Friday 1st January 2010 - Hama

Happy New Year to you all.  I’m glad to say that we just managed to stay awake until midnight and toasted in 2010 with the only fizzy thing we had to hand - some diet 7Up!  Party on. New Year’s Eve was very quiet in Hama, without fireworks or any real celebrations that we could see, although today is a public holiday and there were lots of “2010” cakes for sale outside all the local bakeries yesterday so some partying probably went on somewhere.

We took a rest and planning day today as we were forced to move into a rather luxurious hotel for the night as the backpacker place we had been in the last two days was fully booked, as were almost all the other hotels in Hama.  Luckily the Orient Hotel is run by the brother of the man who runs the backpacker hotel, so he let us have the room for almost half price. It’s nice seeing how the other half travel, staying in this restored 18th century house with a beautifully decorated lobby and plush rooms.

The result of our planning is that there is a change of plan.  Plan A was that after Turkey we would go through Iran, Pakistan and India to ship out from Chennai (or possibly Chittagong in Bangladesh), but we’d already moved onto Plan B after evaluating the events going on in Iran and Pakistan; Plan B was to go through Syria and Jordan, then ship from Aqaba.  However, now we’re switching to Plan C, which is to ship from the UK!

A few things have led us to decide to return, not least our shipping agent going quiet when we try to pin him down on details.  By returning to England we can fix a couple of mechanical issues with the Land Rover (Ben, I’ll drop you an email!), sort and repack based on what we’ve learnt these last few months travelling, get the vehicle properly cleaned for the very strict Australian quarantine checks, and, last but not least, catch up with friends and family.

So tomorrow we overnight in Damascus before heading to the Jordanian border for three weeks in country.  We’ll return through Syria for a week to visit the sites we’ve missed on the way down (as we’ll have to buy a week’s diesel tax on re-entry we might as well make the most of it), then blast through Turkey, Greece, ferry to Italy, up through Switzerland and France, ferry across the Channel and back to Anne’s parents in the Midlands for mid-February. Easy.  We’ll aim to ship out in March and then join the Land Rover in Australia in May.

We did venture out from the hotel in the afternoon to look at the norias (waterwheels) for which Hana is famous.  The design dates from the 13th century AD, but the surviving 17 dotted along the river that runs through the centre of town have all be reconditioned or rebuilt during the late Mamluk and Ottoman periods.  The largest noria is 20m in diameter, and they were used to lift water from the river into aqueducts that fed the surrounding fields. On our way back we stopped at a local bakery to try a local “delicacy”; a sort of creamy cheese filled sweet puff pastry drenched in honey.  Strange and a bit sickly.

We took advantage of the hotel’s restaurant in the evening, which was busy with locals puffing away on water pipes, families eating and couples chatting.  I had a Syrian dish based on flat bread soaked in spicy yoghurt, with rice, peanuts, greens and lamb, which again was a bit strange, but tasty all the same.  Anne played it safe with a mixed kebab and we shared a salad.  We retired to our room rather stuffed as Syrians don’t skimp on portion size.