Tripoli, Bsharri, and the rest of Lebanon.

Wednesday January 9^th – Sunday January 13^th.

Happy Birthday Siobhan!!!

Today we checked out of the Talaal New Hotel and headed north. We jumped on a bus to Tripoli sometime in the mid-afternoon. The journey was pretty uneventful. We arrived in Tripoli around 4pm. The city had a very distinctively different feel to Beirut. It was almost as if we were back in Syria again. It was much less European. We checked into a hostel for the night recommended in the Good Book. It was dubbed something akin to Grandma’s hotel, and pitched as – the sort of place your Grandmother would run. Lordy, they were not joking. The front room was full of a variety of elderly people. Some didn’t move the entire time we were there. Even to blink. I was starting to wonder after some time if they weren’t waxwork models. Our room was through a lounge area absolutely saturated with haberdashery and paraphernalia from what looked like all over the world. China figurines, marionettes, dolls, and very old sepia photographs stared back at us from the gloom as we were ushered through. Our room was pretty much the same. It did have a titillating TV in one corner. We soon found out however it did not work. In addition there were some interesting glitzy magazines in Arabic from several years ago lying around on the dressing table. But it was clean and tidy and when push comes to shove that is what matters.

We went for a stroll and grabbed a shamarma for dinner. The souq was closing up and it was getting dark and very cold quite early that evening, so we didn’t have much to do to entertain ourselves. We did pass an extraordinary high-rise building with a 50 foot photograph of Saddam Hussian on the side of it. This I found rather odd as I thought this area of Lebanon was more Shiite than Sunni, but it was a spectacularly big picture nonetheless.

Caught in the clutches of utter ennui – and also a power-cut - we headed back to Granny’s place early to not watch TV. Both of us were still drying out from a very wet start to the New Year and, wrapped in my thermals, I was in beddy-byes by 10pm.

The next morning we checked out of Grandma’s place with alacrity and enthusiasm. Some of the old folk in the reception were still there as we left. One of them was covered in a layer of dust. We jumped on a bus heading up to the mountain town of Bsharri. The morning was bright and warm and I was pretty excited about heading into the mountains: we were finally going to see the celebrated Cedars of Lebanon. The bus trip from Tripoli was initially pretty mediocre, however as soon as we began to snake around Jebel al-Makmal the scenery became absolutely stunning. We slowly climbed through the snow-tipped mountains that were wrapped in mist and majestic in the winter sunlight. I really enjoyed the bus journey.

We arrived in Bsharri a little after midday. This gorgeous town has been around for centuries. It is most famous for Khilal Gibran, poet, painter, artist, and visionary. Rachel bought Marcus and I one of his books: The Prophet, for Christmas. It is a fantastic work, tantamount to Paulo Coelho or Richard Bach in its simplicity and genius. Gibran died and was buried here, at his behest, and a museum was founded at his burial site, just out of town. We passed it on the way in. The public bus dropped at the hotel we were staying at: Tony’s Lodge. I fell in love with this town immediately. It reminded of the town from It’s A Wonderful Life. It was very small and very friendly and very peaceful. I guess the allure was the romantic feeling you get when you quickly pass through somewhere aesthetically beautiful. I think if I spent any lengthy period of time here I’d be crawling up the walls, or trying to at least. However, allow me the indulgence of imagining I could live here.

Tony was a great guy and a real affable fellow. He gave us a lot of info about walking in the surrounding area. The lodge was very Helvetianesque in its décor. There were two other people staying there. A Japanese guy who was out hiking in the Qadashir valley, and a Dutch guy, who we found sitting outside the lodge doing a spot of yoga as we arrived. We dumped our stuff in our room and headed straight out in the afternoon sunshine for a hike to the cedars. It was about 10k from Bsharri, so it was only around a 2 hour walk. The temperature was about 16 or 17 C but we were high in the mountains and as soon as the sun was to go down it would be way below 0 C. The walk up to the Cedars was pleasant enough. We’d read that many Australians emigrants had settled in Bsharri and sure enough 10mins after walking out of town we were stopped by a Lebanese guy with a stinking Ozzie accent, to ask us if we needed any help, which was cool of him. We bumped into a few people as we walked. Most notably a group of locals who - by the looks the gear they had with them - had just finished snowboarding. One of them was dancing around in a brightly coloured jump-suit listening to an i-pod and drinking Absolute vodka straight, from the bottle. He offered me a swig but I turned him down – well it was 3pm... I must be getting old!

We trekked on into the late afternoon, higher and higher into the mountains. Cars kept speeding past us at brake-neck speed along the winding road. The second funniest thing I saw that afternoon was that several of them appeared have snowmen built on their bonnets. Freshly made out of snow! They were class. The only thing I saw that afternoon that superceded that was when Marcus stopped to photograph one and it drove through a huge puddle soaking him completely. Oh, happy memories. J

We arrived at the Cedars about an hour before sunset. There were, very few of these ancient trees left. They are supposed to be the oldest existing species of tree in the world. In fact, they are an endangered species. In their heyday they covered the mountain slopes in all the surrounding areas. Their enduring and fragrant wood has been sought after for centuries. Egyptian Caliphs, Byzantine Emperors, and Arabian Sultans have requisitioned the bodies of these trees from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. They looked very peaceful sitting under the settling snow. I wonder if they looked as peaceful when this was the Phalange headquarters during the civil war. Probably; Although there was in all likelihood a haze of cordite and smoke around them and the serenity of the mountain would have been rent with gun-fire. But I imagine they still looked the same. Eternal.

Today the road opens into the ski-resort area and is full of avid skiers and boarders, many coming back from a hard day on the piste. We contemplated heading up further but decided against it as a cloud was closing in and the sun was about to set. We stopped in a restaurant and grabbed a late lunch and a beer instead. We got chatting to the restaurant owner and he kindly offered us a lift back to town. So we hung around for an hour until he shut up shop.

We got dropped off back at Tony’s just after sunset. It was freezing. We headed out to try and find an internet café but most of the town’s power was out and the café that was open had such antiquated computers that we gave up.

Back at the lodge there was a roaring open fire. We hung up our soaking shoes and socks and slowly thawed out. We spent the rest of the evening chilling out with the our host, and the Dutch and Japenese guys. Dinner, Tony informed us, was red wine and potatoes, which I took to be casserole. It transpired to be a bottle of – rather nice as it went – red wine and a sack of potatoes that Tony peeled and roasted on the fire. With no butter. Mmmmm. I managed three of them and then my stomach disowned me. The others kept on going.

… I am sitting in the lounge of Tony’s Lodge reading a whopping great book on Lebanon by Robert Fisk. The open fire is roaring, throwing flickering shadows around the room. Tony is kneeling in front of it peeling a small army of potatoes. The Japanese guy is telling me he is just about to return to Cambridge to complete his degree. Marcus is watching some very bad B-Movie on TV. The Dutch guy is jumping around the room, occasionally doing press-ups but more often randomly leaping next to one of us and farting. Evenings just don’t get much better than this…

The next morning was just as bright and as fresh. We decided to do three things today: Visit the Qadashir Valley. Visit Khilal Gibran’s museum. Head back to Beirut. Our visas ran out on Sunday and we were helping Natalie move into her new flat the next day. So it made sense to head back that afternoon. We wanted to do a spot of hiking first. And the Qadashir Valley sounded a fantastic spot to do it.

The Bsharri district is, in the main, Christian. The Qadishar Valley is littered with monasteries, churches, and ecclesiastical buildings. The valley itself runs from Bsharri 20KMs north east to the to Touvre and the Kadishar river runs down from the mountain through it and to the coast, to Tripoli. There have been inhabitants in the valley since the Palaeolithic period. The valley is renowned for its monasteries, pilgrims, and hermits. It was a haven for the Maronite Christians, when Barbars all but eradicated the Crusader cities from the Levant in the 13^th Century AD. The Maronite monks are famed, still today, for their piety. The valley floor is littered with monasteries and hermitages. Many other denominations – more so, people from all walks of life - were drawn to here to follow a path of piousness.

Marcus and I were drawn here to do a bit of hiking. We headed down through the Bsharri to the start of the path into the valley. The sun was warm, however low cloud was curling around the mountain and would soon be on top of us. The town is arranged along three strata running parallel to each other. It has three – count them – three churches. So they are a tad devout here. I think the population must be around 2-3 thousand people at most. The main church is huge and must have been able to host a congregation of around several hundred people.

… We have been hiking downwards for an hour. The fog is crawling down the mountainside onto the town above us, the sun has long disappeared. Despite the drop in temperature we are both sweating. The hike down has been a virtually vertical descent. I am enjoying the physical exercise. We reach the valley floor and head down into along it. The view is gorgeous. Waterfalls cascade down from mountain rivers that jet out of the sheer rock face. Goats leap around on nooks high up on the valley sides. We walk passed a bunch of artisans repairing a bridge. We exchange hellos in Arabic and French, and ask after each other’s health, and us after their work. (Well at least I’d like to think we are. We could well be asking them if their nipples are exploding with delight). “Good” they say. We stroll on downwards until we spot a road leading up to monastery…

We hiked down into the valley which was a pretty energetic descent. We followed the valley floor until we reached a Monastery . I didn't have time to check the place out properly and read up on it. But it was a very beautiful and very spiritual place. It had several chapels cut out of the rock face. It was immaculately kept and even had a residence mouse, there on the stair. It also had a hermitage hole. How the good friars managed to stay in rooms that were, as far as I could see, smaller than a microwave oven, for weeks on end was beyond me. But not for the first time I began to see employment of pain and suffering as a tool to raise one's level of consciousness.

We then hiked a little further and bumped into the Dutch guy who decided to cross the river a kilometre or two further down and was soaking wet. He was heading back up and he was very happy with himself. I found him quike likeable. He was tripping around the Middle East with no lonely planet and no particular direction. I found that very impressive. I was reflecting if I was as nuts as him when I was his age – twenty three. I decided that was a rhetorical question to be asking myself. We turned back about 20 mins later as time was getting short and hiked back up. That was a bitch. But great exercise.

Just as we reached the town, panting and sweating buckets, two things happened. The bells sounded out for church and the fog reached the town. Everyone, it seemed, attended church here. They peeled past us as we crossed the square, emerging from houses, side-streets, and God only knows where (excuse the pastiche, but I am sure he probably did). And the fog came with them. It was cold and crisp and very elegant. I thought it looked fantastic. It also brought fresh snow. We walked through it out of town to the Museum of Khalil Gibran. We spent an hour looking around the museum. It contained paintings, poems, and personal belongings on display that were once possessed by the artist. The paintings were fantastic. He was heavily influenced by Blake’s visionary and grandiose style of painting that I love, so I really relished a couple of hours here in solitude.

Here is an extract from The Prophet:

The hidden well-spring of your soul must needs rise and run murmuring to the sea;

And the treasure of your infinite depths would be revealed to your eyes.

But let there be no scales to weigh your unknown treasure;

And seek not the depths of your knowledge with staff or sounding line.

For self is a sea boundless and measureless.

Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."

Say not, "I have found the path of the soul." Say rather, "I have met the soul walking upon my path."

For the soul walks upon all paths.

The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.

The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

In the car park we met the painter and the guy from the BBC who were visiting Bsharri to get their creative juices flowing. They told us they’d be in BO17 that night painting a belly dancer if we were out and about.

We headed back to Tony’s and grabbed our backpacks just in time to jump on the bus to Beirut. I wish I could have spent some more time there. Tony was a great host and Bsharri was beautiful. It was only as I was leaving I noticed the paintings on the walls of his lodge were all prints of Khalil Gibran.

The trip back took ages and was mainly dark and boring. We had our passports checked umpteen times and Marcus got chatting to a guy who gave us two of the biggest apples I have ever seen.

Saturaday night – Rue Gemayze. Club, another club, a haze of henonism.

Sunday Marcus had plans, and so did I. I was meeting Natalie to help her move in to her new flat. She picked us up as we checked out of The Talaal once more. The area of Beirut she was moving to was Doura. It is a Christian area south of the city centre. It is a transport hub for buses to the south and has huge émigré districts containing, Armenians, Indians, Etheopians, Croatians, Iraqiis, the list is as long as it is diverse. It is a real melting pot of cultures. Nat loved it and I could see why immediately. She was moving into a flat 500metres from the bus station on a quiet side street. The flat was lovely. It was very spacious with balconies that caught the sun first thing in the morning. In the summer it would be a haven against the midday sun. In the winter it was desperately in need of extra heat though. It didn’t take long to get all her stuff in and start giving it a clean. The only foreseeable problem was the generator. Pretty much all of Beirut runs on generators at various times in the day. The power companies don’t have enough juice to server the whole grid at once so they keep switching power around in blocks. Therefore at any given point in the day you’ll have a six hour outage. Everyone has generators to get round this problem. Nat’s building had one but it posed a couple of problems. The load was about five amps. Because Nat’s hot water, fridge (which was huge), and heater all ran on electricity it meant it kept on tripping the Generator. In the end turning off the water and the fridge seemed to do it.

Marcus popped back mid-afternoon and we made ready to head off. Our visas ran out the next day so we had to scoot back to Damascus. Leah was arriving back from Syria so Nat was going to drop us off and pick her up. We said our brief hellos and goodbyes to Leah and to Natalie – we promised to come back again as we still had the south to see – and then we jumped in a shared servise taxi, on its way to Amman via Damascus.