City in the desert

Day 24 Palmyra
Palmyra must be one of my most famous stops on this trip and is surely Syria’s no 1 destination. 1000 year under the Syrians preceded 200 years of the Greeks creating a marvellous classical city before the Romans took charge in AD 217 and Palmyra got seriously rich. Zenobia ruled here, but she opposed Rome and lost, which sent Palmyra on a downwards spiral. As with so many Middle Eastern sites, it was looted and sacked a bit before an earthquake really sorted it out. Once again, you’re left slightly tantalised, longing to see the full city as it was. However, there is still much to see and it is very satisfying.

It has a different feel from the other places I’ve been to in Syria and that’s not necessarily been a good thing. I may be wrong, but the modern town at Palmyra looks to me as if it is here for the ancient city. New Palmyra needs Old Palmyra’s tourists to function and this has meant a noticeable rise in the amount of hassle, touts and people selling stuff. One Bedouin scared hell out of me as he appeared from behind a rock to request baksheesh. I was fairly amused that competition has driven the tat sellers to patrolling the site on motorbike, tho I’m not sure it’s the best thing for the ruins, especially as part of the site seems to be a motorbike rat run. I chatted for a while with a necklace seller (I don’t think he was too optimistic of making a sale) and he said the tourists should increase in number next month. Maybe. Or maybe they won’t come because of things around here-Lebanon, Israel and Iraq all border Syria. It feels a bit in the middle of something and suffering for it. I’d read things had dropped off since 2001 and that competition between restaurants, hotels and the like had got intense and nasty. Relatively it is also rather expensive and has seen the biggest jump in prices from what I was expecting; to an extent, I think fewer tourists has meant higher prices. All of this put Palmyra on the back foot a little, but for a place like this you’d happily pay a whole lot more and take a lot more inconvenience.

The ruins give a proper sense of a city, spread over several kilometres, with temples, baths, a senate and an agora (general meeting place and market place) as well as a spectacular main street. Today I walked round most of the main site. Before reaching the monumental arch and the entrance to the Great Colonnade is the Temple of Baal Shamin, with the Arab Castle in the background.



Here is main street which leads to the Tetrapylon.



The plaque on the Tetrapylon says it served as a roundabout, which is an interesting way of looking at it.



These give an overview of sorts, but does it no justice at all.




This really is a place to explore and feel it with the desert. In town I finally managed to get a good shot of the President.



There are many much larger and much funnier than this. I’m not sure if having one in your business is law, advisable or if Syrians just love the man that much, but I have never seen anything remotely like it. I’m not sure you can go 25 yards without seeing one in inhabited areas; there are even special stickers for your rear windscreen. He wears shades and looks sinister in my favourites. As far as I am aware, this is the only part of the Stalin playbook he is using.

It is good to be back in the desert, while elsewhere in Syria may technically have been classed as desert, it was quite rocky and I think needs a few million years for those rocks to wear down to sand to be the real McCoy. Palmyra’s desert certainly isn’t as clean as Lawrence would have liked, but I did see a litter picker, emphasising the importance of the site. This afternoon we even had a limited sandstorm, which meant I’ll need to wait for tomorrow for the sunset. I quite enjoyed popping back to the Sun Hotel for a nap-I’d walked a long way and I’ve been having a lot of early starts. Tonight the hotel owner Mohammed’s mother is cooking dinner, which I think is pretty cool.

Day 25 Palmyra
After an excellent dinner, we sat by the fire and watched the African cup of nations-remarkable, football that was not the Premiership, hosted by what can only be described as an Arabic speaking Jimmy Hill.

Having been rejected from the Temple of Bel for not having the right change, I tried the theatre. They couldn’t change my note either, but let me in anyway. Gorgeous as the theatre is



the real drama in it was trying to work out what the two women with the tape measure were up to. When I tried to pay on the way out, they simply nodded me away.

Returning to the Temple of Bel, I was feeling a little desperate as my change situation had not improved, but this time he’d had some other tourists and I managed to persuade him to take y money. The cash machine kicks out £1,000 notes and most musea are £150, so you’d hope it wouldn’t be a problem to get change; prior to now, all I had had was an unhappy look or ‘change?’. Occasionally you have to lie and say you’ve no change, as there’s no way you pay for a cab or a falafel with a grand.

This is part of the restored wall at the Temple of Bel:



this I am not so sure about. It looks like they’ve used what’s come to hand, rather than strictly the right blocks.

The Temple is quite curious both in the flesh and in the model in the museum. It has 4 massive outer walls, which create a huge square courtyard, enclosed by colonnaded cloisters. The temple then seems disproportionately small: to my eye the proportions seem like a Chinese style pagoda rather than a Greco Roman temple.



Of course I took no photo to illustrate this hypothesis, but I thought that was kinda artistic for me. From the temple I headed back towards town and the museum. It was the first time I had seen tear containers: the ides is that when someone dies, you catch your tears in the tear container and the container is then buried with the deceased. I think it’s a rather lovely idea. Fortunately I no longer work for Past Times, or I’d probably have to suggest it as a new product.

As I went round downstairs I noticed a couple of tour groups enter the museum, go straight upstairs and then leave. When I’d looked around the upper level, I stood at the top of the stairs trying to work out what they were looking at; the best pieces all seem to be at the ground level. Then I realises it must have been the mummies. I think I had my fill off these in S America, so they didn’t exactly grab me. I was taken by something I read: during mummification, organs and the brain are removed. (The brain was either taken ‘bit by bit’ via the nasal cavity or more directly by cutting open the skull). This little lot were then discarded as they are ‘not needed in the afterlife’. Who works this stuff out? You need your hair but not your liver, your fingernails, but not your brain. I think this may be how zombies were created.

In the museum and on the way to the Arabic Fort on the hill, I was pleased to see that both the EU and Japanese governments have been investing funds to help Syria with its cultural heritage. No sign of much coming form the US in the last 40 years. The need for this fort,



and indeed Palmyra’s wealth came from the city’s strategic position on the silk route.

So when was the last time that someone asked you ‘are you a boy or a girl?’ I’ll wager it’s been a while, if at all. Most likely it was never asked to you, but to your parents before you could even talk. Well a middle aged woman asked me today. I’d decided to walk to the fort and rather than take the rod, I opted for the direct approach (it’s a lot steeper than that photo makes it look). Even this wasn’t enough to put off the hawkers: when I was two thirds of the way up, one scrambled down the very steepest part to see me. I wished he hadn’t as every time I heard him slip, it sounded like it would send a rock down at my head. Still he was a good bit lighter than me and found it a lot easier to get back up. There was a lot of loose scree (I think that’s the word for dust, sand, pebbles and small rocks, which slip when you step on them) and I was nearly on all fours at the end. And that’s when the laughter and the magic question rang out. Bloody cheek-she’d come by car.

I took my usual approach to castle exploration-start off by going through the smallest doors into the darkest corridors. In a couple of minutes I was in a room with 3 small, quite brightly lit doorways. I strode across only to recoil as I discovered the doors were actually windows, providing the quick way back down to the bottom of the hill.

Well my legs wet after that, which meant spending the rest of my tour thinking the Arab castle was built to defend against a group of marauding vertigo sufferers. Low parapets looked over precipices and gaping opening fell into the unnecessary looking most way below.

It was quite a location. Sadly, although the wind was light today, the air was still dusty and sandy, so the views were limited,



but sufficient to imagine the spectacle on a clear day. This is a favourite spot for sunset, but that wasn’t going to work today, so I slid back down to town.

Tomorrow-Damascus, my last stop in Syria.