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)