To the Oasis City, James Bollybood!

So, on Saturday morning I go get a taxi to go to the Sheraton to pick up my Europcar car. The owner of the Baron hotel (a big, dignified but rushy in business, oldish Armenian man with a big nose) takes me there in his huge 50's dodge car for free. He says he hires cars also and says he can do 4 days for $300 U.S. Well I had booked this europocar car over the internet... $160 U.S for 4 days, so I say I will check it out - but there is quite a huge difference in price!

I get to the Sheraton lobby with the hotel owner and I go to the car rental desk and is there is like three people there, all looking very important in perfect suits, like hiring a car is the biggest deal in town!

So they say they never got my reservation... that it never went through the computer and say the next time they can get a car for me is 3pm... so I say "no thanks!" and turn to my hotel manager and we go back to the Baron Hotel. After some time I am finally in a nice relatively new Hyundai with good seats, no deposit, just a cash payment and zero insurance excess!

SO!
Driving out of Aleppo (a city of 4 million!) is not as nightmarish as you might think... the way people drive here is different, it is somewhat hypnotic... cars just rush in, beeping and weaving and ducking... but it is like geese flying together or something. Being a bit of a loose goose, I just drive a bit slower and don't take any risks but have to deal with other drivers making what seems to me like suicidal risks at times. Weaving and ducking, and trusting in my deeper instincts I feel a little bit like Anakin Skywalker, racing through this desert suburbia, surrounded by all these bizarre and wacky cars.

My aim on that day was to see the dead cities (there are all these abandoned cities from about 1500 hundred years ago near the coast) and that is it - and then stay in a town called Hama for the night.

But I drive past the turnoff to the dead cities (there are no signs at all!) and so I keep driving. It is really hard to know where to go and my maps are woefully inadequate. Driving through these green valleys toward Hama, the land looks exceedingly fertile, with many people growing all kinds of crops and I pass many people harvesting and also selling green leafy vegetables on the side of the road.

Once I stop in this small town and buy some sweets... those pistachio sweet pastries whose name I cannot remember. The man refuses to take any money for them! This sort of attitude is not uncommon - but also, people are often trying to get money from you and think you owe them money because you clearly have some! The children watch me in wonder as I walk around... always, you are the most exciting thing in town. And they wave very excitedly and have big smiles when I wave to them as I drive away!

So I drive up and around the valley into the plains away from the coast and get the message to turn around. I look in my guide book and I can see that the ancient ruined city of Apamea is close, but that I have passed it. I turn the car around and energy changes... suddenly, this somewhat knarly feeling is leaving me that has stayed with me from Aleppo.

It is funny, there is more to traveling than meets the eye... I am reading about the Kogi people who live in Colombia in the excellent book about ethnobotanist Richard Schultes called "One River" , and they consider their travels and movement over the land to be similar to weaving strands of thread over the earth mother to make a garment or whole picture of meaning.

Sometimes, these travels have a momentum and a sensation, and in countries where so few tourists travel, there is definitely the feeling of weaving new threads over the earth.

I manage to interpret the landmarks that the guidebook says is the place to turnoff, and so I stop and get out. A man on a motorcycle greets me and tells me that the mosaic museam is closed for the day (it is about 5pm now) and he says he knows the way to Apamea and to follow him.

I get in my car and he drives past and I follow him up the road, we turn up a lane and then I drive along this ridgeline, right behind this old man speeding on this motorcycle and it is like the car is flying, the sensation like some kind of anime cartoon... and it is very exhilerating...all the children and people in donkey carts waving and shouting as I fly past.

Then we turn and pass this big old citadel and begin to see ancient ruins.

Eventually we stop and there we are! There is only one car there (a yellow taxi) and a small shack where you buy tickets. I wave the man off, thank him and buy a ticket from the man in the ticket office.

We talk and he shows me a list of foreign visitors... the Spanish are at the top, up there with the english and the french.... Australians are at 16th as I recall with something like 53 Australians visiting in one year, and then 51 Americans, who came in 17th highest number of visitors. The advantage of that is that people don't automatically assume you are an American if you look slightly first world... which they often do in many countries.

I am immediatetly quite impressed by Apamea and its huge collonade... it is very striking.

I only see a few other tourists there and lots of goat and sheep herders. It feels like a peaceful place, like so much has occured here and perhaps nothing the humans do will ever occur here again, apart from people looking at the ruins perhaps.

Back in Roman times, the city was big enough that Marc Antony took Cleopatra there on a visit. All these sheer roman lines, straight lined and then intricate masonry seems to be such a contrast to the way the locals live now. Visually, it is very enganging... much moreso than, say Pompeii; which is not nearly as intact in many ways.

So I leave the ruins and drive to Hama and get there quite late. The problem is actually finding the hotel I want to stay in! I cannot read any of the road signs and driving through the city at night is really hard! The city seems to be a maze of interpolated one way lanes and windy main drags that turn into one another!

Finally, I walk into the right part of town and find the hotel I want to stay at, but it is full. The receptionist there is one of the most beautiful women I have ever met in my life... not in any sort of modelish or traditional way. But just in this unique sweetness. Looking into her eyes and interacting with her was very sensual, it had that intensity to it... but a sweetness and transparency. Her skin was so white and her eyes were so black, I could see stars of different brightnesses in her eyes. She wore a scarf around her head and her hands she held really tight, almost like in fists, and she moved so quickly, like a little bird! The hotel manager came over and I thought was trying to pull me away from her! (not that I was trying to stay!)

The women in Syria, the one's you can see are often very beautiful (and they are often Christian)... I get the impression the one's you don't see, who wear the birka's are often the more beautiful ones. And they often leave one with a big imprint just passing them on the street. Some of them look strangely stylish - sometimes it seems they are the most stylish people you will see here and often carry black designer handbags! You could understand how it could be liberating for them, not to be leared at by men, but also, I think it is natural for women to dress and want to be beautiful and also be seen.

The advertisements propose this, but sometimes, the fashion sense of the people is so garish, you wish they would be wearing traditional religious costume. As yet there does not seem to be much of a middle way between extreme religiousity and garish capitalistic lipstick, long hair, jeans and track pants sort of culture.

Anyway, I stay the night in Hama, in a hotel the lonely planet describes as the best deal in Syria (about $12 Australian), above all the traffic noise.

In the morning, I go into the city to find something to eat. This is not always too easy when you don't really know what is what. I see this group of men lined up and then pressed against this wall... looking into these small windows... doing something frantic, but I cannot tell what it is. But I take a photo of them. Many of them looking me. Some of them are outraged at this it seems because they start yelling... I think because they feel they have no power and are in some kind of compromised position which may cast them in a negative light.

As soon as I take a photo of them, a man dressed in khaki, with shoddy military stripes, comes over and tries to grab my camera! One of the men shouts out "chilli flip! Chilli flip!" which I can only interpret as meaning, "take out his film!'

Being a digital camera, this is impossible and so I grab my camera away from the man, who seems to think I will just relent to his will because he is the authority and then I quickly back away. While another tall man lunges towards me and I start running away quite fast, down the street and look back to see the man realise I am more nimble than him and not worth the effort!

I am such a cool cucumber that my pulse hardly goes up... it all just reminded me of this sort of pace of Syrian traffic. I turn the corner and duck into a little restaurant and have some salad, a plate of hummous (which they spread all over the plate in this thick layer), a few falafel and bread for breakfast!

I decide to go to Krak de Chavelier that morning., which is a castle originally built by the crusaders. Ultimately, I don't really care about all this stone and buildings... but it does give one an excuse to move through the landscape, which is quite interesting, driving through all these villages and green hills.

The castle leaves me a bit cold actually, even though it is really big, well made and very intricate and clever in its design... it just seems like an irrelevancy. I lie down on the top of it on the stones, getting some sun and do some snoozing.

After lunch at the castle, I drive off and get to this city called Homs... again, I have to negoitiate this traffic in the third biggest city of Syria... but this time, I mistakenly enter the old town, where there is barely enough room for one car, let alone people, motorcycles, carts and so on!

It is a bit like a James Bond moving driving through there... except no baddies that are chasing me! It really does take some time to move through it and finally I end up going down a one way lane which other cars are taking the other way! So this causes a strange scene, where about half a dozen men are helping me through, past their stalls, past the other cars, passing the cars and the stalls by an average of a few centremters (or even clipping a couple of times!). After about 30 minutes, I get out of this and manage to find what I think is the road to Palmrya, an oasis and also old roman city ruins, about 150 kilomtres into the desert which is my next destination.

Eventually, I find a petrol station, but it looks like there are about three dozen trucks lined up to get fuel! But I go in there and they fill up the car right away.

It is funny being the star wherever you go, there are about 15 guys all watching my every move... it is almost compulsory to be quite entertaining! When I pay for the petrol one of them gives me a leaflet saying 15-30% better mileage or something like that, and give me a little tablet, which is obviously to put into the tank, so I buy it and it says it is made in America and so I proclaim, "God Bless America!", like they got a few things right at least!

As I fumble to put the tablet into the petrol tank, one of them grabs the tablet and puts it in the fuel tank, and I say, "So now my car will not get pregnant!" and "It is now a real ship of the desert!" A couple of the men laugh... clearly understanding enough english to get my obscure allusions to camels and contraception!

So I drive my car out of the petrol station, waving to all the men who are all smiling and waving at me! And I feel like a genuine bollywood movie star!

Very quickly the orchards recede, as does the thin greenery, until I am in pure desert, with almost no vegetation at all.

I stop once at this abandoned town, with all the mud houses beginning to fall apart.. When I walk around, I find that some of the houses are still being lived in and in the distance, women look at me from outside their houses.

The desert is completely silent... absolutely still. I take photos of the textures of the houses, find a dung beetle who when I realise I am onto it, plays dead. I also a huge empty well.

Then I get back into the car and speed off into Palmyra.

I arrive at about 6pm and my initial impression of Palmyra is that it is a very beautiful place, the most beatiful in Syria I have seen.

My hotel manager (who I later find out has an identical twin who also manages the hotel) invites me to tea and I ask him about there being many words in Arabic which mean love.

He says, yes, there are many and reels of about a dozen words with this humourous twinkle in his eye. I ask him what is the difference between those words, and he says much of it represents a hierarchy, from something like convivial warmth to when it feels like your heart is about to explode!

I told him about my experience with the border guard and he seems puzzled and asks if it was a man or a woman? I say it was a man and he seems even more puzzled and leaves it at that!

Later on, I find this most incredible shop... clearly this authentic shop in a sea of touristy and semi-authentic shops selling all the trinkets and historical stuff left here from this fallen Roman city, which was one of the the main hubs in between the east and Rome.

In the shop were all these sorts of wild and ancient trinkets you could imagine and many you could not. Big silver stamp seals built around large sea shells, all the islamic astrolabes with intricate dials and moving parts, sextants, ancient compasses obtained from the bedoiun, coins from throughout the ages, various alladin like lamps, a pipe made from ivory showing chinese men, big pieces of amber and lapis, jewellery that looked like it was thousands of years old and probably was... most of it caked with dust - all of it quite expensive. (I just asked the price and did not bargain!) Outside were lots of very old and rusted roman warrior helmets, that intially I did not think could be the real thing... and in retrospect, I think they were!

That night, I go to sleep early, and my dreams are very different to the dreams I have had anywhere else. They are strange and slightly suspicious dreams, but also quite clear and strong.