A Normal Spring Trip
Me and My partner in the university Hashem were asked to continue our graduation project by going to one the Following villages:
khouikhat
Hasoura
Mqa3bra
Rastan
Do you know this villages? Well due to my general culture I know about Rastan town, and due to my "hiking experience" I know a little about Mqa3brah as I hiked near by two years ago, and the other two villages we couldn't even find them in the map.
What I know about it that it's located not very far from the Crack de Chevalier citadel to the west of Homs and in the middle of greenery there. So why not? A graduation scientific trip and a chance to take a breath in the best time of the year here in Syria.
And there we went, we went first to Hims (Homs) where we found out that most of the people there are originally from Homs countryside, and they advised us to take a transportation to one of the major towns which is called Al-7Howash and then continue by walking. And so we did.
When we took the micro bus I realized that everyone knows everyone even the driver who knew even the names of all the passengers!
The driver dropped us in the last station and we had to continue our trip walking!
Everyone advised us to take the main road, but for me, I find it boring, so we decided to cross the valley , and then up to the mountain, using the old roads that the ancestors there made by hand and they call it "7heresh" 's roads..
First we came across an old mill, as usual now it's totally neglected.
And then we went up to the top pf the mountain, where we met a simple nice family who offered us water and invited us to a cup of tea, a shepherd from a village in one of the top of the mounts there joined us, he took of his Ngab (kufieh), showed us the way and told us many strange stories about a big black snake in the valley which attacks everyone stands in its face!
We continued to the village and we found that village was really damaged because of a creep and other earth movements in the main slope over which most of the village is situate, me an Hashem took many photos and interviewed many people.