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al-Andarin

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HobWahid
HobWahid
First Reviewer
3 out of 5
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1
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4
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al-Andarin

  • January 26, 2005
  • Rated 3 of 5 by HobWahid from Damascus, Syria
al-Andarin

It was about 2pm. My girlfriend and I were sitting outside of the ruins of Qasr Ibn Wardan, wondering what to do next. We still had over 2 hours until the sun set and we didn’t want to head back to Hama yet, so we opened up the guide book in search of something else nearby to see because, well, this is Syria and there is always something else nearby to see. Finally we noticed an entry on the ruins of Al-Andarin, which were only 25km away. It was an old Byzantine settlement that sounded interesting, but the guidebook was less than impressed. It read, "Very little remains today other than the jumbled ruins of the barracks and one church. Unless you have a special interest it is perhaps not worth the extra time involved in visiting." It sounded ominous, but we decided to give it a shot anyway. If it was a dud, oh well.

So we headed off to Al-Andarin, farther into the desert and past a number of the famous beehive houses native to the region. All along the way the signage was good and eventually we arrived at a sign in a small town that took us off the main road and said, "al-Andarin 5km" (in Arabic only, of course). The road was no longer paved and was just a dirt track, which was fine, but then all of a sudden the track crested a hill to reveal a completely open plain below. It was here that the track split into about four different paths, all looking perfectly valid. We had only gone 1km, so we knew that we had 4km left. Unsure of what to do, we gazed out over the plain.

"Those could be ruins over there…"

"No they look too modern. How about over there?"

"Let’s go for it."

So, with no real idea of where we were going, we hopped back into the car and chose one of the paths. We descended into the plain, and after another 3km, we still had no sign of ruins and we had arrived at a crossroads. Right or left - and us with no clue. After a few minutes of staring off into the distance, a Syrian came petering by on a motorbike. I waved for him to stop and asked him about the ruins. He smiled, pointed me in the right direction, and asked me if we were archaeologists. "No, just tourists," I replied. He was puzzled.

His directions proved true, though, and we arrived at the ruins to find not only 3 square km of ruins, but also a newly paved road that leads right back to the main road. It was soon obvious that the guidebook seriously underestimated al-Andarin in that even though most of the ruins are quite ruined, the barracks, church, and bathhouse that remain are beautiful, and I found al-Andarin to be one of the most atmospheric places in all of Syria. Just goes to show that you can’t always trust guidebooks.

From journal Hama and the Orontes Valley

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