Middle East - Anthony Ham [448]
Jordanian visas are issued at the border (Click here), or can be obtained in advance from the embassy in Damascus. It’s cheaper to get it at the border.
LEBANON
There are plenty of buses from Damascus to Beirut (Click here), although to travel direct to Baalbek the only option is a service taxi (Click here for details). You can also travel by bus or service taxi to Beirut via Tripoli from Aleppo (Click here) and Lattakia (Click here).
Click here for information on obtaining Lebanese visas.
TURKEY
There are several border crossings between Syria and Turkey. The busiest and most convenient links Antakya in Turkey with Aleppo, via the Bab al-Hawa border station. This is the route taken by all cross-border buses including those from Damascus and Aleppo (Click here) bound for Antakya and onward Turkish destinations.
An interesting alternative to the bus might be the weekly train from Aleppo to İstanbul (Click here).
You can also make your way by microbus from Lattakia, on the Syrian coast, to the border post on the outskirts of the village of Kassab and on to Antakya via Yayladağı. Over in the far northeast of Syria there’s another crossing at Qamishle (see boxed text, Click here) for the southeastern Turkish town of Nusaybin.
While Turkish visas are issued at the border (Click here), you must already be in possession of a valid visa to enter Syria – Click here.
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GETTING AROUND
Air
Syrianair has a monopoly on domestic flights in the country, and operates flights from Damascus to Aleppo, Deir ez-Zur, Lattakia and Qamishle. Students and under 26s can usually get discounted tickets.
Bus
Syria has a well-developed road network, and bus transport is frequent and cheap. Distances are short, so journeys rarely take more than a few hours. Carry your passport at all times as you’ll need it to buy tickets.
Several kinds of buses ply the same routes, but the most safe and comfortable way to travel is by ‘luxury’ Pullman bus.
MINIBUS & MICROBUS
Minibuses operate on many of the shorter routes, eg Hama–Homs, Tartus–Lattakia and Homs–Lattakia. They take about 20 people, are often luridly decorated and have no schedule, departing when full. This means that on less-popular routes, you may have to wait quite some time until one fills up. Journey times are generally longer than with the other buses, as they set people down and pick them up at any and all points along the route – hence their common name of ‘hob-hob’ (stop-stop) – and often detour from the main road.
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JUST ACROSS THE BORDER: BAALBEK, LEBANON
You’re in Damascus and travellers coming from Lebanon are raving about the Roman ruins of Baalbek. Some even claim that it surpasses even Palmyra. So grab a visa to enter Lebanon, Click here, also Click here for information about trying your luck at getting a visa at the border. Although there are no direct bus services between Damascus and Baalbek, service taxis (Click here) regularly ply the route from Damascus’s Al-Samariyeh Garage, covering the route in just 2½ hours. While you could conceivably return to Damascus the same day, what’s your hurry? Baalbek rewards those who linger, especially early morning or late afternoon, and, besides, you also have to factor in time for a meal at Shahrazad (Click here) with its astonishing views over the ruins. The ruins (Click here) themselves are awash with temples to just about every known Roman deity and this is one ancient site where you can really imagine what it was like in its heyday.
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JUST ACROSS THE BORDER: şANLIURFA (URFA), TURKEY
There are more famous cities in Turkey than Şanlıurfa (Click here), but few offer such an exotic Middle Eastern feel, not to mention easy proximity to northern Syria. You might find a service taxi to the border crossing at Akçakale, which lies south of Şanlıurfa, from Aleppo’s small International Bus Station (Click here), but they can take an age to fill and you may be better off catching a much more frequent, early-morning cross-border bus to Antakya (Click