The long road to Damascus

There was something odd about the weather but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. The air was still hot and the wind had changed direction, and I no longer had my forecasted tailwind to push me the rest of the way to Damascus. There was some magnificent fork lightening in the distance and I recalled the predicted 30% chance of precipitation. But come on, it’s a desert, and I haven’t been that unlucky all trip! Still, something was eating at me, the surreal feeling you get like it’s the calm before the storm. And then I saw it over to my right – an enormous dust cloud coming in from the west. The wall of rust-coloured sand and dirt rose from the ground up to a towering hundred feet or so. Like a bushfire it was moving at rapid pace and seemed to be devouring everything in its path – quite a spectacle! There was only one thing to do; I pulled over to the side of the highway and pulled my camera out. I snapped off a few photos and then it dawned on me how fast that storm was actually moving and that I was in a bit of a predicament. Stuck on an exposed highway in the middle of a grim desert, 30km out of Homs, there was no escape. I looked up and down the road but there was no shelter except for a few trees and they weren’t going to be any use. And so I jumped on Bessie and was off faster than a bucket of prawns in the sun!

When the cloud hit, it was like hell’s fury unleashed. Within seconds the whole world turned orange and I was nearly blown off my bike. The sand appeared like giant flames as it whipped through the trees, which themselves looked like they would snap in half at any moment. My face was literally being sand-blasted so I moved my t-shirt up over my face to cover my mouth and nose from the dust, and held on tight as I was battered by the wind which was cutting right across the highway from west to east. I saw things blowing in the wind and had a brief moment of panic when I realised that there might not me just sand blowing in this storm, but all sorts of loose debris. I had to get out of this somehow. Visibility quickly dropped to around 30 metres, but just in time, I spotted one of the many makeshift ‘shops’ that the locals setup along the highway to sell water, coffee, snacks and the like to passing commuters. Their ramshackle store wasn’t much more than a temporary shed surrounded by canvas to shade from the sun, but that canvas was big enough to hide behind and shelter from the storm.

The young shopkeeper was happy enough to let me hang out for a while, obviously realising that I’d been caught unaware by the storm. With him was another guy about his age (mid-20’s?) and three younger boys around ten years. They could have all been related, I’m not sure, but they were a friendly group all too keen to have me sit down on a comfy old sofa underneath the canvas cover. I bought a packet of chips and an orange fizzy drink for brekkie while I waited, offering the chips around to the kids but they refused, I think because they felt like it was their job to be the hospitable ones for the foreigner, and they didn’t want to accept anything from me. Strange how you can have such an easy going situation as this, but then just as easily run into a different type of character down the road who only sees dollar signs in his eyes when he spots a western tourist.

Though the initial front of wind quickly passed, the rain that I’d spotted earlier followed on the back of it, and the lightening was soon right above us. Then it pissed down, and the worst part was that everything that had just been coated in dust, was now covered in mud. The shelter clearly had holes in it because we then found ourselves huddling in the dry spots as the roof leaked and the rain was blown in from the side. I looked at the shop keeper and just burst out laughing at the situation, and he started laughing too. He realised that this was probably a new experience for me, and any concern I had about the storm soon passed, as if these younger kids weren’t scared, then there was no way I should be concerned. It didn’t take long for the kiddies to pick an interest in the bike and their hands were all over it. I explained to them what various pieces of it were, showed them the flashing lights and so forth. They were especially impressed with the GPS map, as most people in the region seem to be. Despite the language barriers, you can always get a message across when they can see for themselves their own city and surrounding countryside pop up on the screen. Makes it very easy to explain where you’ve come from and where you’re going.

As the rain stopped, I jumped back on the bike and waved them off, thanking them for their brief hospitality. The road was still wet and mud was flinging everywhere all over me, and passing trucks didn’t help keep me clean either. When the sun did finally come out again, it dried everything out, and the filth cycle was complete. The mud caked on to my bike and clothes, sticking like shit to a blanket. I had been wearing a white t-shirt of all things. It was now nearly black. The prospects of making it to Damascus by nightfall were looking very grim indeed, not just from the storm but because I had been cocky enough to think that I could spend three hours on the Internet that morning and still cover 175km that day. (OK I realised it was a big ask, but when you find an Internet Cafe as good as this one was in Syria, you don’t pass up the opportunity to use it!). The final blow was that despite glancing at a topographic map of the route, I had failed to notice that there was an enormous climb involved. It had slipped my attention because it wasn’t exactly an obvious mountain – the road literally climbed upwards for 80km. It was so gradual a climb that it didn’t look like a mountain on the map, so I was in for a rude shock that evening. The peak would max out at about 1450m – possibly the highest point of the entire trip to date, even higher than the highest pass I’d done in the Swiss Alps! And thanks to the dust storm, the wind was blowing right in my face again and the great fun I’d been having for the first couple of hours ended. Once again I was forced to tough it out against a mentally challenging, typically shit combination of environmental factors working against me. The toughest part of a cycling trip has always been a headwind. Throw in a huge hill climb, a stinking hot desert, a sandstorm, thunderstorm, lack of water and the boredom of 175km of barren wasteland, and you have a perfectly undesirable scenario.

By late afternoon I’d finally discovered a place that I could pull over for a bite to eat. I’d been holding out from just stopping in at service stations, for something more substantial than a snickers and coke. On the road from Aleppo to Homs a few days earlier, I’d discovered an awesome little roadside pizzeria. You always know the places to stop because there are dozens of long-distance truckers pulled up on the side of the road. They know the best joints to patronise along the way. The place wasn’t a pizzeria in a true western sense, but must have been some local middle-eastern variation. A stone oven that resembled something of a manual cement mixer, was fired up and fed with wood so that flames literally roared out of the circular hole at the front. The fresh dough was shaped into a round pizza and you could choose one of three simple toppings. I can’t really name any of them, except that one could have been a pesto or oregano flavour, another some sort of spicy tomato? Anyway, the pizzas were spread with one of the three pastes, and then the pizzas cooked on the walls inside the round oven, the dough literally sticking the pizzas upside down around the fire. These pizzas were delicious, and if I’d known they were only going to cost me 15SP each (about 20p or 40c) I would have ordered more than two!

Dream on, if only I could have found a place like that where I was now, stuck at the top of the hill half way to Damascus with darkness only about an hour away. The servo that I pulled into had what looked like a pizzeria or some kind of kitchen attached to it. The first giveaway should have been that there were no customers, but I was so hungry from the climb, I just needed to eat. I had not eaten all day except for the chips and drink back at the shelter from the storm. I grabbed a drink from the servo and then wandered into the kitchen. The oven was on so that was a good sign, and then some kid – about 17 years old maybe – comes up, followed by a couple of younger kids. None of them can speak very good English at all and they persisted in Arabic, not in any easy demonstrable way that I could make heads or tails out of what they were saying. Normally you can get through these situations with gesturing and expressions and the like, but these kids just weren’t that good at it. So I fired off some common words that might register with them. ‘Pizza’ did ring true, and though I had no idea what would be on it, I soon had one on the way. The negotiation of the price was even more difficult. I wasn’t sure if they normally did pizzas and were going out of their way to make one, but whatever the hell was going on, suddenly I was on high alert once again. The main kid started drawing numerals on the counter, and I realised that was the price, but in Arabic. He seemed to want 150SP for a pizza – a price that I thought was a little steep, especially at a ramshackle joint like this. But I settled on it, thinking it would want to be a bloody big pizza, and handed him a 500SP note. I sat down as he fired up the oven and one of the little kids went to get my change, so I thought.

I sat there outside on a plastic chair at a table, reading my Tom Clancy ‘Debt of Honour’. Ten minutes pass and I’m wondering if my dinner will be arriving shortly, when the little kid calls out to get my attention, and waves me over to the kitchen. I get up and wander over to have the teenage kitchen hand (or whatever he was) start chatting away in Arabic once again, and eventually I conclude that we must be negotiating the price once again. I look into the oven, he hasn’t even started making my pizza yet. Uuagh! I’m starving and I have no time for this crap, the kid’s about to rub me up the wrong way if he keeps this up for much longer. Now he wants 200 for the pizza and I can see no reason for the price increase and hold my ground. ‘150’ – I write it down on a piece of paper, we both read the maths: 500SP – 150SP = 350SP change. I look at the little kid who had my 500 pound note, “go and get my change…”

Pizza in the oven, I sit back down only to be called over once again by the little kid. Bloody hell, what is going on here? The young kitchen hand comes back over as I walk through the door. He rubs his fingers, “Baksheesh for me” and smiles. I’m incredulous, and even though I know he won’t understand, I state loudly in English “mate there’s no way you’re getting baksheesh for making me a bloody pizza.” It’s his job, that’s what he’s going to bloody well do. I couldn’t believe the gall of the kid. He couldn’t get a price rise out of me for the pizza so he’s hitting me up for a tip. I’ll give you a tip buddy – keep this up and I’m outta here! I have apparently turned into a walking money tree once again, and I was getting sick of it.

I sat back outside and another five minutes later, I still haven’t got my change, but my pizza is bought out. I don’t trust these kids as far as I can throw them, and before I take a bite, I’m going to go and sort out the money situation. I walk in and ask for the change and am handed 300SP. “No, I need 350SP, give me another 50…” It’s amazing how people can all of a sudden lose even the most basic concept of English when it suits them. I still had the slip of paper that we had written down the maths on. Despite this, the guy apparently couldn’t add up, insisting that it was the correct change. I started making one hell of a fuss, and the silly younger kid with the money was dumb enough to be holding onto my 500SP note still. I grabbed it and threatened to hit the road, and it’s amazing how all of a sudden they can understand you again. The commotion in the kitchen had finally grabbed the attention of one of the few adults on site, possibly the owner of the store next door. The man headed over and had a word to the kids and looked at me. I explained the maths that I was being short changed, showed him the calculations written down on the paper, and he got it. Taking control of the situation he sent one of the younger kids into his shop to break down the 500SP note into a lump of 50’s, and when he came back, distributed the smaller notes correctly. I gave him a grateful nod which he acknowledged, before turning on the kids. I don’t know what he said to them but he was less than impressed at the game they were trying to play. I like to think that he may have had stern words with them. Ultimately, the fact remained that they had picked on the wrong target that day. The tired survivor of a sandstorm (and just plain hungry) I was not in the mood for bullshit as they found out. I sat down to my pizza thinking that this is the absolute last time I ever deal with the bloody teenage kids that are left behind to mind the store. Three times it’s happened now and it always ends in grief. Never again!

It was a pretty ordinary pizza, no bloody meat either. But still it was hot, a decent size and I was so hungry I would’ve eaten the arse out of a horse. 20km down the road, it was getting too dark to cycle safely and I’d finally found the downhill run. It was going to be no fun having to brake the whole way down into Damascus simply because I couldn’t see where I was going, so I pulled over to the side of the highway and made a quick camp underneath one of the two trees I could see. Morning came and I was thankful that I hadn’t been buried under a metre of sand from an overnight sandstorm. I did have a flat tyre though, unsurprisingly. I’d been having another bad run of these lately, since leaving Aleppo. I popped one 5km from Homs a couple of days earlier, and now I only had one spare left. I’d have to do some serious repair work and cleaning when I arrived in Damascus. Thankfully it was a glorious downhill run that morning, and I covered the remaining 70km in about three hours of easy downhill cycling, knocking on the door of my hostel just before lunch.

The funny guy at reception took one look at me and just said “are you working?” I figured he must have thought I had been stuck under a car all day or doing some kind of manual labour. I told him about the sandstorm and he got a good laugh, then offered to take Bessie around the back courtyard for me whilst I took my bags upstairs. I knew of course that he wanted to take the bike for a quick spin first, they all do. To somebody from the Balkans or the Middle East, my bike is space aged. At least he admitted it when he returned 15 minutes later. “Hard to steer that” he said. “You get used to it, and it’s actually easier to handle loaded with the bags, believe it or not. Anyway, forgot to tell you she’s got a flat tyre too.” Which she did, I’d popped another on the outskirts of Damascus that morning. Thankfully it was a slow leak so I could keep pumping it up and rolling it for another 10km or so. But it was now time to clean up.

I started with myself. Taking my clothes off to have a shower, I looked down at my legs. They were black, and I had a very obvious sock line where below my feet shone as white as snow. My face and arms were covered in all sorts of crap too. The shower was fantastic and I spent about an hour scrubbing the remnants of the sandstorm off me. Next it was time for the bike. I borrowed a bucket from the cleaning lady, full of some kind of cleaning agent and with a scrubbing brush, spent about two hours removing the mud that was caked on everywhere. I removed both wheels, cleaned them and then checked for foreign objects. The rear wheel that had been giving me so much grief lately, was riddled with problems. I pulled the tyre off and inspected the inner tube, finding not one hole, but four! I couldn’t believe it had lasted me all the way into Damascus. I used five patches to get it back into shape, not wanting to throw it away because I only had one other new inner tube left from the new ones that Hannah had bought out from London only a couple of weeks earlier. I was going through them like they were going out of fashion. Clearly there was something in the tyre causing all these holes, and I found three glass shards and four metal wires poking out, any of which could easily have caused the problems I’d faced over the past few days. Amazing how all this stuff accumulates as you go along. I put Bessie back together and she was looking smarter than she had done for a long while. Then it was time to clean my bags. Thankfully they were waterproof or else I would have also had to clean everything inside them. It took me another hour to scrub the mud and dirt off my six bags, and then finally I was done. ‘Let’s hope I don’t hit another dust storm!’ I thought.

So I’d finally made it to Damascus. The trip from Amman had been eventful and exciting, with its ups and downs, but definitely an awesome journey. Probably the most spectacular sight along the way had been when I stopped over at Homs for two nights (about half way between Aleppo and Damascus) where I left Bessie behind and took a trip out to see an old crusader castle called Krak de Chevalier. It was built by the English Crusaders about 800 years ago when they came riding out to Jerusalem to spread Christianity and all that. Well, the knights certainly knew how to built a castle! I was most impressed and it is clear how it is described as probably the best example of a typical fortress castle in existence. It is exactly what you think about when you are a kid and dreaming about knights in shining armour and castles with moats and towers and drawbridges and so forth. I spent a good four hours wandering around the castle from top to bottom. Some places were so dark you needed a flash light, and I was actually too scared to visit some of the lower dungeon levels by myself in the dark! You could pretty much wander around wherever you wanted, just like the citadel back in Aleppo. I got some great photos from the top of a hill just a bit further up the road from the castle too, so it made my day. Negotiating for rides back into town was part of the fun too. From the original quote of 700SP for a taxi ride, down to 200SP for a lift back in a private car. I scored on that front, and as we pulled out of the car park the look on the taxi drivers face was priceless. Still, I maintain that if they didn’t try to rip you off in the first place and gave you an honest price, then you might actually have some sympathy for them. A savvy tourist knows that they can pay 50SP for the shared minibus taxi, which I did catch on the way out – not bad value for a 45km trip!

My journey through Syria was ending well. I spent two nights in downtown Damascus, checking out the old city which was again full of souks, mosques and its own citadel fortress thingy. It wasn’t as authentic as Aleppo which was disappointing, and a lot of the main souk was a bit touristy in comparison. Still it was beautiful and I wandered around town for a whole day getting lost and eating everything interesting that I saw along the way. On the first evening in town, I found a coffee shop recommended in the guidebook as being a great place to go and see the last remaining ‘story teller’ – a profession that was once popular in these parts but with the introduction of radio and TV, over the years they gradually disappeared until one day, when the last storyteller retired, a young man named Abu Shadi picked up the trade. Interested in books and stories from a young age he thought it would be such a shame to let the profession die out, he picked up the reins. Now he is an old man and reads every night in this coffee shop. The stories are in Arabic but it doesn’t prevent it from being entertaining to watch. Apparently he is grooming is son to become a storyteller also!

The day I left Damascus for Amman (Jordan), I didn’t make the same mistake of leaving too late to cover the distance. Weather permitting I might actually be able to cover the 180km stretch in a single day. I made a cracking start, covering about 70km in a few hours, when up beside me pulled two motorbikes. I had been wondering where these guys had been, I met them back in the hostel in Damascus and they were doing a motorbike tour. One was a British guy James, who had biked all the way from London and like me, was heading to Cairo. The other Belgian fellow was tagging along until they reached Jordan. The pair had left not long after me apparently, and couldn’t believe the ground I’d covered by the time they caught up. I was grateful they showed because I’d just started running low on water, and they also shared a few bikkies and we had a rest and a chat for a little while before we all kicked on.

And it wasn’t long before I saw the first sign pointing to the border and the ‘Jordan – Syria free zone’. Syria had been a fantastic country and I was very glad to have been able to cycle it from the top to bottom. In a way it was also sitting on my mind, that once I reached Amman in Jordan, it would probably mark the end of the long cycling legs. I’d have to jump a ferry and a bus within a few days in order to make it to Cairo on schedule, and though Cairo was the ‘official’ end goal, the reality was that this 185km run from Damascus into Amman was the last full day of cycling that I would have. Sadness.

Perhaps Huey the Surf God knew this, and he said to the other gods “let there be a northerly tailwind and warm pleasant sunshine, for the Foreign Correspondent cycles forth on this day along the flat roads of the holy land, and will soon once again be one with the ocean.” And so it was – and that day I covered the longest distance that I would ever manage in a single day of the entire four-month journey. And it was pleasant and enjoyable and it was good. And the Foreign Correspondent was pleased…

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