The Jebel Ansariyya range stood in between Hama and Krak des Chevaliers, so that turned into a challenging day - and later night - of riding. The route was on secondary roads that were signposted only in Arabic, and even that was haphazard at best. That made things a bit more difficult on a frequently-forking road. Towards evening I was asking directions yet again in a village, and the guy told me to stop in the next town to sleep because at night on the road I would get bitten by wolves. There was no place to stay in the next town, I wanted to make it to Krak des Chevaliers, and I doubted the warnings, so I continued on. It was a near full moon night, so visibility on the road was pretty decent, and I was the only one out travelling at that hour. It was cold enough to require two jackets and the winter mittens, and I could see my breath in the moonlight whenever I stopped for a breather. When I finally approached the valley near my destination I could hear howling along with the strangest animal noises. When I made it to my hotel, the Syrian-American owner (he proudly showed me his U.S. passport) told me that I should not have ridden in the mountains at night because of the hyenas and wolves. I thought he must have been mistaken concerning the hyenas, but I checked my guidebook, and sure enough, Syria has hyenas and wolves. Given the consistency of these warnings, I guess there are a decent number of them in the area. When I was going to sleep in the safety of my hotel room I could hear baying, howling and other foreign canine sounds out in the valley. Incidentally, I also learned from the trusty guidebook an interesting fauna fact: "The majority of the millions of golden hamsters that have been kept worldwide as pets are descended from one single pregnant female that was trapped near Aleppo in 1930." The next morning I visited Krak des Chevaliers, which was pretty impressive - and very much intact. (3/24/05)

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Krak des Chevaliers