Bosra, Syria

After our day trip to Jerash, we returned to Amman, and that night we attempted to arrange a ride to Damascus. We finalized our negotiations with the driver shortly after midnight, and he agreed to pick us up in his private car at 8:00 the next morning.

Having a driver was an extremely helpful luxury. Crossing the border would have been much more time-consuming and confusing without his help. His opinion on the political status of Syria would also prove to be quite prescient. As we approached the Syrian border, our driver predicted that citizens of Syria would attempt to replace their government soon.

With our driver's help, we crossed into Syria at Nasib, which is only a few miles from the town of Der'a. Der'a would enter the news a few days after our crossing when it became the first town in Syria to join the Arab Spring movement and to openly protest the ruling Ba'athist party. The day after our departure from Syria, four of the participants of these protests would be killed by Syrian security forces.

The border crossing was several miles long and involved numerous bureaucrats. The architecture of the government buildings was distinctly dilapidated Soviet.

Once we had passed through the multitude of checkpoints, we made a slight detour to the city of Bosra:


We scrambled around the ruins of the old town in Bosra, which dates from the 3rd century AD:





Bosra's main attraction was its black basalt theatre-cum-citadel:

Theatre


Arrowslit


Arrowslit

If you're interested, arjayempee has a more thorough documentation of Bosra.

Next up: Damascus.