Aleppo, Syria 5/6 May 08

Overnight buses rock. Save on accommodation and get to travel at the same time! Had a mammoth 19 hour trip though from Gȍreme to Aleppo in Syria. Had to change off the o/night bus onto one that took us across the border (what a palava!) and then the damn bus driver decided he wasn’t actually going to Aleppo and the five of us got unceremoniously dumped on the roadside. We ended up crammed in a rickety van with all our packs but the driver was determined to get his full quota of passengers so there were 12 of us in the van, plus all our packs.

Dumped…

Aleppo was big, stinky, dirty and very busy but everyone seems curious and pleased to see the five of us – needless to say there weren’t many tourists around. Selling soap is all the rage and there were shops with stacks of it pouring onto the streets. We quickly discovered that Syria is much cheaper than Turkey and when we found a room for £7 for the night and an incredible dinner of various mezzes for £5 we were pretty sold. I’m living on hummous, tabbouleh and baba ghanooj as I just can’t stomach the meat. Euan eats just about anything but even he drew the line at “fried lambs spinal cord”….. mmmmm! The sheep over here are those fat-tailed sheep and the meat has a very strong flavour (and it could well be goat as some of the carcasses hanging in the windows still had heads on). The carcasses are easily identified as sheep as the sheep here are the fat-tailed breed so there is a great lump of white fat hanging around the arse end - it looks quite weird and very unattractive.

Having a rest on a roundabout (of sorts)


This nice man gave me a flower that smelt divine


Walking anywhere takes a long time as we’re always being dragged off to talk to someone who wants to practice their English, ask where we’re from or have their photo taken. We were in ‘Meat St’ (not sure what it was really called but there were carcasses all over the show) and spotted this chap browning with a blow-torch racks of goats legs. Check out his slightly mad smile…!!


I got firmly beckoned into a chicken shop by the chaps across the road not wanting to be outdone by my neighbour. I stood one step down as I wasn't sure what they'd do (wipe chicken all over me??!)…. I was slightly nervous as they were rather excited about something.


This wee donkey looked so out of place in the traffic and so peeved at his owner who kept stopping


This is Aleppo from the Citadel


The Souks in Aleppo were incredible and you could really lose yourself in there. The smells in particular were amazing – there were huge tubs of Vaseline, castles of decorated spices, boxes of dried dandelion and piles of honeycomb oozing honey.

Lip gloss anyone? Industrial-sized tubs of Vaseline


Cardamom spice castle (with paprika and something else I couldn’t identify)

We were only in Aleppo one night as we have to come back through to get back into Syria so headed off to Hama the next afternoon.