Aleppo: butchers, tailors and soap makers

We parted company today with Lise and headed north towards Aleppo, the last major city in Syria prior to the Turkish border. Like Damascus, Aleppo has an intricate Old City, one in whose alleys you could lose yourself and probably not find the way out for a good few days. However, unlike Damascus, something here is amiss. We did not feel the same kind of atmosphere as we did in Damascus, nor did we feel content to just merely wander around. Maybe it’s just getting to be too much of the same thing over and over again. However, I really think that there was something special about Damascus that no other town can compare with and it’s something that you have to experience for yourself.

Aleppo, however, is not without its merits. Its Old City is filled never ending souqs that go on for kilometers. These are seldom touristy. Rather, they are filled with all the goods that the locals might desire. There seems to be a kind of logic to most markets like these, whether it would be in Hanoi, in Cairo or here in Aleppo. Generally speaking if you want a given product, you go to a given area. So, like in Hanoi where you would find a street filled with stores selling rope, here too you will find an area of the souq selling such goods. A different section will be selling cloth, toys, spices and whatever else you can think of. However, sometimes this logic seems to go astray, especially when you see a carcass of a cow with all its innards hanging in a window, right next to a tailor shop on one side and a soap store on the other.

Other than that, Aleppo is just a large city, with the usual mosques, Christian quarters, citadels etc. I think am more than ready for something new, something different and I hope that the Cappadocia region of Turkey will provide the needed variety. Tomorrow at 4:30am we’re off to Antakya and from there hoping to catch a bus on to Cappadocia, so the next posts should be either from there or from the Turkish coast.