Crac des Chevaliers and Hama – January 3rd, 2006

The thing I dislike about Syria is that everybody smokes. Everywhere. On the street, in restaurants, in the hotel, on the bus, everywhere. I’m the only non-smoker on our tour and the others are making the most of cheap cigarettes and the ability to smoke anywhere, so I’m constantly surrounded by smoke. As a result, my throat is raw and all my clothes smell. I guess I’ve got to get used to it…maybe I need to take up smoking…

Enough complaining! This morning we had to get up quite early to catch the public bus to Hama, our next stop. It is the Islamic festival of Haj on the weekend, during which many people hire buses to make pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. As a result, Syria is almost devoid of buses and the timetables are all out. To get to the bus station, we caught a taxi from our hotel. Taxis here are quite small and really not equipped to hold travel packs. Our taxi driver didn’t shut the boot, so we had a pretty nervous ride, watching our luggage through the rear window and praying it wouldn’t dislodge.


We, and the luggage, made it to the bus station in one piece. We boarded our bus and made the hour and a half trip to Hama. As soon as we arrived, we hopped into a minibus for the drive to Crac des Chevaliers, a castle near the Lebanese border. Driving in Syria is terrific in the proper sense and may be related to the level of religious devotion found in this region. Lane markings are there as rough guides – if cars can fit through a space, they can drive through it. In the cities, this is controlled to some extent by the massive number of cars on the road – they can’t go all that fast. Highway driving is a different story. The speed limit is 80 km/hr but most traffic is doing about 150. Indicators are only used to tell the car in front to get out of your way, horns are then used as a follow-up, meaning that the car in front really needs to get out of the way. The vehicles doing the honking do not slow down, they’ll just hit yours if it doesn’t move. As a passenger, this can be a somewhat stressful experience, especially when the vehicle bearing down on your little minivan is a prime-mover with two containers. We, as a group, found prayer on this journey!


The minibus survived the journey to Crac des Chevaliers, including the steep ascent just prior to the castle. We originally drove past the castle to view it from behind, and it is an awesome sight to behold. Built in the eleventh century by the Hospitaller Knights, it is considered to be the foremost example of crusader architecture. During the Crusades there were eleven crusader castles between Antioch and Jerusalem, five of which were in Syria. Crac des Chevaliers guards two valleys, which today mark the Lebanese and Turkish borders. It took 11 000 people 75 year to build and it housed 4000 soldiers, 400 knights and 400 horses. It could store enough provisions to withstand five years of constant siege, providing that enough rain fell to replenish the internal cisterns.

(Maria stops writing, Fletch takes over…)

Whilst physically imposing, the interior of the castle can only hint at the everyday activities of the inhabitants of the castle. Points of particular interest to me included the massive stone oven in the kitchen, the round table for the knights which was open to the elements, and the “King daughter tower” in which we ate lunch. The lunch was possibly the highlight of the tour, with an incredible variety of vegetarian food and quantities perhaps more suited to the hoards of Christian soldiers whom previously garrisoned the castle. We also enjoyed exploring the hidden passages surrounding the main part of the castle, a feature which was an extra layer of protection in times of siege. Our guide was keen to point out that the application of hot oil was considered a “welcome drink” by the defenders.

(Maria’s back)

After we had our delicious lunch, we braved the gale force winds blowing around the castle to head back to the minibus. Everybody was so full from lunch that the trip back to Hama was very quiet.

We arrived back near sunset and quickly went out to look at the wooden ‘norias’ (waterwheels), for which Hama is famous. The waterwheels have been in Hama for a very long time and were used to get water from the river Orontes into aqueducts, which piped the water around this region. There were originally 86, but only eighteen are still standing. They are not used for water distribution any more, but instead power a number of waterfalls and fountains around Hama.

After seeing the various waterwheels, we paid a visit to a loom weaver’s shop. We saw them making cotton and silk tablecloths and cotton towels. It was interesting to see how quickly they could do the weaving and how noisy it was! After visiting their shop, which contained an incredible range of cotton products, we walked through the main shopping district back to our hotel. Fletch and I went and got some fresh juice from a stall across the street and then had a brief rest in our room. We went out to get a quick bite to eat from a local pizza shop. We actually became the main attraction – they invited us in to watch them make the dough and the pizza. Everyone in the shop came up to say hello and the young boys making the dough began to show off for our benefit, becoming more and more elaborate in their rolling techniques. We had fun waiting for the pizza to cook and it was worth the wait – it was very good.

Currently we’re sitting in the hotel lounge drinking ‘raki’ with other members of our group, eating our way through a bag of Aleppo pistachios. We’ve got quite a big day tomorrow, so we’re going to have a relaxed night – the raki will help with that!! However, we can’t say goodbye without the latest instalment of….

Fletch’s tips for new travellers

Arak (raki in Turkey) is peddled in Syria as a drink. This is a joke perpetrated by Syrians upon unsuspecting travellers. It tastes of camel, and kicks like aniseed, or something…