricks, apparently - his sport turns out to be karate and judo), and about a second castle up in the mountains behind Misiaf - a "holy place to Muslims" it's apparently cut into the summit and sounds more like a monastery from his description. He also explains that he's an Ismaili (I didn't think they still existed) and that his Iman is Karim Aga Khan in Paris who, co-incidentally, is paying for the current renovation at the castle. Finally (it's a long walk - the little bus station is on the outskirts), he pays for our bus tickets back to Hama on the basis that he likes us and hopes to visit us in Romania. Lovely.
Back in Hama we pick up supplies at the little supermarket, buy two (2!) felafel each, and another half-kilo of honeyed pastries. These ones (my choice) are little horseshoe shapes with no nuts/pistachio (much cheaper), and Milla's not so keen on them - she only has four out of twenty-something.

Friday - the worst day for traveling, or doing anything, in Syria (with the possible exception of Tuesday, when most of the museums/sites are closed). That notwithstanding, we're going to try Qala'at Marqab today - remote from Hama, it's the castle that was rained off from Lattakia. We get up at 06.30, and out at 08.20 (yes, it takes us two hours normally to have breakfast and get ready) to search for buses to Banias. We have absolutely no success (there apparently was one at 07.30): our best bet seems to be a coach to Tartus at 09.30 from a little office down by the river. It take us south to Homs first (apparently pronounced "H'Muss"), as part of a big dog-leg, waits for ten minutes, and then goes west for Tartus. From the highway we pass the turn-off to Hosn, for Krak des Chevaliers, and can see the castle shining white on a distant hill-top: that'll be tomorrow's adventure, hopefully. And then we eventually reach Tartus, just after 11.00.
There's a microbus just about ready to head north (again) to Banias, so we're soon on the road again. Approaching Banias along the coastal road, Qala'at Marqab is unmissable: a dark, brooding shape sprawled along one of the hills just inland from the Mediterranean. It later turns out that we made a serious error not getting out at the turn-off on the way in, but it looked like a serious climb so instead we opted for a change of bus in Banias. The little microbus station is some way past the turn off (Banias is a trip along the coast - the tourist literature says "It was an ancient Phoenician seaport. Today it is better known for its oil refinery."): we pass the oil refinery, and its fenced-in and guarded accommodation blocks.

There's another microbus waiting to fill up and, with us, only has 5 people: a steady trickle boards, as the time ticks away - we're concerned that the castle might close at 14.00 (like Qala'at Salahdin), and it's already 12.00. It seems, considering our last attempt, that the gods don't want us to visit Qala'at Marqab at all. The next bus turns up, and its driver argues with ours about why he hasn't left yet (he's waiting to fill one empty seat): the final straw seems to be when three women arrive and start filling the other bus. Our driver gives up and starts off. We start south, past the first and then the second turn-off to Marqab and in fact the castle starts to fall behind us - quick enquiries of the other passengers reveal that this bus is going to Tartus (!). We pull over, get out, have an argument with the driver to get our money back ("Qala'at Marqab?" we asked: "Yes, yes - in you get"), and eventually one of the other passengers (possibly fearful of never getting to Tartus) refunds us. The microbus drives off and we're left standing along on the edge of the coastal highway. Super.

We can see Qala'at Marqab - it's a few kilometres away, and there's an impossibly steep road climbing up to it from somewhere (not here): lacking any other options, with the time ticking on, we start to walk. We turn inland as soon as possible, and suffice to say we end up walking the whole way in the midday sun - it's a serious killer. A guy on a motorbike helps us find the right road (the turning we took led elsewhere, but there was a connecting road): a microbus offered to take us there for a small fortune. Milla gets slower and slower and stops (I worry that she might not make it), but eventually we stagger past the restaurant and souvenir stalls opposite the entrance, and up the ramp. It's 13.15 and we've already spotted one place where we think we could clamber out if the site closes at 14.00 (ie. hide when they close, and then finish: we're buggered if we put in all that effort for only 45 minutes). We're students, we tell the guy at the desk, and we've just walked up here from Banias: he doesn't question our ISIC cards and, when we ask what time they close, waves his hand to indicate we can stay as long as we like. And then we're inside.

First up, after a little piss in a deserted corner, we branch right: the main defensive buildings were on this southern side - the north seems more a lower yard for the usual minor buildings, accommodation and so on. A little gate leads almost immediately into a trapezoidal courtyard: to the right are defensive walls and the remains of two towers, to the left are what look to have been stables, but the principal buildings are straight ahead. Primary among these is the church, with a wide decorated door - single-naved with a rounded apse, it was obviously converted to a mosque later (the Mamluks took Marqab, after Salahdin failed a few times) since there's a shallow mihrab in the south wall. There's a courtyard down the steps from the main door, from which you can reach the other central buildings, but under the entrance are more steps leading down into the darkness, so that's obviously where we head.

Torches out, we explore below and find large, almost totally dark halls. Back up in the light, we go around the back of the church and find a tiny triangular courtyard. The left/west building has a ground floor hall with holes in the floor tossing pebbles in reveals a cistern below - a huge cistern, judging by the echoes. A narrow staircase leads up one level to an upper hall, and then up another level we find an exit onto a flat roof (covered in modern concrete). The views are excellent, and the vertical drops on all sides to the castle pathways are spectacular - somewhat disappointingly, considering the effort of our climb, we can't see Cyprus. We go back inside (through more of a window than a door) and back out the building.

We return to the stables off the main courtyard - there are three or four guys here working on some of the arched doorways (replacing the actual arches with modern, cut stone): it's interesting to see the scaffold they're using to raise and place the angled blocks which make up the arch, since that must have been pretty much the way it's been done since Roman times. As with the later Arab and Ottoman buildings in the castle complex, they're using sandstone - the original castle was almost entirely black basalt (I don't know where they got it from), with geometric decorative layers of white limestone (possibly): it's very imposing and effective - a nice castle to show off to visiting foreign dignitaries. Anyway, we exchange greetings and press on, emerging in the lower castle and a route around the outside of the main buildings.

At the "front" end of the castle, apart from a further, outer line of high defences which we can't get inside (the access routes have collapsed), there are a couple of half-underground halls which we guess might have been kitchens. Facing them, there's a large section of the inner buildings which has been repaired - this time with black basalt blocks and ancient concrete - so presumably dating from one of the area's frequent earthquakes. We follow the outer wall (inlaid with rooms, towers and windows - we find another little hole in the outer wall which we could use as an emergency exit if we get locked in) back in through the inner entrance in case we've missed some bits. There are other visitors here now, though no foreigners - a family group clambering from level to level, and a young couple strolling around. I toss another few small stones into the cistern - the noise really unnerves Milla: "the voice of the water", one of our fellow visitors comments, and then demonstrates to his girlfriend as we wander away.

Spotting the gatekeeper wandering about, and fearing that he might be evicting people, we make a beeline for the remote and overgrown northern (bailey) area. We clamber (diagonally, across a sharp drop) onto the roof of the gatetower, and look in the modernish tower with radio pylon (Ottoman? French?) and adjacent (desolate) caf�E There are a few small fields and ramashackle buildings and walls, which imply the hilltop was partially farmed until recently. And then we walk up to the northern corner and look along the eastern wall (there are giant, presumably illuminated letters and a few palm trees) and across at the coastal views (up past Banias to Lattakia), before turning back and heading for the exit. They're just closing up, the workmen area leaving, and the guy shuts one of the double doors behind us. All in all, after two hours, it was a superb castle and gets 5/10 - pretty good for somewhere I'd hardly heard of.

We're relieved to see a microbus waiting by the castle entrance, but less overjoyed when it drives off with the castle workers, leaving us 50 metres behind. Goddamn. Ah well - enquiries reveal that walking down the far side of the castle is a quicker way into Banias than the road we took here, so off we go (again) on foot. It's actually quite pleasant walking downhill, and even more pleasant when a microbus stops to let us aboard. I squeeze in the front (there's a space) and Milla somehow squeezes in the full back, and the bus takes us straight to Banias' little bus station for S£5 each. Best of all there's a microbus, almost full, waiting to go to Tartus. We get in the front seats and a couple of minutes later we're off.
There are a couple of disadvantages to being in the front seats, we discover: firstly, you're next to the speakers so you get the loudest music and secondly, you can see how he's driving. And, even given the fact that he probably hasn't eaten since sunrise, his driving was . . . interesting . . . and fast. Still, at least I finally figured out why and when Syrian drivers use the horn: it's when, in any normal country, a driver would slow down or stop. See someone in the middle of the road? Sound the horn. Approaching a junction or stop sign? Sound the horn. See a red light ahead? Sound the horn. It gets us into Tartus in good time, though. There's a bus for Homs waiting, but the driver first wants 100 each, and then 100 for both. After a little debate, we decide to nip into Tartus for a quick look round and to find a decent bus.

We get up, determined and ambitious at 06.45 but (with packing added to our usual morning routine) aren't ready to leave the hotel until 09.30: we dump our bags by reception, head up to the microbus station again, straight onto a bus and are in Homs by 10.30. There follows a frustrating half-hour during which we search for information about evening buses to Palmyra - it takes us that long to discover there's a specific station for large buses ("Pullman", apparently) elsewhere and that our last reasonable options seems to be 19.00. Whenever Krak des Chevaliers (Qala'at al-Hosn) closes, that should still give us enough time to get back to Hama and then back down to here for 19.00. We board a waiting microbus at 11.00, but it fills so incredibly slowly (including another tourist - an older German woman) that we're not on the road before 11.45.
The route is mostly along the highway to Tartus (do all microbuses go to Tartus?), right up to the Hosn turn-off and then it's a winding trek up through small villages to the comparatively large and frequently very steep town of Hosn. During the approach we see more and more of the castle, but mostly just from one end (so actually we see more and more of the same two or three white towers - Krak des Chevaliers seems to be white). The microbus takes us right up to the entry on the long eastern wall (unlike the other castles we've visited, the basic shape here is symmetrical, with long east and west sides and narrow north and south sides). Up the stairs the man at the ticket office isn't interested in our non-typed ISIC cards, but he's very polite about it - we fork out 150S£ ($3/£2) each, and press inside, leaving the otherwise enthusiastic German woman complaining about the cost.

Our (Milla's) first stop is the WC, where I'm briefly surrounded by would-be guides and sellers of postcards/guidebooks while I wait: on exiting, Milla is hit for an extra fee for using the toilet which she refuses to pay (there's no sign, and the guy there just looks like a hawker). We carry on south up the approach, flanked by the central complex on our right and the curtain walls/towers/halls on our left, where I choose a more au naturel pissing point (badly chosen, it turns out - the German woman waves down at us from high above and attempts to start a conversation mid-piss). Slightly further in, past a hall where workers are carving blocks for restoration, is a large tower linking the inner and outer complexes. At this point we elect to go straight on, rather than dog-legging up and into the central keep area.
We pretty much hit the southern end of the castle, where the defenses were strongest (it has the shallowest, almost non-existant approaching slope). Here, the most formidable three inner towers top a massive sloping wall of masonry, and overlook a moat/reservoir (still with water) which separates them from the solid hall/three towers which comprise the defenses of the outer wall here. Immediately on our left, and below ground level, are the Arab-era baths (Beybars took the castle in 1271, intact): we scramble around the outer walls and then find stairs leading down. It's definitely a case for torches, since the stairs descend far below the baths to a large hall, from where further stairs descend even further into the pitch-black: we follow them somewhat nervously, but the passage turns out to be blocked. After that, ascending to the small network of rooms which form the baths is quite disappointing.

The towers/hall on the outer wall are fairly average, and are best for their views back to the inner keep - there's also a (self-contradictory) sign indicating a "secret" exit/entrance, but the steep and narrow passage is blocked. From there we follow the western wall/bailey (sometimes inside, sometimes outside the wall) pausing only to look inside a small rough-hewn passage (torches again) which leads a short distance in to another water supply. We round the northern tip of the castle (simultaneously with half a dozen Germans and two Brits - there are at least twenty other people here, including some loud Australians and Americans, which makes it the busiest site we've seen in Syria), and look back south to the inner complex. There are two entrances visible - a rocky scrabble, and a large protected tower: oddly, we opt for the tower, briefly detouring via a restored Ottoman-style 4-room house just inside the outer wall.

Through the gatetower (and a detour via the roof), the main passage opens onto the inner courtyard including a Gothic-fronted gallery and the castle chapel. We save those for later and turn left to look round the cavernous barracks (the castle was built for a garrison of 2,000), off which we find a passage running right round the inside of the southern aspect (with slit windows overlooking the moat and outer wall) - there's a drainage channel running along much of its length, so I guess guard duty there was particularly smelly. We emerge at the far side of the barracks, in great oil storage rooms (the bases of large pottery storage vessels are still visible), next to the huge kitchen/oven and the castle mill. We emerge in the ornate and vaulted gallery which we saw earlier, and then press on round that side of the courtyard to the extensive communal toilets (Toilettes des Chevaliers?), with nice little plumbed alcoves off a huge hall.

A little door off the side of the toilet area takes us into the church/chapel, now containing a somewhat lumpy and disappointingly-sized minbar (islamic pulpit). The chapel is neither as large nor as elegant as the one in Qala'at Marqab, though it had a wooden gallery running round the top (the holes for the beams are still there, as are upper-level entrtances which now open onto nothing). We return to the barracks and ascend a set of stairs (we saw an oriental guy coming down them earlier - there's a "Danger: Keep Out" sign on the other side) to the upper level.

There are half a dozen towers accessible frfom the upper courrtyard, and you can reach the flat, concreted roofs of all of them (one even has railings to stop people falling off): the best three are south-facing, including the central "Command Tower". We sit for a while on window seats in the first floor hall, surreptitiously eating biscuits (staple ruins-food), looking over the southern approaches, and watching Arab couples visiting Krak. They're all smartly dressed and promenade sedately, arm in arm, occasionally risking a staircase or two - they spend most of their time walking up to each window, pausing briefly to gaze out, and then move onto the next.

We wrap up our visit touring the other towers - the Signal Tower (with a precarious external climb); the Princess Tower (now housing the over-priced café on the bottom floor) which used to have a nice balcony, now a narrow and dangerous ledge; and the tower above the chapel (here we find the doorways which used to lead to the chapel balcony). From there we descend via the main entrance, pausing to look in on anything we might have missed, and reach the gate/door at almost exactly 15.00 (closing time): the door is closed, but not locked. Outside we walk around the castle, through someone's garden (Milla befriends a cat), to get good views from the south and south-west: we're just starting off downhill again when a microbus to Homs stops and collects us. Excellent.

Krak des Chevaliers gets 5/10, the same as Qala'at Marqab - they're quite different, but both deserve a good 2-3 hours to explore and it would be difficult to choose between them (though tourist lore and conventional opinion seems to have decided in favour of Krak).

The bus turns out not to be as excellent as it first seemed, due to its (normal) policy of collecting enough passengers to make the trip worthwhile. This entails driving around the steep and winding narrow streets of Hosn (passing the new church - there are lots of churches and mosques being built in Syria), pursuing leads and hints of people who might want to go to Homs: the situation is particularly bad since, apart from us, the bus only starts with two Czech backpackers. We eventually leave and reach Homs worryingly late - thankfully we and the two Czechs pretty much complete the waiting minibus onwards to Hama and we're off just after 17.00. 17.45 sees us in Hama (we leave the Czechs in the bus, negotiating for an onwards ride into the centre with their rucksacks); 18.00 sees us at the hotel; by 18.05 we're in the bus company's offices. Al Ahliah is the bus company in question, recommended by Tourist Information and good so far - they're based in Hama, and therefore have norias/waterwheels on their logo: everything in Hama does, and the wheels feature on the S£50 notes. The big patriotic billboards here have Assad, Basher and a waterwheel on them. Apart from the wheels, admittedly, there's not a lot in Hama, but it's a relaxing place (even the constant backgrorund of car horns is quieter here), and the hotel has BBC World (to let us know how close to potential war zones we are): best of all, it's a good base for visits to other places (though perhaps not for Marqab, on reflection). There are blocks in the outskirts, but more stylish and decorative (and fewer) than those around Aleppo or Homs. For all these reasons, Hama gets 3/10.

The 18.15 bus ends up not leaving until 18.21, but thankfully makes good time and we get into Homs at 18.56 (after a bit of a sticky accident with some honey-covered pastry, which we leave for the next occupants of these seats): thankfully, again (because our target bus leaves at 19.00), the bus drops us at the right bus station for our connection to Palmyra (the modern town is called Tadmor). Milla gets our rucksacks off the Hama bus while I find the bus company office (the signs are all in Arabic) and get tickets (travelling long distances in Syria means needing your passport to buy tickets). Not only is the bus waiting, but the engine is running: our bags are hurried into the luggage compartment and we (with the other 8 or so passengers) pull out of Homs at 19.05. Phew.
Apparently there are ethnic beehive-shaped houses and storerooms lining the dedsert road (we're heading east into the desert, by the way), but at this time of year (and night) there's nothing to see or do on the trip except try to sleep. A major part of our attention is taken up with watching the outside temperature on the bus's digital thermometer - it started at 14 degrees (freezing, compared with Syria so far) and drops as we head into the desert. At one horrendous moment it hits 4 degrees before climbing back to 9 degrees as we approach the Palmyra Oasis a couple of hours later. After a few false alarms (tiny clusters of streetlights visible from the windows) we reach Tadmor - dedspite passing what seems like some fairly central areas, the bus crew won't let us off until their bus station.
"Their bus station" unfortunately turns out to be well outside the town and, as the only likely business, we're surrounded by a small swarm of taxis (whose drivers, we guess, are probably related to the bastards in the bus). We ignore them and set off on foor, in the dark and the cold, into town. Ignoring still further offers of taxis, and suggestions of more expensive hotels (where the suggestees could probably get a commission for bringing us in), we reach the (old) New Tourist Hotel after half an hour. The guys there put us in a simple cold little room with a barely-functional toilet, but they do give us free tea and a discount and a couple of extra blankets. We retire early (Milla requests still further blankets), after reading the guest book - it's full of warnings about busloads of tourists, and backpacker hangouts, and staying here for days in the laid-back environment, and watching sunset from the arab castle, and so on. Of course, almost all of these notes have summer dates . . . just now it seems to be us and a Japanese guy here - possibly in all of Tadmor.

We get up and out fairly early, after all there's little to do in the hotel: it's just gone 09.00 by the time we leave the room, and we find the hotel completely deserted. We hang the room keys behind reception, stow our rucksacks behind a bookcase, and set out into Tadmor. In the daylight it seems a lot less desolate than last night - we're on the outskrits of a little area of hotels and minimarkets and tourist/souvenir/handicrafts shops (and shops selling only dates). A couple of blocks walk takes us to the museum (later, if we have time), tourist information (closed) and the Karnak office (Karnak is the state-run bus company - if they're this close to the hotel then that could be useful for when we want to leave). And one block further, the town of Tadmor abruptly stops because that's where the ancient site of Palmyra starts.

It's quite intimidating, to be honest.

There's a long, colonnaded street ahead of us, perhaps not as impressive as the one in Apamea, but with collanded side-streets leading off at right-angles (of course): in the middle distance are hills, ,and the hills and dotted and ringed with free-standing towers - those'll be the tombs which we've heard about. Way over to our left is a large, high-walled structure, which is presumably the Temple of Bel. To summarise, Palmyra seems to extend almost as far as we can see in three directions (ahead, left and right). Oh, and I forgot to mention that there's a small but high-walled Arab castle on one of the hills overlooking the site (and a modern communication pylon on top of another).
Probably because of its size, the actual site is open and free (ie. they haven't fenced it in), but we know there's a charge for the Temple of Bel - we head up the new road towards it, fighting off the attentions of date-sellers (their local stuff isn't nearly as good as the Iranian dates we've been living off so far in Syria). Our assumption is that, while there, we can pick up information on the rest of the site. When we get there we find a tour bus outside (a tour bus? In Syria? In November? And to get here for now, when the hell did they set out?) and a lot of over-priced literature (mainly in French) inside. We also find that they don't like our hand-written student cards. We play the poor Romanian students, wistfully looking through the door at the temple; sadly leafing through the literature and guided books; pathetically copying down their big wall-map of the site. Eventually they relent and let us in for S£15 each ($0.30), with the proviso that we destroy our student tickets when we're finished.

In we go and, despite the mere handful of columns which we saw through the door, are impressed. The complex is a large, walled courtyard, with two nested squares of columns (ie. originally a massive perimeter walkway) just inside. At the centre of the courtyard is a high, sand-coloured central building with a monumental off-centre entrance: this building was also surrounded by columns originally, of which few are now fully standing. We go up the processional ramp inside, and find a big empty space. There are two large alcoves, one at either end, still with the original carved decoration (including, unnusually, the ceiling - normally among the first bits to collapse) - one of these alcoves presumably held the statue to Bel (local Number One god), but we have no idea which. Behind one alcove there's a (locked) staircase leading up - oddly, for Romans, it's a spiral staircase. Other than that, there's not a lot to see - it's more an admire-the-scale kinda place. Just outside, amid the tons of stone fragments, are a number of excellent bas-relief friezes: pictures of the god receiving tribute (lots of grapes) and a really interesting one showing a laden camel with a number of women. It's interesting because the women (unlike the Roman women on other bits) are totally covered in material (including faces): since these easily predate Islam, that demonstrates the whole covering-up-women thing is Arab cultural rather than religious. The chap who tried to sell us jewellery in Aleppo explain that Arabs like the hide and cover up beautiful things: me, I reckon it's just because Arab men can't contrtol themselves (you only cover up things of value if you live in a town full of thieves). Most of the men on the friezes, incidentally, are wearing baggy trousers rather than tunics or togas.

There are other sections of frieze and ornamental decoration lying around, but the principal other feature of interest is the erstwhile main entrance gate. It's high, quite ornate, and now blocked off: there's a separate entry ramp (also blocked off) way over to one side, presumably for large processions with chariots and so on (we couldn't see very well, but the main entrance looked designed for pedestrians only). The last notable feature of the Temple is that tour-groups keep passing through - this is surreal for Syria: the only one we've previously seen was at Krak yesterday (it arrived 45 minutes before closing time, so presumably had a very concise tour). The groups are almost exclusively French-speaking.

Outside there are people offering camel rides and selling postcards, which we ignore: the majority of the various pedlars are Syrian Bedu - the men wear their headscarves much less casually than most Syrian Arabs, and their skin is darker. Also, and oddly, no-one offers to sell us coins - there must be hundreds in this area, but the locals just don't seem to have cottoned onto it as a money-making activity. There used to be a road linking the temple with the main strteet - only the stumps of the flanking columns remain: very unusually for a Roman city, the road changes direction slightly here - there's an assymetric triumphal arch at the point where the temple road hits the main road. With the backdrop of columns, desert and hills it's very scenic (more than it would have been 2000 years ago, with intact buildings lining the roads): I try to find some dramatic clouds for photos, but apart from a couple of pathetic wispy ones in the distance, there aren't any (the temperature's finally got up to "pleasant", by the way).

At the start of this main section of road, there's a temple to "Nabo" (a local version of Apollo) on the left: it's not hugely impressive (especially following the Temple of Bel), but follows the normal Hellenistic/Roman model - an unnusual feature is a square-based little colonnaded platform just before the main steps: it looks suspiciously like the "fountains" outside mosques. Next up on this side is the much-restored theatre - the seats are low, and almost nothing of the visible structure is original: the stage, on the other hand, is magnificently intact. Interestingly, there's a wide semi-circular colonnaded open area around the free-standing seats, which we haven't seen before. Over the street from the theatre are the Zenobian Baths (founded by mad, bad Queen Zenobia, Palmyra's most famous export), of which enough survives to see the layout but, as bath complexes go, it's not great.

At the back of the theatre, away from the road, is the old Senate building (though it's impossible now to see where even the odeon/buleuterion used to be) and next to that is the agora (which, oddly, seems to have been walled). It's just a big square (well, it's an agora after all), and at the far side it opens onto a major side-street which crossed the long central road. Marking the juntion of these two (and another slight change in direction for the main street - the Romans must have hated this placee) is a much-restored and re-erected Tetrapylon: it has two surviving (bits of) statues in two of the four niches, but the sides prove too steep for us to join them for a photo opportunity. The camels wandering around the site, looking for people to ride them for money, are resting here briefly as are some of the handlers and sellers of postcards and guidebooks.

We head south-west along the main street - it's less excavated here, though there are still a huge number of columns standing. Buildings on either sided are unmarked and not distinct, though occasional runs of columns presumably mark former streets: we finally reach where the road ends at a funerary temple with still-high walls and steps. Less impressive, but far more interesting, is a Temple to Allat close by: there's tumbled masonry all across what remains, and the inscriptions on some of the fragments are in a script I've never seen before (Palmyran, at a guess?). It's like some Ozymandial relic - in the middle of the desert, a forgotten temple to a forgotten god, with inscriptions in a forgotten script. The stuff of Boys' Own, even.

Beyond (through) the temple, ,snuggled against a hill and flanked by the Zenobian outer walls, is Palmyra's counterweight to the Temple of Bel - the euphemistically-labelled "Diocletian's Camp". Possibly built over rebel Zenobia's palace, the camp seems more like a palace itself: after large courtyards, it has a monumental flight of steps up to a large chamber from which there are views across the entire city. It's very impressive, though despite the still-surviving narrow stairs round the back, there's no real roof to clamber up to. From up here we have good views of the large oasis which is Palmyra's raison d'etre - dry in summer, it's a vast lake now surrounded by gardens of palms trees - it stretches away to the east. Behind the camp, we find a burial chamber cut into the hillside, large enough for thirty to forty bodies - the niches survive, but there is no trace of the bodies.

We wander round the side of the hill into the valley of the tower tombs, presumably an ex-necropolis, stopping at another cave-tomb on the way. The towers are cuboid, often rising for several storeys with windows: two of them are locked and require a fee to be paid for someone to come and unlock them. We decide that they're all going to be pretty much the same inside, though, and there are plenty open, well-preserved examples. We clamber inside the most intact nearby tower and find ourselves in a narrow hall flanked by tall niches which seem to have contained two or three shelves for the bodies/caskets. Narrow stairs lead up to a higher floor of the same, as do narrow stairs from there (to a slightly different layout): a third set of steps going nowhere indicates the tower was higher than it is now - a large and/or long-lasting family, presumably. It's quiet and peaceful, with an odd dignity, and our discovery of all the bones heaped together in one niche simply adds an air of poignancy.

Tiring and hungry we head back across the entire site to the tetrapylon, crossing what may have once been a straightened stream (or another, sunken, long street) which seems to have been walled, and then head in the opposite direction from the agora. The last of Palmyra's monuments is on this street, and is the closest to the modern town - the Temple of Bel-Shamin. A still-walled building flanked by two large courtyards, it's locked behind a metal gate: inside are niches for altars and presumably statues, as well as an artistically-positioned tree. After shaking the dust off our feet (the desert here isn't sand - it's all dust-covered small stones), we stroll past another collection of waiting camels and suddenly we're back in town.
We've hardly gone any way at all before we find a little cellar-café offering us shwarma on a plate - we have to eat it indoors (or rather downstairs): in one corner of the little deserted-except-for-us restaurant is a giant stuffed rodent (like a massive stoat with long legs, the size of a huge dog). If that's an example of local fauna then suddenly the desert seems a lot less inviting. We return to the hotel and talk to the guy there (Sami?) about bus options to Damascus - he tells us where the Karnak and other offices are. We check out Karnak (closed) and fail to find the other nearby one, so it looks like we'll be trekking up to that damned bus station again. We delay around sunset (playing backgammon) and then load up and head out: most of the way there, we come upon a bus about to leave (having stopped at a local café for iftaar), buy last minute tickets, and suddenly are on a bus bound hopefully for Damascus.

We originally start the journey in separate rows (the bus is pretty packed) but halfway through, the Italian girl next to Milla moves to join a large group of Italians at the back of the bus, so we get to sit next to each other. Other than that, and a loud exchange when one guy tries to light a cigarette, nothing happens for the next three hours or so that it takes us to get to Damascus. We're dropped at a smallish bus station, avoid the attentions of taxi drivers and find a microbus which should take us to al-Merjeh (properly Martyrs' Square, or Saahat ash-Shohada), erstwhile centre of the French colonial city and now cheap hotel district. It actually drops us by a flyover a couple of blocks away, and it then takes us twenty minutes of wandering and map consultation to figure that out. Once we reach al-Merjeh, though, it takes us no time at all to find somewhere for $8 a night (our target). There's only hot water in the mornings, and the TV in the room doesn't work, but it's got a common room and little kitchens, so hey . . .
After settling in a little we head out and down to the square: there are juice and shwarma stalls in one corner, which we try (the pomegranate juice was very bitter, so I guess they pulped the whole fruit). After that we shop for supplies but, in the immediate vicinity, find no supermarket, no decent bread, no Viceroy (Milla's current cigarettes - we change from country to country, depending on what's available and at what price) and the little patisseries are open but more expensive than Aleppo, Lattakia or Hama. Doubtless tomorrow will bring better options.