Travelling south from Aleppo we spent a damp day in Hama, the home of many old wooden Arabic water-wheels or Norias, wondering whether to dodge the showers and head for Krak des Chevaliers, or not bother and stay in the dry.

In the end, with the sky brightening, we headed east on a minor road just to see where it went. But the heavens opened sending us scuttling back to the hotel.
So the next day it was off to Krak des Chevaliers, rain or no.

Well, no actually. We determined to take the back-country route, expecting to find some dirt roads to explore, but got hopelessly lost with our inadequate-for-the-back-country maps. With it being dark by 5pm, a quick retreat to Homs was necessary to find a place for the night.

But we made the magnificent Crusader castle the next day, well worth the wait.

Photo time at Krak des Chevaliers

Then the serious stuff, the ride across the desert to the ancient Roman ruins at Palmyra.
Well, not officially desert, but near enough for us, for now.

The desert at last

Fork in the desert track

With the sun low behind us, we reach the Roman city of Palmyra.

Magnificent ruins

There are a couple of well-publicised camp sites adjacent to the walls of the main Roman temple. In one we were offered a complete Bedouin tent to ourselves so we moved in. It's actually a reproduction for tourists but nevertheless was traditionally furnished and elaborately decorated and had an entertaining wood-burning stove inside.

Interesting visitor to our Bedouin tent, size L or XXL, depending on your outlook.

It seemed a handy sort of place to do an oil change, so we did three, cleaned three air filters and whipped the carburetor off of Caroline's Serow. It had run fine back home in SE England, but here on roads above 2000 feet the mixture was far too rich and was affecting the little engine's performance. We lowered the needle as far as possible, which improved things a little, but further adjustment is definitely necessary.

As usual we had the problem of what to do with the old oil. We always pour this back into the container that we bought the new oil in and then look for a solution.
But we never found a proper one.
Back in Turkey we bought oil in a petrol station, did the oil changes on a patch of grass next door, then took the old oil, in the container we had just bought, back to the petrol station for advice.
First off, the attendant was very surprised, and we quickly realised that he thought we were bringing it back because there was something wrong with it.
No. We explained we needed to dispose of the old oil from our engines. His face lit up. "Follow me," he beckoned. To the rear of the filling station and his wheely dustbin.
He opened the lid, took our can of old oil and threw it in.
"There - job done!"

This time we thought we'd try the campsite warden. We explained we had a can of used motor oil and a bottle of dirty petrol (used to clean the air filters), and guessed that he would know someone who could use it. He was bound to know, we thought, a local Syrian farmer with an old tractor needing lots of both.
Bingo! He gave a big smile and gladly took both containers.

Maybe the most authentic thing about that Bedouin tent was the dust inside it. Every single thing that you touched, however lightly, emitted a thick cloud of it. When we finally vacated and were ready to leave, the site warden took a little electric blower inside to blow our three days of occupation around. After a while I looked inside. He was hardly visible in the dense clouds of dust marshalled up by his blower as he coaxed it towards the door. Outside I watched for a while, and when he came out, satisfied the job was complete, not a single speck of dust had left the tent. It was all still inside, just re-arranged.

We departed for Damascus