Our last stop in Syria was the Hittite temple at Ain Dara, about 20km short of the northern border with Turkey. Dating from the 10th century BC, the remains of a black basalt temple, devoted to the fertility goddess Ishtar, are perched on top of an acropolis rising up from the surrounded cultivated valley.
A huge carved lion greets you as you reach the top of the hill, with the remains of many more within the temple walls.
Intriguingly there are also four 1m long footprints at the temple entrance, thought to be proof that the goddess honoured the temple by actually visiting it, but we think they look like recent additions!
The caretaker to the site lives at the base of the hill and greeted us with oranges, then proceeded to wash the Land Rover whilst we were looking around the temple. You wouldn’t get that sort of service at Stonehenge!
Maybe we’re getting used to them, but the border crossing was straight forward, especially as we used the same crossing point as when we originally entered Syria. The only slight hiccup was that we had to change some more money as the departure tax at the northern border is charged at S£550 per person, not the S£500 we had paid when leaving the southern border into Jordan, and we’d worked our Syrian money to just leave the S£1000 we thought we needed. Strangely the receipts still say S£500, so Anne thinks somebody is probably just pocketing the extra.
After asking whether any of our jerry cans on our roof rack were for diesel, the Turkish vehicles inspector told us “All the cans on the rack are for water, aren’t they...”. We’re assuming you aren’t meant to bring in cans of cheap fuel from Syria (just what is in your tanks), so we agreed with the inspector that the diesel can was indeed filled with water and we were on our way, not a moment too soon as it had turned bitterly cold with a strong wind.
We had an easy afternoon’s driving, first on minor roads to link up with our first Turkish motorway with its four lanes of smooth tarmac, the latter making a nice change from the somewhat irregular surface that graces most roads in Turkey. We were a little worried when we hit the toll booth as we only had about £10 worth of Turkish Lira on us, but it proved not to be a problem as the 200km we’d just completed only cost us £1.25 (if only the French toll roads were so cheap). We stopped at Adana for the night and, rather than venturing into the centre of this city of 1.2 million, we stopped on the outskirts at the Airport Hotel and managed to negotiate a reasonable rate.
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