Amman, King Hussein Bridge, Jordan, Israel border. Take I.

Friday 25^th January.

Action!

I got a servise taxi to the King Hussein bridge around 10am. I was still feeling pretty weak so it was touch and go as to whether I was going to leave that morning. In the end, my evaporating window of time on my Indian visa was the deciding factor. Everyday I spent in, freezing, Amman was a day I wasn’t to spend in warm and sunny India.

… I have dragged myself out of bed to check my email. Actually I have dragged myself out of bed to eat breakfast: the email part turned out to be an unexpected occurrence. I am sitting in the Palace Hotel foyer listening with half an ear to Al-Jazeera on the TV. People are scattered around the breakfast area and through the archway, the reception buzzes with its usual hive of activity. As usual I have asked my breakfast without an egg. The waiter will bring me an egg and I, for my part in this charade, will not eat it. For this I will earn a reproachful look. I don’t care. I am not eating a boiled egg and he is just going to have to find a way to get over that. I am on to chapter two of The Great War of Civilisation: The holocaust of the Armenians by the Turkish at the start of the 20^th Century - throughout the First World War. The Turks decided to try to eradicate the Armenian nation with brutal efficiency. They created death camps in the then northern and eastern Syrian provinces: in places such as Aleppo and Dier Ez Zor. Places I visited, having no idea these events happened. Places with unmarked mass-graves containing thousands of Armenians. They shipped or marched them to these camps before executing them. Many did not survive the journey. Torture and rape was commonplace along the way. Further thousands more were taken into the lakes in Armenia and slaughtered. To save bullets soldiers would rope several people together and shoot one and then throw them in the lake. The fresh cadaver would be dead-weight and drag the others down. As the weaker ones drowned then the dead-weight increased until the whole line was dragged under. Today Turkey still refuses to recognise its actions towards the Armenian people as genocide, let alone a holocaust. The Turkish government have, several times since, coerced, cajoled, and dissuaded public organisations from also recognising this. Organisations which include the British War Museum’s Holocaust Exhibition, The English Government’s The International Holocaust day, and the American Government.. The Independent actually published an article on this, written by Robert Fisk. If you read it note the observation of the Israel government. The refugees - that were able - fled en masse from their homeland. They marched, on foot, through the desert from Armenia, to Baghdad, to Amman, and to Lebanon, fleeing the annihilation of their people. I met their grandchildren now living in Doura. Hitler was thought to be heavily influenced by the treatment of the Armenian people at the hands of the Ottoman Empire: it gave him ideas. Nearly a million and a half people were thought to have died. What constitutes a holocaust? What constitutes a genocide? And who gets to decide? I am sitting contemplating this we a news flash comes on Al-Jazeera. Car bomb goes off in Doura, Esst Lebanon. Fuck,..

I left the hotel around 10am with a cut down version of my rucksack. The rest went into storage in The Palace. I took a taxi to the Hussein Bridge. The bridge is a pain in the arse to get to but provides a very useful function; one which I will explain shortly. I got to the bridge and border checkpoint around midday. It was closed. It was closed as Friday was a holy day. Of course it was. I knew that. I didn’t know they closed the bridge though – given that the Shabbath didn’t start until tomorrow evening. Parle – you toilet. Quite. I would have appreciated the taxi driver letting me know the bridge was closed before he took me there. I could have got a taxi north to another border check-point but I specifically wanted to cross here. I know I said I would explain as to why but this is neither the time nor the place. Things will become clear by and by. The taxi back to the Palace cost me the same going out and I had to check in to a room again and pay an extra night. Not best pleased was I. The staff were pretty sympathetic. They even put me on to a Dutch guy who was looking for a taxi the next morning. We agreed to book a car for 8am. It turned out not crossing that day would be a good thing as I was exhausted once more. I checked my mail and quickly caught up with Marcus and Nat. A bomb had gone off in East Beirut the day before. It freaked me out a bit because it took me ages to get hold of them. In the end I had to Skype Rach and ask her to ring Nat’s mobile. This time the bombers were targeting a member of the police force, one Wasim Eid. He was person responsible for heading up the investigation into the recent bombings. Mmmmm… He, along with five others, died in the explosion. Marcus and Nat were close to the detonation but far enough away not to hear it. Hearing the news with growing panic I suddenly realised how my nearest and dearest back in the UK felt. Incidentally: Marcus and I had decided against visiting Yemen. Two Belgium tourists were shot there the week before by individuals claiming to be linked to Al-Qaeda. As much as I wanted to see the country the situation changes somewhat when you are deliberately being targeted by people with murder in mind.

I spent the rest of the day taking it easy and resting.

Beirut, Damascusm, Amman

Tuesday, January 22^nd

I got up and said good-bye to Marcus this morning. Our paths had been entwined for much longer than we had anticipated - fourth months had flown by - and it was a bit of a jolt to be parting. I was impressed, but not surprised, of the recent turn of events for him in Lebanon. I am a hopeless romantic at heart and I wished him all the best. We had planned to meet again in south west India in February. But for now, I had somewhere I was dying to visit.

Marcus saw me off at Doura. It was weird saying goodbye, but I knew we’d see each other soon enough. I got to the Charles Helou bus station and jumped into a shared servise to Damascus. I could have got a transit straight to Amman. But I wanted to stop in the big D one more tine: to say goodbye to Rach and to pick up my Christmas present from M!

My servise turned out to be from the 1950s, as was the driver. I think it was his first car, and I suspected he was also the first owner. Not only but also it filled up with three women armed with lots and lots of luggage. The lady in the front spoke a little English and chain smoked. The two ladies that got into the back with me were rather rotund and had more bags than a super-size box of PG tips. A bit of a squeeze ensued. It was going to be a long journey. That was ok though because just after we left – which by the way took over two hours – we hit a storm. A big storm. A big snow and ice storm. It had swept in from the North East and hammered down across the Jebel Assyrian mountains. We crawled to the border and I completed my exit visa. After that things got a little dicey. The main highway turned into a skating rink and the inside back seat of the car turned into a bouncy castle. Our driver was reduced to 20 kmph. Cars on either side of us were completely losing control, and thus losing traction. Two vehicles collided in front of us. A jack-knifed lorry loomed from nowhere into our headlights from out of the blizzard. It was time to get off the main road.

We finally got in Damascus at 8pm. The usual 2 hour journey had taken 6 hours. I had arranged to meet Rach but I was a bit late. I got dropped off in Souk Saroujah. The street was still a mess. The hotel was in black-out but the phone still worked. I checked in to an empty dorm and headed out into a winter wonderland. The Damascenes were loving it. The taxi driver was telling me earlier there hadn’t been snow like this for over 10 years. As I walked up to meet Rach I could see the evidence of this. Everybody was in the streets. Snow-ball fights were spontaneously erupting all over the place. People were even building snowmen in the middle of the road. I saw two middle-aged business men chucking snow balls at a traffic police-man. One caught him squarely on the back. He turned round and waggled an admonishing finger at them but he was laughing as he did so. What is it about snow that makes us so playful and childlike? It is a universal panacea that cures us of the affliction of being serious!

I stopped by Rach’s flat to check it out and pick up my present that had arrived from the UK. It turned out to be a gorgeous watch. With a self-maintaining internal battery that draws power from ergonomic body movements. Thank you, M! xxx. Rach and I did a number of takes of me opening and receiving it for the camera. I still need to get the pics from her from that. Her flat was looking lovely and I was glad to see the plant Marcus and I had bought her was sitting in the corner in the large sitting room. I was really impressed with the place and what she had done with it – and it no longer smelled of paraffin. Bonus!!

Rach and I headed out to the French café round from her and had a lovely evening chatting away amidst crepes and espressos. It was the fourth good-bye of a good friend in a week. So much for my quick exit theory! I was getting a little better at it though. Hopefully, maybe, I would see her in the summer – in the UK.

El-Haremein was freezing when I got back, but at least the power was on. I curled up in my thermals and was asleep in minutes

Wednesday 23^{rd -} Friday 25th

Beirut Amman.

Back in San Maria for the last time. I was an old hand at this now. It was good to see Charlie, though, and he kept me company for a while, whilst my servise filled up. I promised him I’d try and get a picture to him from the snaps Marcus had taken. Just how I was planning to achieve that I hadn't quite worked out just then, however it was off to Amman once again.

I arrived in good time and checked into the Palace hotel. I was an regular at this place now and it was good to be back among friendly faces. I checked in feeling a little strange. Strange soon gave way to being very ill and I spent the next two days laid up in bed until I managed to get up 36 hours later and check my mail. It turned out the vomiting flu virus from the UK had made its way to Lebanon and Marcus and Natalie had also fallen foul of it. I must have been exposed to it just as I left, but I was a veteran at being bloody ill by this point. I was double 'ard. So I weathered it pretty well - mainly by curling up in a ball and winging to myself like a wuss. By Friday morning, though, I would be ready to travel again.

I woke up early on said Friday and decided it was time to take stock of myself and my possessions. I had left the UK some months before with an impressive array of things. Things that fell into five distinct categories: Things I couldn’t do without. Things I was never going to use. Things I was going to use but not just yet. Things I had when I left but had been broken lost or had been stolen. Things I wished I’d bought but never got round to it. (ok the last two categories, upon reflection, represent things that I do not physically possess - but in a strange sense, I am still travelling with them – or I am yet to).

So to just briefly define the categories:

Things I couldn’t do without consist of:

my passport, my fleece, my walking boots, my medication (which consisted of Ibuprofen, Nofrafglaxicin, Paracetamol, Tinadezol, Anti-Histamine, Viagra (thanks Ray!) my camera (which had subsequently been moved into category five) my mp3 player (again category five) my Pashmini scarf (sigh, category five again), my silk sheet cover, and my waterproof jacket.

Things I was never going to use:

My copy of Charles Dickens Bleak House (I had swapped it the first time I was in Amman and had been making excuses not to read it ever since), my camera charger (see above although, in all fairness, a causal dependency), my Viagra (These were a parting present from a friend, although I appreciated the gesture I had yet to find a use for these. I suspected I could maybe make use of them on very cold winter’s nights or perhaps on safari when I had to erect a makeshift tent or a bivouac of some description. They were afore-mentioned in category one, but on principal I though that they should fall into this category), my ripped T-shirt, and my sterilised medi-kit (well maybe I am tempting fate, however I just couldn’t see me sticking a hypo into my veins anytime soon), my pen-knife (I had to send it home at

Luton as it was in my hand-luggage).

Things I was going to use but not just yet:

My thermals (ok I had just recently broken these bad-boys out), my mosquito net, my swimming gear, my flip-flops with the bottle openers on the sole (my thanks the QA girls at CSW for those!), my travel chess and back-gammon set (thanks Karlos), my surround sound headphones (see MP3 player category five – ok this could be a causal dependency but I never used the tarnating things maybe these should actually fall into category two, then come to think of it, why hadn't the Viagra gone here? I mean I am nearly thirty five...).

Things I had when I left but had been broken lost or had been stolen:

My camera (stolen in Damascus), my first set of glasses (broken in Goreme), my pashmini scarf (left in Sidon, Lebanon), my mp3 player (broken 3 weeks after leaving the UK! That was particularly gutting!), my alarm clock (I left it at home) my mosquito net fixtures. (ermm.. god only knows when and where that went), my head-torch (lost in Lebanon somewhere) my white T-Shirt (where on earth did that go?) etc etc…

Things I wished I’d brought but never got round to it:

A laptop, a kitchen sink, a large kipper to slap offending people with, a I AM ASLEEP SO BE QUIET sign in all languages, a watch, a food sterilisation kit, a water purification kit, a sleeping bag, a lighter, a spare torch, a spare mp3 player… hmmm this could go on.

Actually there is one more category which is: things I would never have thought of bringing that I would have never have thought I needed but I am glad I had which consists of one object so far and that is:

A Rubik’s Cube (a present from my friend Dave – (cheers funkington! It has been much fun) actually I thought a guy I'd met in Turkey walked off with it under my nose when we said good-bye. It turns out he'd bought himself one because he liked mine so much. So it nearly fell into category two).

This in turn also creates a dependency under category one which is: The Rubik Cube seven step solution guide. This has now, given the newly created seventh category, become an absolute category. I guess thinking about it I could also add categories such as: Things I am glad I did not bring; things I did not initially think of but I am having sent to me; Things I pretend I didn’t really want as presents when I left, but inside I am seething about because I could have got them myself instead of hoping other people would; things I could have gotten in a smaller size; and of course things I could have bought in an edible format. The list of ways to categorise is endless.

Anyways Friday brought with me new strength and I was ready to get up and get moving. I had just finished reading Robert Fisk’s harrowing chronological account of the civil war in Lebanon. So in the spirit of changing to something more upbeat and positive I quickly nipped up to Books@cafe to pick up the even bigger book by the same author: The Great War of Civilization. Then it was time to visit Israel.

Beirut, Sidon, Tyre and Beaufort Castle.

Beirut, Sidon, Tyre and Beaufort Castle.

Thursday, January 17^th – Friday January 19^th

Leah’s mood had not changed much by the next morning. She decided it was time to leave Lebanon and head to Jordan and then perhaps to Yemen to meet Marcus and I later that month. It was understandable. If you don’t feel comfortable somewhere it is time to move on. It’s as simple as that. It was sad to say farewell though.

We said good-bye to her and then ourselves made plans to head to Sidon – in the south of Lebanon – the next day. Apart from that we chilled out and relaxed. Well what we actually did was head off on the bus to Jounieh 15 kilometres north of Beirut. We got dropped off there, in the middle of the freeway. Oh, on the wrong side. This, given the infernal nature of Lebanon’s drivers, was not good. It took us about 45 mins to cross the road. No really. It did. And I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. In fact I am sure I’ll think about it from time to time. Probably around 3am lying in a pool of cold sweat. The reason for this little jaunt was to jump on the Teleferique up to Harissa. The Teleferique is a cute little cable car that dangles precariously from a huge wire that runs up the side of the mountain. It gets up to the village of Harissa in less than 9 minutes. If you don’t mind swaying around in precarious and dangly blobs of metal it’s kind of fun. The stats say there have been no injuries reported on this ride. Well we live in hope... Re – cold pool of sweat. Another weird thing was how close it passed to many high rise flats: peoples houses. We reached Harissa after riding the second part of the jaunt on the funicular. The reason for this little excursion was to visit the church of Our Lady of Lebanon. It is a church set at the feet of a colossal statue of the Holy Virgin. The view is spectacular and it was well worth the visit. We also tried to get into the huge Basilica but it not open for public viewing. This site has a special devotion for pilgrims. Not just Christians, but Shia Muslims and Druze consider this place holy.

The evening was spent chatting to Nat and doing a bit of shopping, wondering around Doura and taking it easy. I have to say, the Lebanese have perfected the shawarma. They have really embraced the idea that having it dipped in a vat of grease is not a good thing.

The next day we headed South. As Lebanon is a tiny country it took us maybe two and a half hours to reach Sidon. It was a beautiful and relaxed place, very idyllic, much akin to a picturesque European fishing town. It was originally as Phoenician city. The south of Lebanon has a different feel to it. It is very much Hezbollah territory and predominately Shiite. During the civil war, the Israeli defence force pushed through this land, occupying and suppressing any form of insurgency they found. This sparked off, internal, sectarian violence as Muslims and Christians were forced to take sides either for or against the invading armies. Moreove, at a micro-level, many towns and villages did not see things in such a black and white fashion. They were still friendly with their neighbours regardless of their cultural or religious background. It wasn’t until the onset of the militias: Hezbollah and the Phalange: acting as the right arm of the IDF, loosely employed as a peace-keeping force; the cloak thinly veiling a brutal and cruel regime of violence, suppression, and murder. In short things were pretty bad here a decade ago.

Nothing of this was apparent to us – in regards to the ambience of the place – in regards to the war. Not like Beirut. Maybe we weren’t looking hard enough. I didn’t really try to I just wanted to take things at face value for a change. We checked into a hotel and then went out and chilled in a local UN restaurant. The evening didn’t amount to much more than that.

I got up early and ran along the cornice the next morning. I ran north first of all, but I ran into a refugee camp. I am sure other people did this also - run along the cornice, as opposed to running blindly into refugee camps, but I drew some very strange looks - again on the cornice - as I never quite made it into the refugee camp. It is interesting what a person defines as strange: as I ran back toward the hotel, past the film crew filming the local fisherman with a huge cache of eels, I nearly ran into a guy riding a moped along the quay carrying a tray upon which was balanced four cups of tea, sugar, and some food. the tray was borne aloft in one of his hands - his left as it happened - apropos to a waiter’s finger-tip balancing act. The other hand was steering and controlling the moped’s speed. On his face he wore a look af peace and serenity. I felt a little less strange after that.

We had planned to skip Tyre and head to Chateau Beaufort and then to the now disused Israeli prison camp of Khiam. Unfortunately we discovered we had to first go to Tyre and obtain a permit to visit the castle. On top of this it was the prelude to the Muslim Day of Ashura.

… The taxi is sitting in a dusty jam-packed road. We are sitting in the taxi. It’s late afternoon but still very hot. Ahead is anarchy:. The road descends to a large square with a melee of beeping cars and a crowd of Shiite Muslims, with banners, mock machetes, sticks, ripped clothes, are gathered. They are marching and are performing ritual of Zanjeem Matam. Many of them are covered in fake blood …

We reached Tyre early afternoon and got a servise to the Ministry-of-handing-out-permits. After being directed to three or four different guard posts we finally got ushered upstairs to meet a nice enough guy who seemed very pleased to have to English tourists wishing to visit Chateau Beaufort. We filled in the forms and had got our permit arranged. This turned out to be in the form of a phone-call.

We skipped back into town – as time was marching on – and jumped into a servise to Arnoun. This was the nearest town to Beaufort Castle that was reachable by bus. We arrived to find a bunch of opportunist taxi drivers eager to charge us a fortune to get to the castle. We bargained hard, but the day was nearly over and we were at a disadvantage. So we ended up paying through the nose. It then took us nearly an hour to get through the crowds that had gathered for the day of Ashur. This day has special importance to Shiites as it marks the Martydom of Hussein Ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet, at the Battle of Karbala.

Leaving the town behind we soon found ourselves approaching the Castle. Chateau Beaufort thus named – Beautiful Castle – it may have been a looker once upon a long ago, but since then it has been visited upon by an earthquake; then repeatedly being bombed by Israel during its occupation by the PLO; then repeatedly being bombed by Hezbollah during its occupation by the IDF; it has kind of lost its charms. The Arabs call it Qala'at ash-Shqif. It was still a great place to explore and the views were amazing. Two months before, Marcus, Merryl, and I had stood in the ghost town of Quneitra and looked across at the Golan Heights. So too can you see from here the mountains that mark the beginning of Syria, then to the south – Israel. We found a great underground passage within the castle ruins that showed off the remaining and intact fortifications under the pile of buried rubble. We desperately wanted to continue on to Khiam prison. But we had all but run out of time.

We got a bus back to Beirut and headed back to the flat to see Nat. She had managed to get hold of a paraffin boiler. Bonus! It was fantastic and also meant she was no longer dependent on mains electricity to heat the flat. Her erstwhile neighbor, Fadi, had supplied it to her for free. He also invited us upstairs to meet his Mum – whom he lived with. He was a really lovely guy and she was incredibly hospitable. He was originally from Syria, his family live in the valley below the fortress of Krak des Chavaliers. He gave me his address and asked me to visit, in the summer when the flowers are in bloom. I will try to when I make it back to the Middle East.

Marcus and I headed out for the evening and got a tad drunk.

Saturday January 19^th

Natalie was off work today so we decided to visit the Jeita Grotto just outside of Beirut. We took a servise pretty much to where we got off for Jounieh. However this time it was on the right side of the road. We decided to walk the two or three kilometers to the grotto. It was a bit of a trek uphill for the first two kilometers. However the city soon disappeared and we found ourselves walking in beautiful valleys surrounded by high cliffs and deep gorges. We finally reached the grotto in late afternoon. The site is as vast as it is amazing. It is divided into two caves. The upper caves which can be explored on foot and the lower caves which are accessible by boat. I had no idea the site was so expansive. We took a cable car up to the first set of caves. We had to leave our cameras at the entrance so no pics from inside. The upper cave was mind-blowing. It was a visual feast of stalactites and stalagmites. Calcium and phosphorus deposits from centuries of pressure and time have created the most extraordinary spectacle. In addition to this someone with a theatrical flair for light and shade had cleverly, and artistically, positioned lights throughout the network of caves. The lights moodily gave life and character to these dark and enticing caverns. We walked through each one along a metal walkway slowly winding upward. I felt like the two characters from C S Lewis’s Narnia series, who ventured into the depths of the earth to the land of Bism and observed the sleeping giant, and discover ripe, succulent jewels: diamonds and emeralds that could be eaten like fruit. (I have always since wondered how diamond juice would taste). The rock had a decidedly organic look to it, visceral almost.

We headed down to the lower cave by a model choo-choo train. Get in!!!!!! I even made noises.

The lower cave, as I said, was to be explored by a motor boat. It was a magical trip. I really was blown away by the whole thing, mainly because I wasn’t expecting it. I am always happy to be completely surprised. Do you ever notice that gets harder as you get older? Not because you become wiser, instead because you become more cynical.

Getting back proved to be a little difficult and taxis were charging a bomb. Luckily we met an affable old geezer who took us most of the way back. We walked back down to the freeway and jumped on the servise. I was absolutely shattered by the time we got home.

Sunday, January 20^th

Chilled out all day. Nat and I walked up to the huge mall first off to get some bits and pieces. Marcus was out with Nia for lunch. I had hoped to catch up with her and Zeina, her friend, now I was back in Lebanon, but I just had too much on my plate. Besides I had the feeling they were both enjoying spending some time together, and I was enjoying hanging out with Natalie.

Nat had hoped to take Marcus and I to visit one of the Palestinian camps she worked at. I really hoped to do this as I wanted to speak with some of the refugees and get some idea of how life was for them. Also there was going to be a show that week-end by a touring clown. This was the tip of an incredible story. This clown used to be a Spanish lawyer who had become completely disillusioned by his life and what it afforded him. So he decided to forgo his practice and travel the world performing as a clown to orphaned children. He was due to be performing that week-end. Unfortunately it turned out it that he could not make it until the week-end after. I was gutted I wouldn’t see him or meet the people in the camp. The story was inspirational though.

We took it easy for the day and in the evening we headed over to West Beirut to meet her friend Mohammed. Gadzooks!. I wish I had known how cool the bars were here when I stayed here at the beginning of the month. Mohammed was a lovely guy. He is Jordanian, a Bedouin to be specific. He is involved in modern theatre and is trying to change the way people in his country view traditions such as equality between the sexes. He is facing a hard task but he is so passionate about it. I really enjoyed chatting to him. Natalie and he had a good bond between them. After a couple of drinks we walked along the cornice and took in the crisp evening air.

Monday, January 21^st

Got up. Bummed around. Nat had to work that morning. So I walked up to the mall with Marcus. He wanted to buy Nia a little something. We spent the morning hanging out in the Mall – Lebanese people really love their shopping. Goddamn their malls are BIG! We got some food to cook a Thai Green curry that evening. I even found fresh mushrooms and fresh basil. I was amazed! We also got Natalie a wok. Marcus headed off to meet Nia for the afternoon. I could smell the romance in the air.

We had bought Nat a wok as a thank you for letting us stay with her. It was a bit touch and go as we knew she was after one herself so I could cook and had promised me she’d buy one on the way home. When I arrived back she was home and she hadn’t forgotten. She was great about it though and we returned it to the shop and she got a some pots and a chopping tray instead. Then we set about trying a veggie green curry from a recipe Siobhan and Emma had given me. Thanks guys! It was gorgeous. We chilled out for the rest of the evening and then it was time to say goodbye to Natalie. We have a plan of meeting up next year for Christmas in Tazmania when Nat is home visiting her folks. I really do hope I can make that. I was going to miss Nat a lot. She is such a cool chick. And living such an amazing life by virtue of the work she is doing in the Middle East. This is the sort of lifestyle that inspires me.

Time to get a shimmy on, however, the next day I had decided to quit Lebanon and head somewhere I not supposed to be.

San Maria Pullman Bus Station, Dora, Beirut.

Tuesday 15th January

San Maria bus station servise area is a great place for people watching. It helps if you can speak Arabic, but only a little. As every good person watcher knows the essence lies in the art of non-verbal communication. Rather like watching TV with the sound down and trying to figure out what everyone is up to. We arrived around 11am and immediately got embroiled in a huge altercation. The bus station is government sponsored and everyone that came to hire a servise taxi took the next available taxi in a queuing system to ensure fair trade and some sense of order. This didn’t stop opportunist from trying to grab fares as they came in the front gate and thus jump the queue. This is what happened as we arrived. Our driver took our bags and locked them in the boot of his car. Then he took our passports to have them processed. It turned out he had been a naughty boy and had jumped the queue. There is nothing Damascenes like more than a good old ruck, I have discovered, and they went at it with gusto. Our driver, who was a big guy, was an irascible fellow and really took offence to being accused of fare pilfering. A big crowd quickly formed and several people began screaming at each other. We had no idea what was going on at this point until we heard a familiar voice cutting through the sway. “Ah you’re in a bit of fuckin’ bother here!” I was never so glad to hear such a welcome profanity. Charlie explained to us what was going on and we decided to ditch our sneaky driver and go with the guy at the front of the queue. If nothing else he was leaving earlier. Unfortunately our driver was having none of it. Unbelievably he decided to hide his keys in his pants and fold his arms and sulk like a petulant child. It wasn’t until a gang of drivers ganged up on him and physically remove the keys from his pants did he relent. I was very impressed by their bravery. I wouldn’t have retrieved them.

We had a chai and chat to Charlie for while and then it was time for hour taxi to leave.

The journey was pretty pleasant, if you can ignore the death-defying actions of the motorists. The temperature improved considerably as we descended through the mountains to Beirut. We got caught in a massive traffic jam coming into the city and sat on the motorway for over and hour and a half. We finally got moving and began to pass a number of military vehicles and armed police as we entered Beirut. Something was definitely up.

We arrived in Doura and headed to Nat’s flat. Nat was at work but Leah was in. She was pretty freaked out and told us a massive explosion had occurred about an hour ago. We turned on the TV in the flat which had Al-Jazeera but in Arabic. We could see quite evidently that a bomb had gone off on the freeway. We all ran over the internet café a few blocks down and checked online. A bomb had indeed gone off that afternoon on the freeway. Just 30 minutes before our servise taxi had arrived. Very close to Doura. Leah had literally just stepped out of the front door when in was detonated and stood in blind panic as people ran for cover in the middle of a week-day afternoon. The internet café owner thought we were journalists. He could not get his head around what we were doing here as tourists. I think the words he used were – ‘You must be fuckin’ mental!’ I did wonder if he was related to Charlie.

As I’ve said before, it’s a funny thing travelling in countries that your government considers high risk areas. My family and friends are constantly asking me when I am going to leave the Middle East. Merryl has confessed to me that she scans Al Jazeera online every morning looking for reports of kidnappings or bomb attacks, but that was just her attitude when she was in the UK. When she was here she loved it. And so she should. It is a beautiful and safe place to travel. The media treats it as a sub-continent of maniacs. This is a shame. There are, unfortunately, fanatics that do give people cause to worry. But then there are fanatics everywhere. It shouldn’t stop you from experiencing the beauty of a culture. You should be aware of the dangers though. In this instance the bombs that are being detonated are part of a political power struggle. The pro-Syrian Hezbollah backed faction of the government is trying to increase it’s representation in Parliament and tip the balance of power in its favour; a balance that hitherto now has been in favour of the pro-western party represented as Christians. Yes it does sound an unfair balance. A parting present of the French Mandate left to keep power in western favour. The politics here are anything but secular and the deadlock that was caused when the last president stepped down is becoming increasingly tenser every day. Myself, and - from what I have gleaned from other travellers in Lebanon - however look at it differently. We are not visiting here to thrill seek or to see a war torn country. We realise there is civil unrest and we are aware the country has just started to put itself together after a particularly vicious civil war. We have come here to visit a country steeped in culture and history. We accept that there is a possibility of being caught up in an internal struggle, but we realise the focus of the altercations are between political factions. We are very unlikely to be targeted because we are tourists.

We all went back to the flat. Leah was still not feeling good about the bomb. Mainly because it scared the living shit out of her, the blast was less then a kilometre from her and it was big. It killed four bystanders and wounded several others. Nat got back a little later. She was pretty unfazed by the whole thing. She had been living in Beirut for over a year and this had happened more frequently than anyone would care to like.

We tried to lighten the mood by going out for some food. Nat took us to a funky little Indian restaurant over a shop by the bus station. They did a great Dahl and Byriani and we grabbed some wine and had a couple of glasses back at the flat. We found an amazing pair of glasses left over from the previous owners and had a lot of fun with them. Well I did anyway. Leah’s mood had far from lifted however and I suspected she’d be leaving us in the not too distant future.

Back in the big D, Syria.

Sunday, January 13th - Wednesday January 16th

We got back to Damascus and headed for El-Haremein. We’d already spoken with Rach stay ing with her was right out. Her new flat was in a well to do area. Social norms in Damascus don’t really allow for single a woman to have two men staying her apartment. Tongues would be wagging. So we were back in Souq Sarojah. It was a little different this time around as the ministry-of-digging-up-Damascus had turned its beady eye on the area. Damascus is set to have a massive cultural exposé this summer and therefore the cities plumbing was being upgraded. I think the main focus was to improve facilities for drinking water and washing.

Damascus was freezing! We had originally planned to spend a night in the monastery north of the city: Mar Musa. A number of people had told us about this retreat and it was reputed to be a great place to go to find some peace of mind and do a bit of reflecting. However temperatures in Damascus were dropping to – 10C in the evening. Visiting the monastery, with no electricity or hot water, was likely to be suicidal. Instead we spent the time chilling out, and catching up with Rachel in the evenings, which was great. There was a funky little French Bistro around the corner from her flat that served gorgeous caramel coffee and hot chocolate and crepes. I was becoming acutely aware that we were going to be leaving very shortly and would not be seeing each other for a while. This is one of my pet hates about travelling. Sometimes I wish good-byes were a social taboo and you could just flip a casual salute and then not see someone for a year or so. But that is my awkwardness in my ability to express myself. As the man says “parting is such sweet sorrow”

… Merryl is driving me to meet Marcus in Luton. It is a mild October evening. We are staying the night in a hotel just outside the airport. Merryl and I are making light of things but we are a bit freaked out. We have only just met and now I am leaving for an unknown period of time. Merryl is in the middle of her DPhil and she has a lot on her plate. I am making a spectacular mess of things – as usual – I have decided to pick the three weeks before I leave the UK to start conducting a relationship. I have no idea of what I am playing at, but it feels right. On reflection, I often wonder if anyone really knows or understands what it is they are doing. We follow routines, we have goals, short term, long term, life schemas, plans, plots, schemes and, most of all, dreams. But we are just making it up as we go along really. We do the best we can with the resources we have available to us at any given time. But we rarely ever stop and question as to why. Because to question why would mean you would need to be honest with yourself, and that is often fatal. I meant to buy Merryl a book before I left – Jonathan Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach. It was given to me by a very good friend and within it lays some insight into parting from those you care about. I completely forgot however, in the struggle to wrap my affairs up, to do this. It will work itself out though, and Merryl will read Richard Bach in India…

Extract from Jonathan Livingstone Seagull:

Sully, I must go back " he said at last "Your students are doing well. They can help you bring the newcomers along."

Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. "I think I'll miss you, Jonathan," was all he said.

"Sully, for shame!" Jonathan said in reproach, "and don't befoolish! What are we trying to practice every day? If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?"

If only I were so enlightened.

You can read the whole book of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull online here

The weather was not improving as the week continued. The nights were the worst and I found myself living in my thermals. Marcus and I both decided to head back to Lebanon. Marcus had met a very nice young lady. We still had the south to visit and we wanted to spend more time with Nat and Leah before leaving the Middle East.

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.

Byblos, Lebanon

Wednesday the 9^th January

I remember thinking It’s a good thing I don’t have to work for a living or I would not be feeling good today. As it stood, the most difficult thing I had to do this morning was to get out of bed and get a pizza for breakfast. Alison had to head back to Damascus to catch a plane home early that morning and she was a happy bunny to be so early. Rob and I had planned a run along the cornice, but common sense told us both that was right out. So, Marcus and I spent the morning chilling in our room watching crap TV and recovering. We were sharing a room with another guy, Rory from Dublin, he was off to Tripoli and Bcharre that morning. We had planned to follow him up the next day. We decided if nothing else we could manage a trip to Byblos as it was only a 45 min bus ride.

We took a servise from the Charles Helou bus station north of Beirut to the ancient city of Byblos. Byblos was founded somewhere around 5000 BC. It is believed to be the first known city ever to be built in the world and it vies with cities such as Damascus for being the oldest continually inhabited city although there is no concrete evidence to suggest this. Byblos is a Greek name. The Phoenicians called it Gebal and the Canaanites Jbiel. It’s currently name derives directly from the old Canaanite name. It has many legends around it. Cronus was thought to have built the city and Thoth, who is purported to have invented writing, is thought to have resided there [Evidence of a Phoenician alphabet certainly exists from around 2000 BC. There is even a nice little translation chart you spell your name in Phoenician in the museum]. The name Byblos is thought to have come from the parchment that was shipped from Egypt to Greece through this port. Archaeologists love Byblos for the sheer volume of artefacts, human detritus, and historical evidence that lies in abundance under the foundations here. City after city was constructed at this site.

I won’t go into overt detail here because the history is extensive. If you want to read up on it there are plenty of sources on the web. However the usual suspects all had a hand in the development, or destruction, of the town over the centuries. The Egyptians, Assyrians, Byzantines, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, et cetera.

The town itself is reminiscent of a Mediterranean coastal town. You could be quite forgiven for thinking you were in Greece, Spain, France, or Italy, as you stroll along the winding streets down to the quay. We took some lunch in a restaurant famous for being home to a local legend, one Pepe The Pirate. Hob-nobber with the rich and famous and playboy extraordinaire, this old funboy is depicted in photographs adorning every wall of the restaurant. It was a little uncertain as to whether this guy was still alive or not, but his spirit was definitely still around.

The site itself was a bit disappointing given the history of the place. The Crusaders had quite thoughtfully and considerately built a large castle on top of the previous one in the 13^th Century AD. There is a number of ruins from Phoenician temples dating back thousands of years, but they were so difficult to make out it was difficult to ascertain exactly what the guide was alluding to. The castle was reasonably impressive. The ancient city walls from the Byzantine period were quite cool, as were the remains of the city gates. The graveyard was a bit of a let down. There was a nice Ottoman-style house on the sea-front.

… Marcus and I are exploring the ruins of Byblos. They are pretty much that. Ruinous. Large signposts designate the area we are in as the Phoenician Temple of Obelisks. I can make out a lot of coke bottles and crisp packets which I am pretty sure are not dating from pre-Biblical times. The castle looms above us masking the setting sun. The thing that has interested me the most so far on this trip is the fascinating modern rail-tracks. These tracks have popped up all over the site They go under rocks, into walls, and earlier on we saw them heading off into the sea at the edge of the port. “Wanna go Choo-Choo!” I say. Marcus doesn’t look as optimistic as me about a train turning up.

We headed home after this and went out for an Italian on Rue Gemayze where we got chatting to two English guys. One was a painter and the other was working for the BBC. The painter was tripping around Lebanon taking inspiration from this ancient land. The media guy was making a documentary on him. We said good-bye and hoped we may bump into them again. Tomorrow we are heading North, into the mountains.