This is the story of the bus/mini van trip from Beruit to Istanbul I did in the start of March this year. The beginning of this two day and night drama started with the usual crowded mini van from Beruit to Damascus. Packed full of filthy chain smokers, I periodically blasted them with icy winter air to remind them of my feeling of general disgruntledness at their polluting ways.
Besides the usual stops on the way to the border to load up with fruit, bread, cigarettes, etc there was no trouble in crossing back to Syria under the evil eye of Assad and his unholy trinity of his two sons. Bought my ticket in the Karnak office, once again with the two fat ladies in evidence. These were not jovial like the well known television show, but cantankerous old cows with a marked dislike for foreigners. So a quick trip across town stopping for pizza, where at the office of the bus depot it was found the fat toads had given me the wrong ticket, much to my delight the manager phoned them up and proceeded to dump vast heaps of abuse upon them.
Climbing on to what I thought was a luxury coach, I found it to be strewn with rubbish and the passengers were more chronic chain smokers, many coughing disgustingly with death grunts, yet they persisted. In vain, I hid under my sleeping bag to ward off this toxic attack.
The first stop was for a roadhouse, then the bus refused to start. After some on-road repairs we were off again until we picked up some stray passengers here and there, which again resulted in engine failure. The night rolled on, passing many small towns with bright green glowing minerets, making for a somewhat alien sight.
After some 5 hours had covered about 200km and it was 3:00am when we pulled into some fourth rate roadhouse and were herded into its dingy, filthy interior. Naturally all the smoking addicts took this fine opportunity to shorten their lives some more, so I went outside. I noted some of those nasty 3-wheel motorcycle vans loading stuff into the bus before being chased inside. After protesting, I went out again and another one of these helpful young guys who seem to be everywhere in Syria explained all about the smuggling occurring, the government spies there as well, and the whole dirty business. I said I did not care; I just wanted to get to Istanbul, smuggling or no smuggling.
Then some young scum came up demanding money and tried to threaten me with his father being police, etc and he would smash me, blah blah. I responding by wrapping my chains around my hand under my sleeping bag in case he decided to carry out his threat. But he still did not get any money, much to his disgust.
Two hours later we headed off loaded with many unknown and questionable items. I noticed at the border the bus driver slipping the immigration officer a large wad of cash and, surprise surprise, was put through straight away. It was sunrise and it revealed bleak green rock strewn hills. The Turkish side was the opposite with screaming officers violently hurling smuggled goods about, herding people away and dragging the odd one too. Being a westerner, they saw my couple of Lonely Bastard books and that was all the attention they paid me. Except when leaving one wanted to inspect my passport and then wanted a bribe for doing so, I just grabbed it and run.
Going across the plains was quite beautiful, rich and green with a jagged line of snowy mountains behind, but the villages were filthy with dirty people. Antakya became the next stopover. A four hour wait for another bus, another 17 hours to go and I had already been going 20 with one hour sleep. Met up with a luckless Japanese with the same saga so we wandered through the narrow lane ways of the old town and eating some great chicken sandwiches.