Through Jordan, Syria and Turkey into Europe

7 juni 2011 - Utrecht, Nederland

Jordan

We left the Egyptian Sinai desert by ferry over the Gulf of Akaba to Akaba city in Jordan. It’s a beautiful setting going by boat along the rough Sinai mountains in the west and the Saudi Arabian coastline on the east. After several hours the western coastline becomes Israel with the large city of Eilat. Looking to the other side lays Akaba, two big cities not far apart. Unfortunately we have to avoid Israel (otherwise the Syrian immigration will not let us in). After a long delayed ferry ride we entered Jordan by night. A large cold beer, an apple tobacco shisha and off to bed. The following day we drive to Wadi Rum, a dry and stunning desert landscape with surreal rock formations.

02 Walk up sanddunes Wadi Rum

Further north, the large city of Petra was built by the Nabataeans around the 6th century BC. Today it is still visited by thousands of tourists every day, a huge area full of tombs, temples and other structures. You can get lost here. The recommendation is to stay here at least 3 days to see all the sites. After 1 day we’ve seen enough old piled stones and caves. After having seen so many sites in Sudan and Egypt our brains are simply saturated.

06 Petra

We drive to the Dead Sea, which lays between Jordan and Israel and is almost 35% salinity (salt %). This means you can easily float around, even while holding your hand and feet into the air. Swimming is only possible while floating on your back (otherwise your legs move above the water surface). Entering the cold water is first chilly, but once your body is covered with a salty-oily film you feel like a duck (protected from the cold).

09 Floating the Black Sea


Syria

The city of Damascus is probably the most interesting and beautiful city we have seen on our trip. When entering the old souks you feel like wandering around in the old medieval times. Strange products and scents kept amazing us for several days. Long walks in such a city have to be varied by drinking mint tea and smoking shisha. The people in this city consist of strict and conservative Muslims often wearing fully covered burkas, and on the other hand very modern Muslims wearing jeans and only visiting the mosque once a day or less.

10 Mosque Damascus

In Damascus we stay in the Carlton hotel, for a change providing us with a decent room and bathroom for three nights (thanks Heineken!). Also the car could be parked safely and we felt better staying in a large hotel due to the current unrest in Syria. We were warned not to enter the city (and other Syrian cities) on Friday as people will go to the streets to protest against Assad. At that time this warning was not really valid for central Damascus, though the surrounding cities were indeed in turmoil.

At first sight Syria seems a very safe and carefree place. The only signs which indicate you are walking around in a dictator country are the thousands of president Assad pictures you see; in shops, on billboards, on cars, T-shirts, etc. Even on the front window of this car (see pic). The man really wanted to see the world through Assad’s eyes..

11 Looking through Assad's eyes

Further north the old city of Palmyra already exists since the second millennium BC. For a long time it served as a trading centre and safe place for the caravan routes crossing the desert to Mesopotamia. For centuries many people lived here and it was destroyed and rebuilt again several times. What remains of the old city are numerous columns and parts of temples still standing. Again due to severe brain saturation levels we stayed one day in this beautiful place.

12 Columns and camels in Palmyra

Close to the Lebanese border and west of the city of Homs lies Krak des Chevaliers, a large crusader castle (housing for the knights in the times of the Crusades). Laying on top of a high hill it used to be almost impossible to enter. The French restored it several years ago, so it remains in good shape.

Before entering Turkey we visited the city of Aleppo in the north of Syria. Another medieval city with a large Citadel towering in the middle of it; an amazing place. The people here are all pro-Assad. The weeks of fights between the government military and protesters where hundreds of the latter were killed are described to us as “some protesters throwing stones at the military”.

 

Turkey

On the journey through the north of Syria into Turkey the temperature is dropping substantially and in Turkey we face our first big snow storm. Trust me, this feels like hell after having spent 6 months in Africa. Luckily the second day in Cappadocia spares us with a sweet spring sunshine lighting up the remarkable landscape and millions of white and pink blossoms. Cappadocia is covered with old Christian underground cities which were carved out of the soft white stone and sand.

13 Cappadocia

We travel through Ankara to the Black Sea coast. A beautiful trip through the northern-Turkish hills. After having slept on a parking lot in front of a dodgy restaurant (we could not find camping places) we headed for Istanbul to cross the Bosporus over the long bridge to the western part of Turkey. Into “Europe”. We saw Istanbul before so we spend our time buying some clothing and drinking expensive but delicious cappuccinos.

 

Europe

In Europe our journey is not about seeing countries, we only consume its highways to get home. Our plan to drive to drive via Croatia is blocked by the Serbian customs not allowing us to enter their country (twice) because we only have a copy of the green insurance card. “Your card is not green”. Especially the second attempt to cross the border several hundreds of kilometres further results in a lot of suspicion at the border. Already one Serbian stamp with a huge red “CANCELLED” through it seems to alert them. So a second “CANCELLED” is added with a grumpy smile. We turn back and drive through Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary into Austria. Here we obtain a full service treatment in good food, warm showers and a large and clean bed at Helmut (Heineken colleague) and Jana’s house. Lovely place stay so it was difficult to leave again for our final trip home.

14 At Helmut and Jana's

Graz, Austria to Heeze, Netherlands is about 1200km, so we took two days to drive in our green tank averaging 90km/hr. We slept our last night in our mighty Toyota on a German Raststatte between many large trucks, not the most picturesque place we have slept the past 7 months.

 

Home

In Holland we were waited for by Ted and Patty who gave us our last escort to Hans and Anita’s place in Heeze, Brabant.

Høme sweet høme. We flew 10.000 km in a straight line to Cape Town by plane and drove back covering 36.000 km.

15 home sweet home

It was a nice trip.


 

Some figures:

2 people, 1 car

22 countries

3 continents: Africa, Middle East and Europe

200 days (7 months)

36.000 km

5000 liters of petrol

Foto’s