palmyra / tadmur (syria)

Well, at the rate I'm going (with not retrieving the Jordan & Damascus photos I deleted from my memory card by mistake) I'll never put up the rest of my photos from my x'mas trip. So let me skip that bit of the trip for now and move on to Palmyra, or Tadmur as the locals call it (Palmyra is the name of only the ancient city, though even that might be a corruption of the name Tadmur).

Palmyra's a World Heritage site and it is quite amazing - the ruins of an ancient city at the edge of an oasis in the vast flat expanse of the desert. And then there's Qalat Ibn Maan, a fort from the 16th century, which is perched on a hill at the edge of the ancient city. The views of the city and the desert from the fort are beautiful. We had traveled from Damascus to Palmyra by bus in the morning, and didn't stay the night in Palmyra, so it was a full afternoon of walking, including climbing up to the fort to see the sunset.

Temple of Ba'al, from the 1st century AD.

temple ruins

the monumental arch leading into the colonnaded street

from one side of the colonnaded street - with Qalat Ibn Maan on the hill in the distance,
to the right

from the other side of the arch

one of the friendly, charming guys who zoom about the site on their motorbikes selling trinkets and scarves to tourists - he charmed me into buying a tiny silver camel by telling me that Indians were just like Syrians (unlike the Germans and French to whom he claimed he would therefore have quoted a higher price). Not sure why he said that - I suspect it had something to do with evoking some kind of "Third World" solidarity. Just recently I was reading something about how "trust" and "familiarity" are created in particular ways through speech in bazaars in India. Anyway, whatever it was, it immediately made me feel a bit more at ease with him and we went on to have a bit of a rambling chat... And once it was clear to him I was going to buy the camel, he went on to cajole me into buying two more trinkets.

more of the biker dudes selling stuff

remains of the Temple of Nabu along the colonnaded street
(Nabu, according to wikipedia, is the Assyrian and Babylonian god of wisdom and writing, so given my state of mind these days, wouldn't mind some blessings from Nabu!)

we didn't make it to the tower tombs seen here in the distance - I anyway suspect that they probably looked more beautiful from a distance than from near.

Varun beginning the walk to Qalat Ibn Maan

steadily approaching the base of the hill

looking down from the fort - the new city of Tadmur to the left of centre, the ancient city to the extreme right (might be able to see it if you click on the photograph), with the greenery of the oasis spread out in the middle and around

trying to zoom into a football game and a basketball game

trying to zoom into a solitary man in the middle of the desert

the palmyra ruins and sand dunes in the evening light, just before sunset

resting my legs for a bit

sunset from the fort