2006.05.14_Palmyra

Photos: Tetrapylon, Funerary Temple, Funerary Temple and Citadel beyond, Theatre, Monumental Arch and Colonnade Street.

We get up 05:30 in the morning, and left Citadel Hotel at 06:00. We spent about three hours to tour the ruins in the morning sun. Named "Bride of the Desert", Palmyra lies on an ancient desert trade route between Homs in the west and Dura-Europos in the east. From Homs merchants could go further west to Tyre, a large port city at today's Lebanon with all sort of trade routes in the Mediterranean; and from Dura-Europos, the trade route ran eastern along the Euphrates, passing by cities in the Mesopotamia such as Babylon, then to the Persian Gulf, where access to the Indian Ocean and China could be made. Palmyra gained significance after the Nabatean Empire collapsed in AD 106, when earlier trading usually went through the southern routes across Arabia and converged at Petra before reaching the Mediterranean. In the first century AD, Palmyra became part of the Roman Empire and one of the wealthiest cities in Near East. However by mid third century, as the Sassanid Empire emerged in the lands of Persia and beyond, and disrupted trading along the Silk Road, Palmyra's fortunate turned to a gradual decline.

We left the ruins at 08:45, and headed to the post office to mail out some postcards. We dropped by the Palmyra Museum to see the mummies, and headed over to the storefront of Pancake House to wait for our prearranged transportation that would send us to the closest bus station. To much of our surprise a pickup truck came instead of a mini-van. So we all sat down at the back of the pickup truck for the 5-minute journey in the Syria desert. The truck took us to a local tea-house. Nothing here resembled a bus station, but it was the right place where we hopped on the regional bus that bounded to the Syrian capital Damascus. After about 3.5 hours we finally arrived at the renowned Middle Eastern city of Damascus.