Sunday, August 21, 2005

The hike!



I joined a group of friends to a trip to the last Syrian still-owned land before the Golan Heights on the bottom of the Syrian side of mount Al-Shaikh.

A drive of roughly 2 hours separated us from the location of the town called “Bait Jin”.

Not long ago, people needed to get a security permission in order to get there, but not anymore!


The views are awesome at that area; the breeze is reviving, and the mixture of the colors of the nature form a painting that no painter can paint.


We rented a little spot by a tiny stream. We were a group of 22 persons.


We played some cards, prepared a huge amount of food that could have fed a whole African tribe who’s been suffering a famine for few years. It was good, the food I mean. Everything was fresh and delicious, even the fizzy drinks we had, we didn’t buy them, we fished them from the river. It was the first time I ever knew that coke comes from water not from supermarkets! ;)

These kind of fizzy drinks only live in Syrian water, I was told.


A small group of us decided to go for a hike in the nearby mountain, so a number of 10 people hit the road up and started walking. The first thing we saw was an Israeli watching-station built on a nearby mount.

Few minutes later, there were only 4 of us continuing the soft climb and enjoying the scene. One of the guys, who withdrew from the hike, felt that he was losing oxygen due to altitude! We were some 50 centimeters high and he already felt that! What a champ! Anyway, it was a pretty nice hike, a bit hot though. I got some shots that tell about the views better than I can in writing.


The good thing was that we never worried about “where to go” if the nature called, no matter how high and isolated we reached, we still could find “a place to let go”.

Later on the afternoon, we decided to go on a longer hike, so the brave 3 of the group, Reem, Amr and myself, who happened to be the cute ones as well :D, prepared ourselves and hit the road once again.

The scenes were, this time, a lot more beautiful than the first one…..




We climbed for a couple of hours and that included some tough rock climbing before we reached the top of the mountain.

This is me on top, the hardelly-noticed belly that may be seen on me is just a big muscle that I have been growing for a while ;)



There, we could see the two separating border lines between Syria and Israel (or the occupied Golan if I wanna speak patriotically).

The photo on the left shows the border lines, the one of the right shows the border towns on the Syrian side.


It was a day well spent, the hikes were great, I think whoever enjoys this kind of activities, hiking or cola fishing, should go there and enjoy it. A local guy told us that the place is best visited in April, where there will be lots of water falls here and there. Talking about the water; up in the mountain, we drank so cold and fresh water from a small spring, that water was GREAT!


P.S. Click on any photo to enlarge (I know you know, just wanted to make sure)

10 comments:

Yaman said...

Hehe, my family and I came here one Friday afternoon for a sayran. The pleasant fellahin (I think they were Durzi on the particular farm we sat on), had no problem with us sitting their and enjoying the scenery as we ate our pre-cooked food. Of course, we offered him a plate.

I also like the picture of the sodas in the water. It reminded me that a lot of times we put things in naturally cool water just to make them cold--I can think of several occasions in which we've put a watermelon, cantaloupe, or sodas into a running stream for that purpose. In fact, many of the restaurants near Ain Al Feejah do this too!

Thanks for the amazing pictures!

Ghalia said...

Shi zareef, inshallah next time I'll come:/

مترجم سوري said...

ya zelemeh i hated u after this post

this is awosem

Z said...

nice blog ..I like it!

Bubidu said...

So you like hiking...
Hopefully I'll see more of your hiking pics so I know where to go on my trip in December.
cheers,
Ahmad

Dina said...

Looks like you had a great time...now i'm sorry i didn't go :|

GraY FoX said...

that trip was so adorable especially the tribe's food ... cuz if it wasnt that much we would've eaten one of the 24 persons there ... we had fun guys .... wish you were with us :D
it's great to know that ihsan got some pics cuz some of us didnt have the chance to go hiking ... in general it was fun .. if you girls came you would've honored that trip more and more ;)
cheers

Amr Faham said...

a trip khafifeh, zarifeh.
we realy had fun.
thanks to gray fox!

Zena said...

Yes it was fun, refreshing. I don't mind doing it again. And greyfox, I did have fun, I might not show it, but I definitly felt it.

Sharks said...

hi there! the cute one of 3 :\

Well...nice way to describe the whole thin'...but incase no body told u...u missed a lot of fun down there when u took u'r 2nd hike...n' besides some of us had a lot of cleaning up to do...

Anyways...like u said...It was a day well spent!...hope we can to this again some time...

Peace out!