In the morning we took a minibus from Damascus to Maalula, a small town 50km north of the Syrian capital. Backed against rocky cliffs, Maalula is a small place of rich history and religion. Several Christian monasteries and around 2000 inhabitants. The town is famous for the last town in the world where inhabitants can speak Aramaic, an ancient language that people spoke in Jesus' era, including Jesus himself.
We get off at a fork road. Immediately we went up to the cliffside Mar Sarkis Monastery. We made a short hike to tour around Mar Sarkis. The gorge is so narrow here that it strongly resembles a miniature of the Siq in Petra. We reached a plateau with good views of the village. We turned back to the monastery and made a brief tour of the interior. At the end, a priest offered us a special wine prepared from the monastery.
It was unfortunate that we couldn't stay longer in Maalula because according to our schedule, we were due to travel south to Amman of Jordan in the afternoon. We had another brief glance of Maalula, passed by some new concrete houses under construction, before heading back to Damascus by minibus.
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