The road from Damascus to the Golan Heights was going through the desert with little to see and the group used this time to catch up on sleep. We consistently did not get enough hours of it going to bed late and getting up early. Everyone made themselves comfortable as much as it was possible in our seats and napped.
Nobody knows what contacts Fadi has in the right places to get permission to visit the Golan Heights but we were going there. It is not a tourist area. Before us, it was visited by a group of journalists. An official was on the bus with us to make sure that we only took approved photos and did nothing suspicious.
The number of checkpoints on the road noticeably increased. They were small crude shelters from the elements built from whatever materials could be found nearby like rocks, bricks and planks that provided enough space for 2 or 3 people. A ragged piece of cloth that in its past life was a rug or a curtain hanging at the shelter entrance to serve as its door and a coffee pot sitting on the fire outside the shelter to make the shift more bearable were typical features of these shelters. Some checkpoints were hours away from any settlement. The road was mostly empty except for a truck or two once in a while. A bus with foreigners was a novelty, a kind of entertainment for bored soldiers who studied the group list and our faces in the bus windows and let us continue our trip.
We drove away from the border a little, then walked among destroyed buildings; the official was always by our side. Sometimes he was specific about the direction in which we should point our cameras but mostly we were free to photograph what we wanted.
Another long day in Syria was over. In the remaining 3 days, we were to see Damascus, Bosra and Palmyra and to return to Beirut.